Wishes

Note: I wrote this in 2006, about a month after my cousin Apple went back to work overseas after spending a short vacation in the country.  I posted this in my old blog and somehow forgot to move it here.  On her birthday today, I repost this entry as it has somehow found new significance.

December 11, Monday, 7 PM.

     I was sitting under a huge, extremely bright streetlight somewhere inside the parking lot of the NAIA Centennial Airport.  My textbook was cradled between my knees and my phone was in the pocket of my jacket.  It was a windy evening and my hair was flying all over the place like the snakes on Medusa's head.  I was aware I looked like a bum in one of those New York movies.  As I sat on the sidewalk and read my book, I received a text message from my cousin, telling me that her delayed flight was finally accepting passengers for boarding.

     I was hit by a sudden flashback of the opening scene in the movie "Love Actually," where Hugh Grant's character does a voice over while shots of people arriving in Heathrow Airport in England are shown.  He says he loves observing the goings-on in the arrival area of that airport.  Smiles are everywhere, people of all ages are running around and hugging is especially prevalent.  Then the irony struck me.  An airport and smiles.  Among the throng of people to flood the arrival area of an overseas airport in two days, one face would stand out in the crowd.

     I was in NAIA to fetch Manang Apple, the oldest among all my cousins.  She was due to fly abroad by noon the following day to report back to work after more than a month of being home for vacation.  She had been gone for more than a year and it was great to have her home, although she arrived the same week my sem break ended so we only spent a couple of days together before I flew back to Manila.  The month sped past as if it were on swan's wings and now, she was going to say goodbye again.  She left, among others, a father, a sister and, most significantly, three very young daughters with ages between ten to four.

     Manang Apple is not just my cousin.  She and her younger sister Manang Maya are like my older sisters.  For about five years, I lived across the hall from the two of them on the second floor of my grandparents' home.  Day in and day out, the two of them took turns in introducing me to "cool '80s teen icons" like New Kids on the Block, Brooke Shields, Phoebe Cates and Spandau Ballet.  In other times, they would dress me up in tights, "tease" my hair with a comb until I got split ends, paint a Madonna mole on my face and if I didn't indulge their whims, scare me to my wits' end by telling me that a lady once electrocuted herself and died in our bathtub.

     As a little girl, I looked up to Manang Apple for a lot of reasons.  Long before "kakiyan" became the byword, she was already the ultimate fashionista and she always had the coolest and most outrageous outfits ever, not to mention her colorful hoop earrings.  In fact, it has become much too easy to spot her in old family pictures.

    She was also among my first music teachers.  As far as I can remember, she was always singing somewhere - church, the bathroom, school, the car, music competitions, the garage.  We used to sing together with Manang Maya in the children's choir although I think they detested having me around because they had to keep an eye out for me all the time.  She later became part of the adult church choir and I vividly remember sneaking into the balcony during church services just so I could see her.  I remember when I was 10, I joined this singing contest for the first time in my school and she taught me for several nights in a row, making me stand on her bed, hairbrush in one hand.  I lost in that contest and later in the day, she told me "It's okay," in between mouthfuls of ice cream.

     She was my saviour in every mealtime.  I had a yaya when I was little and she would heap food on my plate too much for a four-year old to ingest.  Manang Apple would ask her to get some water or something and when my yaya's back was turned, she would pull my plate towards her, stuff her mouth with as much of my food as she could then push my now less full plate back to my cover just in time. 

     I ruined her legs once.  When I was 9, I used to ride a motorcycle.  To show her how good I was, I asked her ride in the rear seat while I drove.  I lost my balance and we both fell on the concrete pavement.  I bruised and wounded my left knee while she tore her good pair of jeans.

     I knew her more significant crushes from high school to college and the corresponding "theme songs" for each.

     On her 18th birthday, my newest Barbie decked the cake I helped Manang Maya and their aunt bake.
During her 'pamanhikan,' I sat on the hallway of our house and played optical volleyball between her and her (now deceased) future in-laws.

     I watched her sing her vows to her husband during her wedding.

     I dashed straight from my high school to the hospital when she gave birth to her first daughter with whom I share part of my name.

     For the next ten years, it broke my heart to see her struggle and cry as she juggled a full-time job in a city hospital with a full-time designation as mother and homemaker, to the point of travelling four hours each day to get to work and back home.  I had always known she was made of tough stuff and I could not believe it when I saw her strength dwindle through the years. 

     For ten years, I found myself praying for her everyday and hoping she would get the life and the love she had not only desired but truly deserved.

     It took ten years before she finally realized everything had to stop.  She broke free of her cage.  Her mettle had finally won out.

     I know going away was not an easy decision to make for a hands-on mother like her, especially since her three beautiful girls love her unconditionally with every square inch of their hearts.  She has missed graduations and plays, storytelling contests and chorale presentations, birthdays and games of hide-and-seek and patintero.  By the time she comes home for another vacation, one of her girls might not be asking for Bratz anymore.

     We had a late dinner on that Monday evening, the traffic along EDSA-Guadalupe being extremely horrible.  We were both very sleepy but what kept us awake was a stream of texts from her oldest daughter.  "Mama, we can't go on like this forever," she said with wisdom beyond her years which oftentimes makes me rethink why I still treat my eldest niece like a little girl in a pink dress.  I don't recall everything Manang Apple texted back but I remember she said "No."  And I remember being half asleep at around 5 AM, hearing the sound of a cellphone keypad punctuating the silence of a cold December morning.

     I wish so many things for her I do not know where to start.  For one thing, I wish that she would no longer miss any more of her daughters' growing up years.  I wish that everything she has longed for ever since she was a little girl would all be fulfilled.  Most of all, this Christmas season, I wish her happiness, contentment and peace which come from loving and being loved by God, her family and herself.

Whitney

"I didn't know my own strength.
I crashed down and I tumbled,
But I did not crumble.
I was not built to break.
I didn't know my own strength."

So goes the chorus to one of the last Whitney Houston songs I came to love.  I adore glorious comebacks and hers was one I felt was long overdue.  So when her last album came out, I bought the CD, pushed it into the player and listened to the entire thing on loop all the way to Boracay.  I noticed that her voice was raspier than I remembered and the songs were in a much lower register.  Her runs were more predictable and less complicated, her notes less sustained.  The big belter was quite difficult to find.  In its place had settled a more subdued, more vulnerable, more heartfelt Whitney Houston.  And that side of her I embraced willingly even if I admit I missed the booming voice and the notes that could hurl one straight into a brick wall.  Long before her death on Sunday, I had already realized that the Whitney Houston of my childhood was never coming back.

Songs are a means of achieving some semblance of immortality.  Certain memories wind their way through the measures both for the singer and the listener.  As a little girl, Whitney Houston was quite awe-inspiring to me.  She was one of the first pop singers I looked up to - really, really looked up to.  Before her marriage, she was almost squeaky clean and was the daughter of a gospel singer.  "Greatest Love of All" was an ultimate favorite anthem.  My mother used to encourage me to sing just like Whitney - huge voice and solid belting that sent musical notes spiralling to the moon.  So I tried to do just that in my striped red pajamas with the little flowers at age 4, grabbing a microphone and literally screaming myself to the most awkward shade of blue as I struggled with "One Moment in Time" and later "I Wanna Dance with Somebody."  If I could take a look down my throat with tongue depressers, I knew I had scratched myself from the inside with hidden claws from my voice box.

