A fresh new start for Dina Bonnevie

August 25 ------ IF you want to see Dina Bonnevie shed buckets, engage her even in a casual talk about her late husband, DV Savellano. It’s been more than a year since DV succumbed to an abdominal aneurysm, yet to this day, Dina has yet to recover from it. He passed away 20 days before her 64th birthday last year.

In an interview with PEP, Dina shared that one of the early steps she took to keep DV’s memories off her mind was to dispose of his clothes. “I didn’t want to sell any of those, including his pairs of shoes.”

Instead, Dina told DV’s children, Marie and DJ, to pick them all up from their Quezon City residence so they would be out of sight. Seeing his plaques and trophies in one part of their house was also too much to bear, so she stashed them all in a box along with his clothes.

Still, she felt his “haunting presence” in every nook and cranny of the house whether it was one corner where DV loved to sit, the garden where his pet turtles roamed or the kitchen table where he couldn’t wait to taste Dina’s cooking. “Kahit saan ako lumingon, feeling ko, andun siya,” the actress said.

Their home kitchen bore witness to their cozy moments. Halfway through her chores, he would hug Dina from behind and praise her cooking, saying: “Ang sarap talagang magluto ng asawa ko! Still, whatever little trace of DV left in the house had to go. It was at this point that Dina found a reason to relocate as part of her healing process. Her house-hunting came with a lot of misses even with the help of a broker. She prayed she’d be able to find a house preferably near her children, Danica and Oyo.

The search took her through nine house viewings, but none came anywhere close to her discriminating taste or preferences. But then came the 10th in Ayala Alabang where his children and one of her sisters reside. Dina asked for a sign. “Napansin ko ’yung door, may nakaukit na initials na ‘GB’. I instantly told myself, ‘That’s me, Geraldyn Bonnevie!’I knew immediately that it’s for me, it’s my house!” Not only was the house near her children, but Dina also gets to stay with her other sister and the latter’s children, who enliven the house. With everything new in her sight, Dina is, thankfully, on her way to self-healing. Not completely, though, but she’s confident she’ll get there.

Source: manilatimes.net