CAGAYAN DE ORO (MindaNews / 18 December) — Holding a lighted candle, Midy Daig, 64,  pointed to the name of her husband, Clyde Eddie Daig, forever etched at the Sendong Memorial Wall in Gaston Park in front of the St. Augustine Metropolitan Cathedral here Wednesday afternoon.

Her husband was among 400 residents of the city who were declared missing when flashfloods triggered by tropical storm Sendong spilled into Sitio Cala-cala, Barangay Macasandig here and other riverside communities along Cagayan de Oro River in the early hours of December 17, 2011.

Midy has no cemetery or memorial park to visit and light a candle on a grave so she does the ritual at the Sendong Memorial Wall.

The memorial wall lists names of the dead and the missing in the aftermath of Sendong.

Midy survived the typhoon 14 years ago because she went up to the second floor of her house.  She called on her husband who was on the ground floor to join her  upstairs and he said he would after attending to their dog. 

“I saw a wall of water crashing into our villages, flooding homes and sweeping people and animals,” she recalled. 

When the waters reached the top floor of her house (she estimates the house to be around 17 feet high), Midy said said she, too, was swept away.

Midy was rescued by fishermen in El Salvador town, Misamis Oriental. She was found floating in Macajalar Bay.

Their three children were spared because they attended a party in a place which was not reached by the floods. “Maayo na lang nagpasaway,” she laughted.

Fourteen years later, that fateful morning of December 17 is now forgotten by a new generation whose awareness of the great flood stems from oral stories passed on by elderly persons like Midy or from social media posts about that day. 

But a local artist, Nic Aca, staged a performance art using his body to narrate the tragic event before a small crowd of onlookers and children at the Sendong Memorial wall Wednesday afternoon.

“It does not mean that if we have to move on we should forget what happened fourteen years ago,” said Aca, who performs this act every anniversary. 

Aca said the memorial wall is a powerful reminder of tremendous loss suffered by residents who still bear the emotional scars.  (Froilan Gallardo / MindaNews)