But it was "The Bodyguard" that convinced me that Whitney Houston was simply the most amazing singer of all time.  I was ten and a little too young for the movie but I listened to the soundtrack over and over and over and over again until the cassette tape could have snapped off the plastic rods.  I remember being rendered immobile as I listened to her sing "Run to You" and "I Have Nothing" but it was "I Will Always Love You" that simply won me over.  I still remember watching her on TV as she sat on a chair in the music video, the camera zooming out from her face at the very second that the momentary silence is interrupted when she opens her mouth and sings "And I(aiiiiyeeey)......will always loooooove yooooou."  It was pure exhilaration, nothing less.  Even now, when I listen to that song, the gloriousness of that moment never disappears.  It's an entirely different thing to simply hit the note from singing it.  Her rendition was effortless, uncluttered and an absolute epiphany.  The ease with which she released that powerful voice of hers was almost mesmerizing.  From that time on, I decided I was going to stop trying to be like her because I realized there was no way I was ever going to sing with that precision and power.

Whitney was the benchmark.  Singing contests, lip-synching competitions, beauty pageants...you name it.  People were always trying to sing her songs, attempting to imitate her trademark runs and jawdropping belting.  For instance, take a look at all twelve seasons of American Idol and make a mental note of all the times the contestants decided to slay a Whitney Houston song.  Then try to recall how many of them passed muster.  In the end, the Whitney version was always a gigantic spectre quite too difficult to kill.

There is great unhappiness when I think about how troubled she had become later on until the end of her life.  It was a truth I found very difficult to comprehend - that the immense talent which gave me so much joy was not affording Whitney her share.  She was a poor thing, wasting away before the eyes of her adoring fans.  Her singing mirrored her life.  She was trying to regain what she had before her tumultuous marriage and her drug addiction.  No matter how much I wished for a comeback, I knew it was not going to happen - not when she couldn't take control of her personal life and her wavering voice.

There is great consolation as I listen to more cuts from "I Look to You."  As Whitney was stripped of a great instrument - her formerly reliable voice - she bared her soul even more in her songs as well as her faith.  "I look to you," she sings in the title track. "When all my strength is gone," she adds, "in You I can be strong."  She knew where to look for courage in the midst of her own frailty.  In the wake of her death, it might seem that her source of that strength had failed her.

"I look to You," she sings once more.  "I look to You."

"And when melodies are gone,
In You I hear a song,
I look to You."

Even in death, despite every fall and her tragic end, Whitney Houston is still an inspiration.

Seeing Double

    Ever since high school, there was always one other person in school who supposedly looked like me.  Now that I find pretty amusing since my own sister and I barely resemble each other and the closest people who supposedly share some of my facial features are my Tita Vilma and my cousin Denise.

    Who knew that law school would yield another person who seems to bear an uncanny likeness to my physical appearance?  After years of reading about how much fun it would be to have a twin, I was finally able to slip into that opportunity just last week thanks to the fact that my supposed doppelganger (actually reflexive since she could very well say I am the clone) was also fun-loving and was willing to capitalize on an opportunity to potentially sow confusion in the optic nerves of anyone we would meet.

    It all started when Rach and Cha told me that I had a "kamukha" or "kahawig" - same facial features, practically same length of hair, about the same height, similar build (I was slightly pudgier) and so on.  When I was finally introduced to Phibs, my supposed "twin," I really took the time to study her face and to see for myself whether or not we really did look alike.  I was not sure if she was told the same thing though since she really didn't say anything about it. 

    By the second semester, we were in the same team in legal aid.  Rach and Cha still continued to label us as "twins" so Phibs decided to go along and call each other, well, "Twin."  It was all together quite amusing since the more I looked at photos of us, the more I came to realize that we indeed looked alike.  The semblance was more apparent when we were were not smiling (since Phibs has smaller teeth whereas I have humongous choppers and showcase three quarters of my gums like the Cheshire Cat).  Our profiles were undeniably similar and our bangs fell in the same way across our faces when we tilted our heads.  We both even like the shade of purple!  Good heavens, we even part our hair in the same way!  We tried to look into our family lines to check if we were indeed related but apart from the fact that we both trace our roots to the north (she is from Baguio whereas my father hails from Pangasinan), our bloodlines do not seem to have intersected at any point in time...except perhaps if we go ahead and do blood compact.

Phibs and me.  I saw this photo on her Facebook page and for about
three seconds thought I was staring at myself.  Even our
shirts are quite similar.

   Phibs and I both thought such indicators of resemblance were not enough to make people mistake one of us for the other.  Even if we looked somewhat like Chip and Dale when we hung out, it still had not gotten to a point wherein someone actually thought Phibs was me or vice versa.  I had always thought we were somewhere in that area about three blocks away from "deadringer."

    Until one day about three weeks ago when Cha's boyfriend Allan saw me in Uncle Moe's, a restaurant in UP Village, at around 7 or 8 in the evening.  Allan texted Cha to tell her that he saw me in the restaurant with a couple of friends.

    That would have been all right if I really had been in Uncle Moe's.  But the truth was, I was at home with my dog somewhere in the southern part of Metro Manila when Allan supposedly saw me in Diliman.  What was even more hilarious was that Phibs had texted Cha at about the same time as Allan, telling her that she had just seen Cha's "Prince Charming" in Uncle Moe's.  In Cha's words, this was how the text exchange went:

Phibs: Charito, andito sa Uncle Moe's ang prince charming mo. hehe. :-)
(simultaneously)
Allan: Hi hon. Bahay, kasama ko sina sis pau. nagtext sila. nakita ko sina aida.

***

Cha: San ang uncle moe's? And kasama mo ba si Aida? Haha nagtext si allan grand, nakita daw nya si aida. :)
Phibs: Dito sa Teacher's Village, and nope, hindi ko kasama si twin. hehe....
Cha: Haha malamang napagkamalan kayo. Bwahahaha!! :) or ibang prince charming ko nakita mo. :)
Phibs: Haha, ano ba yun. :D

    Phibs told Cha that Allan even said goodbye to her when he left with his friends, thinking all the while that it was me he saw in Uncle Moe's.  Poor Allan only realized his mistake in a clarificatory text exchange with Cha later that evening.

Allan: Bahay ka na?
Cha: Bahay na. :)
Cha: Aida?
Allan: Yup. Aida . 3 silang sis mo, dito sa may malapit sa bayantel.
Cha: Si Phibs yan. :)
Allan: Ay oo nga pala. Si sarah (another nickname for Phibs since she supposedly looks like singer Sarah Geronimo). :) Magkahawig eh.

    I am quite sure that the last response by Allan was as sheepish as Baa Baa Black Sheep could possibly get in the same situation. 

