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The road to recovery

LAST AUGUST 28 was a dark day in Anne Curtis' life. It was the day that her little sister passed away. The untimely death of four-month-old Clare caused Anne and her family much grief. A viral infection had severely weakened her heart;...

sadly, even the best efforts of the doctors at the Philippine Heart Center's Intensive Care Unit weren't enough to save her. Clare was buried at the Magalang Memorial Park in Pampanga on September 1.

Following her sister's death, Anne temporarily put her showbiz career on hold to help her family cope. An artist to the core, she wrote a poem in honour of Clare as a way of saying goodbye. A few lines from the poem were read on the showbiz talk show Entertainment Live! on the day Clare was buried. “I love you all and miss you so/ I'll always be nearby/ My body's gone forever/ but my spirit will never die/ And so you must go on now, and live, and understand/ God did not take me from you/He only took my hand.”

However, ever the professional, Anne resumed working shortly after Clare's burial. In a quick tête-à-tête with reporters on her first day back, she revealed that she had already asked her bosses for — and taken — some time off to regroup. As she put it, “I'm OK now. I spent five days recharging my batteries and preparing myself for the workload again.”

So how does one move on after losing a loved one? Well, if you're Anne Curtis, you hop on a plane to Hawaii. The day after her sister's burial, Anne bought herself a ticket to Maui, Hawaii — without telling anyone. “It was a spur-of-the moment thing,” she says. “[When I bought the ticket], I did it just in time to get on a plane!”

When she landed, she checked into the Westin Maui, where she met a lot of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who were working as hotel desk clerks and maintenance staff. Sure enough, they recognised her right away. “They asked me if I was the Anne Curtis,” she says, laughing. When she answered in the affirmative, they treated her like royalty and sent her free drinks, among other things.

“I was there for a week and I enjoyed it very much,” she adds. While in Maui, Anne took in as much of the island's sights and sounds as she could. The Filipino OFWs on staff at the Westin Maui notwithstanding, she was able to do so incognito — which she says was very liberating.