My Nanay—Aling Emma to everyone else—once ran a very successful hog-raising business.
Our backyard bodega didn’t begin as a storage room. It began as a pigpen. I was around four years old then, small enough that memories came in pictures instead of timelines. What I remember clearly is this: about a dozen pigs, and another dozen piglets, all scrambling and squealing over fresh milk like it was the greatest prize in the world.
The mother pig was named Gloria.
She was Nanay’s first pig. The matriarch. The mother of every pig we raised after her. No one knew how old she was. No one counted how many offspring she had already given. Those details no longer mattered.
What mattered was that Nanay loved her.
No matter how busy Nanay was—with the sari-sari store, the carinderia, and the thousand small things that kept our household alive—she always found time to visit Gloria. She would rub her back while Gloria lay on her side, eyes half-closed, enduring the chaos of piglets fighting for milk. Nanay would smile then. Anyone watching could tell that she loves Gloria.
It became routine. Every five or six months, a big elf truck would arrive—steel sides, canopy at the back—and load up the grown pigs. The pigs would squeal, resist, and protest as if performing heavy metal music in symphony every time. Then the truck would leave, Nanay would count the money, and life would continue.
Until one visit broke the pattern.
That day, the truck took everything.
All the grown pigs.
All the piglets.
And Gloria.
One pig—the younger sow meant to replace her—was left behind.
Kuya explained it plainly: Gloria was too old. She could no longer produce piglets. She had to be replaced by a younger one—her own offspring, in fact. From a business standpoint, everything made sense. The numbers were right. The logic was sound.
Everything looked ordinary.
The pigs squealed as usual.
The truck rumbled away as always.
Except for one detail.
This time, the driver handed the payment to my Tatay—not to Nanay.
Nanay was nowhere in sight.
The scene ended quietly. Kuya swept the yard with a walis tingting. My playmates and I resumed our game of piko where the truck had been moments earlier. The world moved on, indifferent as it always does.
Dinner came.
Ate Prax opened a can of salmon and called us to the table.
Nanay wasn’t there.
I went to her room and found her sitting on the bed, shoulders tired yet randomly shaking, face, a mess with China eyes of red sclera. She looked up at me and said, in a voice broken beyond repair:
“Gloria is gone.”
My Nanay was a strong woman. She recovered quickly from most things life threw at her. But not this.
Days passed. Then a week.
The young sow meant to replace Gloria was sold—cheaply, almost carelessly. The pigpen stood empty. And from that moment on, Nanay never raised pigs again.
Never.
Not because the business failed.
Not because it wasn’t profitable.
But because somewhere along the way, she crossed a line.
She named a pig.
And once she did, what was supposed to be a business stopped being just business. It became personal. Emotional. Human.
This is the quiet danger we rarely talk about.
Business demands clarity.
Emotion demands attachment.
When the two overlap without boundaries, even success can wound you.
Nanay didn’t fail at hog raising. She failed at separating her heart from her ledger. And the price she paid wasn’t money—it was grief.
Some lessons don’t come from textbooks or seminars.
Some come from a sobbing mother, an empty pigpen, and a name that should never have been given.
Gloria.
Originally published on Benjie's Bench - Measuring Life's lessons in Millimeters
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