    Since Phibs and I had unknowingly (and unconsciously) precipitated an ever-so slight wave of confusion (either that or Allan just had eyestrain from work), we decided to go all-out on one duty day just for the heck of it.  And if anyone should fall for the ploy, that should make the entire thing well-worth it but confusing people was not a major objective.  We just wanted to play around with the concept of "looking alike" We had initially decided to wear an all-black top and go for any kind of bottoms we wanted but in the end, I decided to match Twin's weapon of choice: grey skirt and black heels.  I was not quite sure if my grey skirt was even ready for pressing and I made up my mind to hang it in the back of the refrigerator just in case it was still a bit damp.  The next day, the very minute Phibs walked in to the room for case conference, I just knew coincidence was a gleeful and willing conspirator because even the style of our respective collared, frilly black blouses was almost identical.

    The day ended without any casualties although we did get a lot of inquiries about our wardrobe.  Everyone in legal aid knew the two of us pretty well to be able to distinctly identify Phibs from Aida or Aida from Phibs.  Except for, well, one applicant who was being interviewed by Twin.  I was working in a separate cubicle when the applicant walked in, clutching her photocopied documents.  She was heading straight for the cubicle where Phibs was conducting her interview. Unmindful of the applicant, I spontaneously rose from my seat to get my bag from another table across my cubicle.  I unmistakably saw the applicant do a double take when she saw me.  She made a quick U-turn then walked towards my direction, holding out her photocopied documents to me.  I was initially puzzled, wondering why some person I didn't know from Adam was handing me documents.  Then I belatedly realized she thought I was Phibs so I gestured that I was not the interviewing intern.  For a while she had a confused look on her face but after about two more hard stares my way, she realized was thrusting her documents upon the wrong intern.

    As for my next project with Phibs, it's all still under contemplation.  For the time being, we can perhaps work on reading each other's minds and finishing each other's sentences while saving up for eventual DNA testing.  And that also means I should postpone any plan to cut my hair.

Redefining Yellow

"It could have been the sunniest day," I thought as I stood in the midst of a sea of yellow. It was the perfect day to go out, take a walk, go for a run, do anything to celebrate the vibrance and warmth of a life well-lived. The sun was back in her golden throne after days of seeing nothing but rain and the dreariness of clouds.

I was standing across 6750 Ayala Avenue at 11 in the morning with my hair wet all scrunched in a ponytail. I had belatedly decided I was going for a walk and my companion was on her way. I didn't mind waiting because the breeze was cool and the air was thick with a stillness which had remained elusive for the longest time.

A few minutes later, I saw her approaching. She made her way through the street with the quiet grace that had long been her trademark. There was nothing pompous, nothing grand about her last walk except perhaps for the yellow blooms which kept her company or the four uniformed men around her who kept quiet watch.

I waited as she came closer, my fingers gripping the iron railings which lined the street. The metal was still curiously cool to the touch despite the sun's grand re-appearance after days of unceasing rain.

The stillness had since dissipated and there was now a wispy feel to the air, like giant cats padding quietly across a stone floor. My walk was about to begin any minute now and I adjusted the strap of my bag on my shoulder.

Nothing could have prepared me for the deluge of yellow flowers and the sight of my country's stripes - the deepest blue, the most fiery red, the purest white, the most vibrant yellow - draped over a wooden box.

As my former President's body slowly passed my inconspicuous little spot along Ayala Avenue, the tears came quietly in a stream as steady as the flow of people who had come to pay their respects to the woman in yellow.

Martial Law Babies in a Revolutionary Society

I was born during an interesting point of Philippine history - right at the fringes of the martial law era and smack at the doorstep of a revolutionary tide that was to radically reshape the environment that I was to grow up in. When I was a couple of months old, then senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was felled by an assassin's bullet in the tarmac of the Manila International Airport and by the time I was three, the Philippines had its first woman president in the person of his widow, Corazon Cojuangco Aquino.

Bespectacled. Calm. Gentle. Mild-mannered. A woman of quiet strength and relentless courage. It was easy to look up to President Aquino with all admiration and hope as her husband had now become one of my great personal heroes. Her smiling face graced the pages of a coffee table book on EDSA Uno, her thumb and index finger stretched out to form the letter "L," symbolizing the Filipino word "laban." That pretty much summed up how the American-educated widow was thrust into the public limelight. She had taken up the cause of her deceased husband and was now fighting for freedom, for liberty and for democracy which the Filipino people deserved. Little did she know that her fight was not to stop the moment she stepped down from office in 1992. The Filipino people still came running to her like little children with scraped knees everytime the cornerstones of democracy came under intense attack. Willingly she came out of the confines of her life as a private citizen, her clear, steady voice cutting like a knife through the haze, akin to the constant sting a probing conscience makes on a guilty mind. At the last moments of her life, she fought the cancer that had ravaged her body until she finally yielded to the eternal rest that she so belatedly deserved.

To be honest about it, I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly what she was like as a President in terms of policy. I was three when she took her oath and was nine when turned over the presidency to Fidel Ramos and all I cared about back then was my daily game of dodgeball. She survived seven coup attempts from disgruntled members and officers of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and I do know she got flack for some of her policies, including the Comprehensive Agrarian Land Reform.

President Aquino was not a perfect President but then she was someone who worked very hard to do what she could in an imperfect society. The fact that she has not lost the people's respect and admiration I think says a lot about the kind of President she was. Her support was still sought after by people in all the issues which has rocked this country's foundations and has threatened to suck our people's pride dry as dust.

President Aquino's strength and courage as a woman was of a different breed. She was not a Gabriela Silang, not a Boadicea, not a Joan of Arc, not a Xena Warrior Princess. It was difficult to imagine her with hair in wild disarray, mouth curled in a raging fit of anger, arms raised in a battle stance. She was more of deep water which ran with a strong current that belied its stillness. I vividly remember a picture of her sprinkling Holy water on her slain husband's coffin. Ninoy's body still bore the marks of his death and his clothes still carried the bloodstains. Her face was composed and her courage was unmistakable. She was determined, unfazed and focused but all tucked within the folds of gentleness, integrity and conscience. She could be tough and unyielding when the circumstances called for it, when truth and freedom were to the impending victims of a pillage. It is interesting to note how yellow, a color which supposedly relates to cowardice, has come to hold a different meaning in the Philippine context.

Yellow: A Color of Courage, Faith and Selflessness

Ever since news of her hospital confinement hit the country in June, yellow ribbons were seen fluttering all about the metropolis - in cars, buses, bicycles, motorcyces, lamp posts, tree trunks. Masses for her healing were held one after another. Where so many politicians and public figures had failed, an ailing former President had succeeded - in uniting once more a nation that was polarized by bitter divisions in class and politics. President Aquino was a woman of intense faith and she had urged the Filipinos to unceasingly pray for the Philippines. The support through prayer came spontaneously like the yellow ribbons which sprouted overnight, like the love which a grateful people felt for the simple housewife who stood up against a dictator.

