Born in the summer of wartorn 1902 in Argao, Cebu, Anastacia Fortuna was destined to travel far from her birthplace. Anastacia was tall, slender, and fair-skinned. She had Castillian cheekbones and gray eyes that seemed to knowingly pierce through a person’s intentions.

As was then customary, Anastacia got married at an early age to Jose Geyrozaga. Folklore has it that Jose was so strong that he would wrestle bare-fisted with an obdurate carabao, until the water buffalo submitted to his will.

Eager to search for greener pastures, Jose enlisted as a sacada to be shipped off to one of the plantations in Hawaii. Together with his young wife, they migrated to Hawaii, U.S.A., where their five children were born, namely: Guillermo, Agustin, Primitivo, Francisco and Buenaventurada (b. July 13, 1927).

The couple soon discovered that life as a sacada in a foreign land was no vacation. Working in a plantation meant hard labor and long hours. Anastacia tended to their home and children while Jose toiled from sunrise to sunset. Sometimes Jose would get drunk, tempers would rise, and Anastacia would get feel the brunt of Jose’s strong hand. Nonetheless, they did not return to the Philippines, probably because they hoped that things would get better if they pursued the American dream. After all, this was in the 1920-1930s, when the Philippines was still under U.S. colonial rule.

Sometime in 1935, Jose received a work furlough and returned with his family to the Philippines intending to enjoy a brief vacation. He was eager to introduce his brood to their relatives in Argao. Just before the family’s holiday ended, Jose was bitten by a snake. While the wound healed, the snakebite proved to be ominous. At the time, Argao was a bucolic town, whose methods and facilities dated back to the Spanish era. When a cholera outbreak broke out in one of Jose’s farms shortly thereafter, there was no doctor who could save Jose this time. Fate had dealt the Geyrozaga family a tragic blow.

Anastacia struggled to raise her five children alone. She worked as a grade school teacher in Cebu. Upon her retirement, she accompanied her only daughter, Buenaventurada, to live in Digos, Davao del Sur. By 1979, however, all her children had returned to permanently live in Hawaii. Too old to do the same and already suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Anastacia was left with her granddaughter, Buenafe, who would take care of her until her death in 1986.

Anastacia liked to smoke a cigarette or two after every meal. Yet, she lived to be 84 years old, cancer-free. Her favorite poem–which she was able to recite until her last days–was a child’s hymn of faith and praise by Cecil Alexander, that spoke of Anastacia’s simple joys and optimism amidst the misfortunes that befell her:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colors,
He made their tiny wings.