Her simplicity was astounding and were she not selfless, she would not have taken the burden of becoming the country's president along with all its trappings, intrigues and the immense pressure. When Ninoy Aquino was in exile in Boston for three years, Cory described that time as the "happiest" in their married life. She obviously preferred a quiet life away from the limelight but because her duty as a citizen called for being more than just standing by the sidelines, she bravely accepted what had been thrust into her hands.

A Tale of Two Women

In a time like this, it is difficult for me not to draw comparisons between her and the current President of the country. Both are women, both came from politically affluent families, both were educated, both were thrust into power by a peaceful revolution, both came to prominence at a time of clamor for change, both took their seat as the highest official in the land with the highest hopes of their people spread before their feet like a sheet all ready for treading.

One has earned her people's love and sad to say, the other is in the opposite side of the spectrum. One has constantly upheld the truth and sad to say, the other has not. One has consistently fought for freedom and justice and sad to say, the other has attempted to bury them. One has tried her best to live a life of integrity and has become a beacon of light to her people. Sad to say, the other, even after eight years, has yet to earn her own people's trust.

The Presidency cannot always be about popularity but it does speak so much about what a leader is when her own people have not ceased to respect her.

Walking By

As I stood by that railing in Makati on Monday and walked along with the procession up until the Ninoy Aquino memorial along Paseo de Roxas, I realized that most of the people who stood and walked beside me were people my age. Most of them might have been toddlers or little children when President Aquino came to power. Some of them might not have been born yet even. But we call came to bid our farewell and pay our respects to the woman who had allowed us to grow up in a society where we have a significant degree of freedom, rights and liberties. A woman interviewed on TV said she withstood the heat and the rain just so she could see the late President at the Manila Cathedral, saying it was her "only way to repay" President Aquino. I understand where she was coming from but in reality, we could do so much more for her by continuing to safeguard the democratic ideals she had fought to restore, by not allowing anyone to take away our pride as a nation and as people and by continuing to fight for what is right, what is fair and what is true even in the simplest of circumstances.

A quick to flashback to 2001: I was a freshman in university and I was standing in the middle of the intersection of Ortigas Avenue and EDSA. Right in front of me loomed the huge image of the Virgin Mary atop the EDSA Shrine as people chanted and waved huge placards, urging then President Estrada to resign. It was almost 5PM and I was urging my friends Em and Shyne that I needed to go home badly. I had gone to the rally without my parents' permission and I had to be home before my mother checked on my whereabouts. We were weaving through the crowd and we finally reached a clearing. We slowly walked towards Galleria but when we passed the gate of Corinthian Gardens subdivision, I suddenly stopped and turned around.

"Did you see that?" I asked Em.

"What?" she asked.

I turned around and walked towards the direction of the Shrine just to confirm what I saw. All of a sudden, my excitement took the best of me and I ran back, my knapsack jiggling as I dashed back to the crowd.

Shyne and Em ran after me while shouting "What's going on?"

I turned around and shouted in one breath, "Cory, Cory, Cory!"

It was easy to remember how Shyne ran faster than I did when she heard me. After all, she was shouting "Kris, Kris, Kris" like a true fan girl. It was easy to remember the faces of the people in the crowd looked when they saw the former President approach. After she did so without the slightest bit of fanfare or deluge of bodyguards. But I will never forget what I felt the first moment I saw her emerging from the direction of the subdivision gate. She was in black and walked slowly, casually. She unaccompanied except by her eldest daughter Ballsy on one side and her actress-daughter Kris on the other. The three of them had walked past me when I was heading away from the crowd. I knew it was the former President when I first saw her but my mind went blank just like the black shirt I was wearing. She had a pleasant look on her face and gave everybody a ready smile. I felt something indescribable well up inside me and that was when I ran back like mad just so I could stand in the same crowd with a freedom fighter.

That memory rushed back to me as I stood momentarily in front of the Makati Stock Exchange on Monday morning. The flatbed truck bearing her wooden coffin had come to a halt because of the crowd. When a quiet chant began somewhere, I allowed my fingers to form an "L" as I spoke in unison with the people on the streets: "Cory, Cory, Cory..."

Let the Rain Come

"And no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth..."
Genesis 2:5

The Bible is replete with simple parables which illustrate deep biblical truths. One of perhaps the most popular would be the Parable of the Talents where three servants were given three different amounts by their master. The first two servants returned bigger amounts than the ones originally given to them while the last servant did not make use of the amount given to him so he returned to his master exactly what he received. Of course, we know that the the last servant received a lot more than mere verbal bashing. However what the master told the first two servants is one of the most repeated lines from the Bible which best serve as an inspiration for the frontliners in ministry work. The words go, "Well done, good and faithful servant (Matthew 25:21)."
On August 7, in the stillness of the evening, one of God's faithful servants closed his eyes and woke up to hear those words from the Master Himself. It was a peaceful, painless transition, as noiseless as the quiet but fervently passionate manner of service he had always rendered the Lord. Pastor Rudy Acosta was finally called home to rest in God's eternal embrace in a manner befitting that of a faithful servant.

To be honest about it, I have yet to ask my mother how old he was. After all for me, he was as ageless as he was tireless. I have known him for as long as I could remember and yet I never noticed any radical change in the way he looked, except when I go through photographs taken during my parents' wedding and I see the marks of the years that pass on his face and on his hands. He was a little over five feet in height, diminutive even for Filipino standards, quiet, unassuming and in the latter years of his life, trodded along with a trademark gait that I can still picture clearly in my mind. His coversational voice was soft and melodic, laced with that trademark lilt that older Visayans especially have. However, when it was his turn to stand on the podium to deliver his sermons, the lamb became a roaring lion. He was possessed with fiery fervor and passion which exploded in every stomp of his foot, every twist of his hand, every slam of his fist, every hunch of his back and in each and every word uttered by his tongue.
I do not recall exactly when I first heard him speak or how old I was but it must have been in one of those occasions after Sunday School in primary level when I grew tired of waiting for my parents in the playground and my two bottles of Yakult had run out like the wine in the wedding in Canaan. Growing restless, I decided to venture inside the "boring church for grown-ups." I grew up in a white-washed, old-fashioned Baptist church with the towering steeples, wooden pews, stained glass windows and occasional bats where children were herded off to Sunday School in the mornings. When I planted my foot on the tiled floor and took a peek, I remember being captured by the image of this man with a thunderous voice which I figured couldn't possibly fit in his small frame. His presence was commanding and his stares were so intimidating they almost bordered on gloating. To me and my pigtails, he was scary. Scary enough to send my frilly socks flying off my shoes. Before I could turn around and run out to tell my friends how the boring grown-up church was not exactly boring after all, he shifted seamlessly to being thoughtful and reflective like a Ferrari on quick deceleration, with his head cocking to one side and his hand curled in a balled-up fist resting under his chin. For me, morphing from a T-Rex to a diplodocus in a snap was was nothing short of cool.
I remember on one weekday, my mother dropped by the church for some business. One of my friends was the associate minister's daughter so as the two of us snuck up to their house on the pretext of getting a drink of water (a prelude to our usual game of hide-and-seek), I passed by Manoy Rudy's living quarters in the church parsonage and I saw him inside, walking around quietly, with absolutely no trace of the fiery preacher anywhere. He couldn't seem to hurt a fly but on the podium, he was as consumed as a bonfire.
Now for a kid, the manner is what matters. But as I grew up, I looked forward to his sermons Sunday after Sunday not because of the way he delivered them but primarily because of what they contained. I look up to him as one of the greatest preachers who have walked my side of the world and I followed him around depending on which church he moved to, from Lapaz to Molo to Mandurriao to Jaro. His command of both English and Hiligaynon worked well to his advantage as he could swiftly shift from quoting the English text to bringing the point closer to home and heart by using poetic yet familiar words of our local dialect. His brilliance and intelligence were astounding and he overhauled the Bible like a backhoe digging through the soil and sifted through each word and every sentence like a goldpanner. He would squeeze the very essence out of scripture until the understanding comes like a fresh breeze. His theological viewpoints though were never compromising on accuracy and clarity and were always delivered with the strongest and most emphatic of punchblows, enough to outlast the toughest of spiritual pugilists.
Pastor Acosta was also an educator and he taught at the Central Philippine University's College of Theology. A lot of the pastors I've met were mentored by him and his influence is apparent in the way these pastors deliver their sermons. About two years ago, I met up with an old friend (who, since our days in the children's choir, had now become a pastor himself) in a church anniversary we both attended and in the middle of his sermon, he started to share one anecdote after another about Manoy Rudy. Then he lightheartedly said in the vernacular, "It should be obvious by now who my mentor was."
He remained unmarried until his death but like a sower hurling seeds across a field, he had brought many lives to Christ in the same manner that a child grows under his parent's tutelage. It is one thing to hear someone speak about Jesus and to actually see him walk the talk and in my opinion, that was what made him effective. He was not perfect of course, as none of us are but he was a man of humility who loved Christ with a quiet yet simmering ardor which was difficult not to emulate. He was a simple, quiet man and in the latter years of his life, I slowly came to regard him as a grandfather of sorts.
About a year ago, after Pastor Acosta had retired from the church he was ministering to in Jaro, my mother requested him to be part of her office's workplace ministry where he was to deliver messages or sermons once a month during our Sunday worship services. We were a little apprehensive as he would be speaking to a group of people who were practically strangers to Scripture so my mom asked one of the regular attendees how the service was for him. I personally remember chuckling as the attendee started raving about how everyone was entranced by the "old, seemingly feeble pastor" who surprised them by speaking very well while "bouncing" around the podium. "And we had gone straight from work to the worship service as there was overnight work to be done," he narrated. "But none of us fell asleep!" Thus began his love affair with this small group of people who always looked forward to and will sorely miss his sermons on the last Sunday of every month. He adopted a different paradigm with this group. Gone were the profound words and the complicated illustrations when he spoke before this crowd. He went back to the basics, spelling everything out in clear, broad strokes like an expert swordsman's demonstration.
The last time I saw Pastor Acosta was on April 27, a day after my father's birthday. It was his time of the month to preach and I remember he was surprised to see that I was home for the summer. He gave me a light punch on the shoulder, a greeting he begun to give me when I started dressing up grunge-style in my dad's huge T-shirts during my teens. He spoke about the Beatitudes and about being "salt of the earth and light of the world," a sermon I had heard him deliver years before when I was in high school. I noticed he looked thinner than I remembered and when I shook his hand, I turned his palm over and I told my dad that he looked a bit yellowish to me. He told me he didn't feel anything and that maybe it was because he was getting old and starting to lose his appetite.
On June 20, he was rushed to the hospital after he collapsed inside his home. My dad noted that he had a large mass in his liver. Alarmed by the size of the mass, my dad kept on asking him repeatedly, "Are you in pain?" His answer was a constant "no" and that amazed my dad. Usually, according to my dad, patients with a liver mass that big were writhing in pain but Manoy Rudy was not. He was discharged from the hospital after a couple of days and he still continued to accept speaking engagements after that. In fact about three or four weeks ago, he was off to another speaking engagement outside the city, tireless and dedicated to the Lord's call even as the sand in his hourglass was almost running out.
In one of his many sermons, he came up with a very simple illustration for faith which apparently a lot of people liked as it was quoted every so often. It's something I hope I won't forget at some point, as a way of holding on to the memory of a person who had brought me to the saving knowledge of my Maker.
Faith, according to him, was walking out into the hot sun with an umbrella in hand simply because you prayed for rain.
What I'd give to see Manoy Rudy drenched in Heaven's torrents.

Watercolors

When I was a little girl, I was so utterly convinced that I was a gifted painter and was destined to be the next Claude Monet or someone of that calibre. I always had this thin, rectangular watercolor palette between my fingers (I even remember the brand: Artex) and I spent endless hours lying on our wooden floor, swirling colors on paper after paper after paper.
Once, I left one of my "masterpieces" out in the garage to dry. About half an hour later, I heard rain pummelling our roof and I immediately thought about the "painting" I had left outside to bake. I watched in horror as the fat drops of water crashed into the piece of paper like bombs, each one literally exploding into a gazillion microscopic droplets of color.
The rain eventually ceased its campaign on my artwork and all I had left was a drenched piece of paper with some streaks of color here and there. Everything I had painstakingly drawn was gone. As I peeled the wet paper off the cemented path, I stopped to examine what was left. Right under the paper lay an entire spectrum of colors glistening in the sunlight. The rain had washed away the watercolor from the paper but a significant amount of it was trapped under the wet paper. The myriad of colors on the cement path, a harmonious medley of blues with greens, reds topped with yellows and purples highlighted with pinks, was a far more beautiful sight than my attempt at a painting. A couple of minutes later, I watched as the watercolors slowly started to disappear as more water from all corners began to spread itself over the area, stripping my personal rainbow of its very essence. After a couple more minutes, the colors were gone.
Yesterday, on the day of hearts, I saw those colors once again almost immediately after the lives of two well-loved people ended in a manner more vicious than torrents of rain attacking a helpless piece of paper. In the morning of February 14th, one of the pastors in our church, Rev. Kevin Alamag and his wife Belle were killed when a passenger bus slammed into their Nissan Sentra in that junction in Commonwealth and Tandang Sora in Quezon City. He was 37 and she was 46, parents to two very young children below the age of 12. They were both literally rays of sunshine. Ate Belle, as she was known in church, was always radiant and I could never picture her without her warm smile. Pastor Kevin was enlightening. He was profound in his speech, meticulous in his work, passionate about his country and consumed with his love for the Lord. He was dedicated to the ministry and I almost always imagined him outrunning the Energizer bunny anytime anywhere. They were both as vibrant as midsummer's day.
Then they were gone. It was just a couple of weeks ago that I sat in a meeting with him in the church choir room and he was plopping one butterscotch after another into his mouth while announcing, "This would be great with coffee." Just like that, just like watercolors disappearing into flowing water.
I've been to a lot of funerals and I usually hear a lot of this: "He was a good man," or "She helped me in this way." Maybe it's just me, but I rarely hear about people talking about going beyond the act of helping by actually touching people, by connecting with them. I don't know if there should be a distinction since helping partakes of an element of giving some part of one's self away but I think there are certain ways of helping wherein you go beyond what is required and actually make a commitment to another person. It's like that line from a song by Nicole Nordeman: "I wanna leave a legacy, how will they remember me? Did I choose to love?" That kind of love rivals rainbows and miles of wildflowers.
My friend Banana (who's now on another offshore project in Vegas) was more alarmed. "It's so weird," she said. "He ministered to us in my mom's funeral service last year and he even attended her burial on February 14. Exactly a year after, he's gone."
My cousin Tren was one of the many people Pastor Kevin ministered to in Church of the Risen Lord. Pastor Kevin apparently led their Bible study group. She called him "PK" (as opposed to my more formal way of addressing him). "He taught us so many things," she said as she ended her text to me with a ':(.'
It was one of my classmates who was deeply affected by Pastor Kevin's untimely death. She headed a bible study group with Him in Church of the Risen Lord and much of what I know about Pastor Kevin's life and testimony I learned from her. Once, she told me a rather interesting story. When he was with CRL, Pastor Kevin used to drop off some of the members of his bible study group in their homes, my friend included. He would insist that all of them would sit in the backseat, leaving the front seat vacant. "He didn't care if he would end up looking like a driver," she related. My classmate asked him why and he answered that the seat was reserved only for Ate Belle.
It was her thoughts after I told her that he died which made me believe that there was a semblance of beauty in the midst of a death as a tragic as his and Ate Belle's. "He believed in me," she said of Pastor Kevin. "He was the kind of person who wanted to be proud of you."
And the stories abound, enough to rival rainbows and miles of wildflowers even as watercolors disappear into the flush.

Rev. Kevin and Belle Alamag's memorial service at the
Church of the Risen Lord earlier tonight

God's Roses

This afternoon, Lola asked to write a speech she is supposed to deliver on Sunday during her oldest sister's funeral service. While tip-tapping, I tried to channel my Lola's feelings and the like, which isn't easy. But it was only when I ended the message that I realized that this would be the last time my Lola would be in the state of losing a sister. She had gone through two similar losses in the past three years and each one left her sad yet hopeful. And so, through me, my Lola writes:
A booklover will tell you that to have a glimpse at what makes a person tick beneath his skin, try checking out the books he reads. Some people know this technique all too well that they would display rather profound works on their shelf so as to give an impression that they too gravitate towards reading material that make your head swirl. Perhaps they have yet to realize that sometimes, the best written words which overflow with wisdom amidst unmatched simplicity dwell in the pages of a children's book.

One such book is The Little Prince, the classic favorite by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. It is a rather thin volume, consumable in about an hour or less. The Little Prince, the central character in the book, actually hails from a small planet which has three volcanoes and a rose. The Little Prince takes care of his planet by removing the trees which grow there as these have the capability of turning his planet to dust. However, he pays special attention to the rose because he thinks it is the only one of its kind in the entire universe.

In the course of the story, he visits planet Earth and there he encounters an entire row of rosebushes. Upon seeing the rosebushes, he is immensely saddened because his little fantasy of his rose being the only one of its kind in the universe has just been sucked into nothingness. However, this situation gives birth to the most memorable lines in the book and in the literary world:

"But my rose is more important than the hundreds of you other roses. Because it is she I have watered, it is she that I have put under a glass globe, because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen, it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars, because it is she that I have listened to when she grumbled, or boasted or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

In the course of my story, it should have been clear to you that I have seven roses. My seven roses may be a rosebush to other people but I certainly do not care. These seven roses are mine, these are my roses and each of these seven roses is unique to me. They are not like each other, each one is personal, each one has a unique bond attached to me, each one is my rose. If the Little Prince had his rose, I had my sisters. They may be Ramona, Pening, Ester or Nanay to others but to me, they were my sisters because they were the ones I grew up with, they were the ones I tried to shelter, they were the ones I tried to look out for in our old age, they were the ones who I listened to when they grumbled, or boasted or even sometimes when they said nothing. Because they were my sisters.

No one could have been more ready to go home and face her Creator than any of my three older sisters. They had each lived a long life and each step of the way, God had been with each of them. God had promised in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: "Even when you are old, I will be the same. Even when your hair has turned gray, I will take care of you. I made you and I will take care of you. I will carry you and save you." He fulfilled that promise to them until they breathed their last, all because in the eyes of their Creator, they were His. They were His creation, they were His own. Nene Moning, Inday Pening and Inday Ester were God's roses.
- In loving memory of Moning, Pening and Ester

A Valentine's Day Like No Other

Valentine's Day 2007, 5:00 PM. A Valentine's Day like no other.

After ten sticks and one bottle, I was lying face-down on my bed, smothered in my pillow and in what could perhaps be the best sleep I have had in days.

That is, ten sticks of isaw and a bottle of iced tea.

The moment I entered campus yesterday, the entire Valentines-y feeling was palpable. A women's org was in brisk business, their wares consisting of flowers and everything chocolate flying off their booth. The classroom was no different. Almost everyone was talking about dates - which had to do with having one, not having one or hoping to have one. There were plans to see "Music and Lyrics" after class, a movie which I had been raring to see ever since the first time I laid eyes on that gigantic billboard of it along EDSA-Greenhills. But I had to pass since I had promised to see it with my own "date" (aka my sister) this weekend. It would be our first movie in months.

After class, some of the "single people" across the aisle where I was seated (Jo, Bryan, Lora and Marge) decided to go out. I decided to pass again since I had been feeling heavy-headed all day. My weekend had been both physically and emotionally draining so I just wanted to get some sleep. On my way out of the school building, I fished out my phone and made a call.

The voice on the other end of the line sounded even more tired than I was.

"Valentine's Day is different this year. At this time last year, we were doing a movie marathon, just like we always do."

Her words stung like a wasp. This year was indeed going to be the start of something totally different.

At 4:00 PM of perhaps the next most anticipated day after Christmas, instead of cringing over the cheesiest chick flicks available on the planet, I was standing in the back of the school building, clad in my favorite blue shirt in an attempt to look cheery while talking to one of my best friends who was on her way home after burying her mother earlier in the day.

Tita Celine, as I fondly called her, died last Friday at around noontime, two weeks after suffering from a stroke. I was in my third floor classroom, reviewing for my last class that day. I checked my phone to see that Banana had texted me, asking if she could call. My teacher was unusually late but I did not want to take the call since she might come bursting in at any minute, spot me with a phone on hand and call my attention. I asked her to call me at around 4 PM, when I am sure my class would end. She did just that and I was alarmed to find out that her mother had a stroke. I could not believe it. A few days before, Tita Celine and I were texting each other like we always do. Ever since I entered law school, she would frequently send me messages of encouragement which always seemed to come at the time when I was feeling worn out and tired. Once, one message really hit home, I had to text back, "Thank you, Tita. I really needed that." Then she replied, "Alam ko, kayang-kaya mo yan."

Em and I went to the hospital the next day and we made our way to the Acute Stroke Unit. The first person I saw inside the room was Banana's younger brother, Pau. I tentatively approached the room and saw Tita Celine. She was intubated and her eyes were closed. A monitor was attached to her and I found myself screaming inside my head "This cannot be happening." The last time I saw her, she was doing great. Her gentle voice rang inside my head and her trademark sweet way of saying my name. Moments later, Banana arrived with her boyfriend Marvin. Banana brought me beside her bed and I swear, I was shaking. She tried to coax her mom to wake up, to let her know I was there but Tita Celine slept on. I took Tita Celine's hand in mine. It was swollen slightly but warm. I wondered if she could feel my hand in hers. Banana and I then closed our eyes and I began to pray. In the middle of the prayer, I began to cry.

It was Banana's turn for her "Father Estrada" moment.

The "Father Estrada" moment began in our sophomore year in college. Banana and I could not come up with a better name that is why it is called such. It started on that day I was told that my mom had to undero a hysterectomy in order to remove a myoma that had grown on her uterus. The procedure was risky, given the fact that the last time my mom was opened up, the doctors said that she had severe adhesions. On the day I found out about the decision to open her up, I was harrassed both by schoolwork and my friends who thought I was just being moody. I retreated to the school chapel where Banana went with me. Choking up with tears, I told her what was wrong, including my fear of losing my mother. She bowed her head and prayed for me and when she was done, we both looked up to see that Father Estrada, our freshman theology teacher, had passed us by and was eyeing us both rather curiously. He eventually walked away and just to lighten up the moment, I told her "He's probably wondering who broke up with who."

I saw Tita Celine for the last time a week ago, February 3, Saturday. The week had been literally sleepless because of my Crim midterms. I was nursing the beginnings of a really bad cough which I acquired from trying to catch a few winks in a car the night before, at around the time the "cold wave" hit the country. I had a 3 PM flight to catch because I was going home for the weekend for a double whammy thing - my grandmother's 77th birthday and the inauguration of the new building of the church I attend back home. But I just felt I had to see her before I left, just to see how she was doing. Besides, Banana's father Tito Max was also admitted in the same hospital because of fluctuating BP. I walked into the ACSU just a few minutes before visiting hours would end and I was livened up by what I saw. I did not enter the room but through the open door, I could see that Tita Celine was awake although her eyes were out of focus. She was more conscious now and she was no longer intubated. She looked so pretty and brave lying on her bed I could not stop smiling. It was like being calm in the midst of a storm. I whispered a "Thank you, Jesus" to myself, hope renewed that she would make it through.

Things would get better on Sunday. I got a text from an uber-excited Banana at around 6 PM. Her text read: "Niyakap ako ni Mommy (Mommy hugged me)!" I was so happy for her I could not wait to fly back to Manila and see for myself how much Tita Celine had improved.

Exactly two weeks after Anna informed me that her mom had suffered a stroke came that fateful call. I had two unopened voice messages from Banana so I called her back immediately. The voice on the other end of the line was barely perceptible and all I could hear were her sobs. All she managed to whisper was "Wala na si mommy (Mommy is gone)."

During Tita Celine' interment, I made up my mind not to look at her as she lay on her coffin. Banana prodded me to do so, teasing me that she would get mad if I did not look at the dress she bought for Tita Celine to wear. I told her I couldn't do that, that I had to preserve that last image of her mom in my mind. All of Tita Celine's text messages are still in my phone, in its own special folder that I made before her stroke. During the time she was hospitalized, I unconsciously found myself waiting for her texts and it did not help that Banana would sometimes use her mother's phone to contact me. I was hopeful and anticipating the day I would finally receive a message from her saying something like "Hi, I'm back."

Tita Celine's phone which Anna now uses.

I do not know why Banana and her family chose February 14, the day of hearts, to lay Tita Celine to rest and if they did so on purpose. Thinking about it brought to mind the inscription on the epitaph of Rianne, Em's niece whose life was taken away by leukemia at age 7. This made the choice of February 14 more significant and beautiful. The inscription says "Death does not put an end to love."

On the day of hearts, Tito Max, Banana and Pau made that message loud and clear.
Love transcends death, love is eternal, love remains even when our mortal bodies are no more.

Scheduling Spontaneity

My last entry for 2005 was about losing a loved one. Call it coincidence but my first entry for 2006 is still about death. Doomsayers may point their fingers and wag them in front of my eyes, saying it's a bad omen but I choose not to look at it that way. It is nothing to be scared of because all people die, no exceptions...er...a correction is on the way...excluding Enoch and Elijah. When people die, it is a moment of both joy and sorrow when past, present and future all come together and settle on a person's heart much like a snowflake which, eventually, melts and becomes nothing more than a mere memory whose bittersweet sting could still be felt from time to time.. Besides what could be more dramatic than starting the year with an entry on a fusion between exit and entrance, between departing and arriving, between a place we call home and a place meant to be home.

That was what I felt like two nights ago when I received a message from Em. I was reviewing for an upcoming exam when her message came. She said that Kuya Elbert had died on New Year's Day. This actually elicited a rather late response from me. I racked my lethargic brain cells in a desperate bid to jolt them awake, trying to remember who Kuya Elbert was. In almost an instant a face flashed in my mind: a small, rather thin man in his 30s or 40s with slightly dark skin who sported a "semi-kal" haircut (if you could call it that) and usually paired his oversized white collared shirt with a bright smile on his face. I snapped my fingers in excitement. Yes! He was the guy in the Nat Sci laboratory who assisted the profs in the usual experiments like pithing huge frogs for dissection. In my freshman year in college, I saw a lot of him. On our dissection exam, he stood quietly in one corner, chuckling at how our knees wobbled like jelly as we observed one dead frog after another. He later on successfully suppressed his laughter when a classmate of ours let out a horror-movie scream and almost ran to the door when one frog, who wanted to say goodbye to the world with a bang, tried to jump at her with its stomach flapping open like butterfly wings. I remembered him! When I would drop by the lab in between classes to check out the bacteria I was trying to culture, I would seem him through the glass panel on the door, hovering about our test tubes like a bee among flowers. One he brought his son, who was about four, to work where I had a few rounds of tickling with him before I sallied forth into Lit class.

Then the very memories of Kuya Elbert which made me laugh slowly caused my smile to disappear. He was gone, just like that. Em later told me her brother said he died because of complications arising from sleep apnea which a layman would simply label as "bangungot." All sorts of thoughts ran around my head. Did anyone care that he died? I mean, if two years ago most students did not even shrug a shoulder when informed that our old Asian Art teacher had died, how about a lab assistant who usually stood a foot lower than most students? Did anyone ever remember how he could be relied upon to make sure that our ongoing experiments in the lab would always been in the same state as we left them? Did he die happy? Did anyone ever remember he would crack jokes so as to counter the nervousness that filled the air whenever we lined up outside the door before an exam? Did anybody stop to think about his son and how he had now become an orphan? Did anybody regard him not just as a lab assistant but as a friend?

My thoughts slowly drifted to me. Did I ever show Kuya Elbert his gestures were appreciated? Yes. Did I do enough or was it of lack? I thought harder. It may have seemed enough in my opinion but did he look at it in the same way? Was it enough for the trouble we were putting him through, frog legs and all? Come to think of it, I never saw him after graduation or when I finally started with my major.

People like Kuya Elbert have given us a little push when the road gets a little rough and they do so in their own little way. It may seem like a completely simple gesture for others but it meant a lot to us freshmen still reeling from bewilderment. Come to think of it, the world has become like a massive network of feelings with people affecting each other through their actions, much like "Pay It Forward" with more Haley Joel Osments and greater spontaneity. It's like what my favorite Mando-Pop artist Wang Lee Hom wrote upon learning of the suicide of his friend Leslie Cheung, a pillar of the Hong Kong movie industry who starred in Farewell, My Concubine.

"We are all twisted and sick, misunderstood and in pain. Yet we live for those moments of parting clouds and warm smiles.I believe that each encounter with another human being is a chance to create these moments, and am more convinced today than ever, that "breaking the ice" and disarming our fellow human beings of their fears and isolation is the key to letting us live in harmony.We should all be able to be ourselves, and connected at the same time."

In reality, the world is so small and I believe there are no broken links and dead URLs. Leslie Cheung's star status was a vehicle for him to reach out to people. But normal people like us are given that opportunity too - in work, in school, at home, in the grocery store, even while queuing up at the ATM machine. Perhaps if we all think of ourselves as part of a worlwide reality-base telenovela, then we might start believing that things don't just happen. They are meant to happen, just like the everyday sunrise and sunset and the moon going from full to gibbous to half to quarter to crescent to nada. Just like the astronomic schedule Haley's Comet religiously keeps. Just like birds flying South for the winter.

Actually, just like the new year.

Farewell to a Champion

One of the things I hate about sleeping over in my sister's dormitory room is that I miss the news. I developed a habit of watching the news when as a high school sophomore, my high school Asian history teacher would give a pop quiz on current events in almost a weekly basis. Since the latest single at the top of the MTV Charts was not considered current events, I would almost always be assured of landing a zero (or a 1 or 2 if I'm lucky) during such pop quizzes that I finally decided it was time to read the other parts of the newspaper aside from the Entertainment and Comics sections as well as regularly tune in to "The World Tonight" before I go to sleep.

Two days ago, I was helping my sister with her homework while trying to tabulate the results of a survey I was doing for my thesis. I forgot to turn on the radio and listen to the simulcast of the 6 o'clock news. I ended up missing something very important.

When I called my mom in the morning, she said to me "Haydee Yorac is dead." My still half-asleep brain suddenly came alive, the zombie-like neurons sparking with life at the mention of the name. All I managed to muster was an "Ahay," complete with my trademark Ilonggo cadence, perhaps one of my few commonalities with the late government icon.

Losing someone like Haydee Yorac would definitely elicit some sort of reaction similar to mine - a drooping head, downcast eyes, a grim mouth, all punctuated with a heavy sigh, as if losing someone or something of dire importance. Yes, losing Haydee Yorac was like dropping a prized samurai to a precipice of infinity, saying goodbye to the sword whose razor sharpness could easily cut through the diaphonous fabric of lies which deceptively strangle the government and the bureaucracy into absolute paralysis.

I was 11 when I first knew about Haydee Yorac. I remember I was in the airport to fetch two cousins who came for a visit. One of them went up to my mom and breathlessly told her that they were in the same flight as Haydee Yorac. My mother excitedly reacted to the news while I sat in the backseat of the car, trying to shake my head like a glass paperweight, the type with the white flaky things swirling in the middle. Finally I got the courage to interrupt their conversation and asked "Who's Haydee Yorac?" The three of them turned to me as if I had committed the gravest sin in the world, enough to land me in the pits of hell with Judas, Cassius and Brutus (if Dante were to be believed). My cousin said "You don't know Haydee Yorac?" That's what happens when you're 11 years old and all you watch is MTV and Cartoon Network. I shook my head and my mother was about to launch into her whole narration of Yorac's past and achievements when my cousin said "There she is!" I poked my head out of the car and shifted my glance to the mass of heads swirling about near the airport entrance. I saw a woman dressed in purple with big, curly hair in the middle of the crowd with sunglasses over her eyes. That was the only time I had seen her in person and I will never ever forget her face - hard and worn, strong, fearless with an air of confidence, but not haughtiness, about her.

In the midst of the chaos and political instability surrounding PGMA's tenure as President of the Philippines, she said that our government has been so besmirched in a swamp of corruption that once you decide to join its ranks, it is fairly difficult to keep yourself clean. I will never forget that since I was eating dinner in Em's house in Laguna and I abandoned my half-eaten plate to hear PGMA quote those overused words from the Bible "Let him who has no sin cast the first stone."

At that time I was consumed by my anger at the audacity of PGMA to attempt to pull the entire bureaucracy with her under the spotlight of allegations that she rigged the 2001 presidential elections that I forgot to mention that someone was actually worthy of casting the first stone smack in GMA's mole. Haydee Yorac's life is proof that there is indeed such a thing as principle, that it is still very much possible to stand up for what you believe in, that right can still prevail in a society which seemingly favors the wrong. She chose to work directly in government of all places, the seat of bedlam and the hive of thieves in the guise of serving society. She was driven by her search for truth and justice and she truly lived up to the name of her title as head of Presidential Commission of Good Government. She was not concerned with minor projects. In fact she dealt with controversial issues such as the Marcos ill-gotten welath and the coconut levy funds and she scored victories with them, never mind the scale. But the point is, she was a true definition of a public servant, one who worked for the good of the people and one who tried to deliver what the government owed the Filipino people. And most of all she refuted the cliched claim "If you cannot lick them, join them." If a government official like her could live up to such rigorous standards of truth and morality, there should be no reason that the President herself cannot do so, especially if she takes to heart her mandate to serve the needs of the Filipino people before anything - and anybody - else.

I told my mom that we are slowly losing good people to the sickle-bearing goth dude. People like Haydee Yorac cannot fight our battles for us for all eternity. In fact, the reason that people like them only seem to go as far as making a small dent or two in the thick metal encasing the enemy is that we ourselves have consented to thinking that the enemy, no matter how evil it is, is the norm and we just have to go ahead and accept that. That is a dangerous precondition which could twist the societal values which govern our daily lives. Evil is never to be accepted; it is always to be shunned and rejected. It is people like Haydee Yorac who have raised the bar and have tried to present us with a new standard to pursue and live by. Skeptics may ridicule this and say this is a dream, not a sense of reality, rather, an illusion.. But Haydee Yorac was a real person and hers was a real life. Is this then not reality?

Two Deaths and a Resurrection

After more than a week of computer abstinence, the weekend news that my power adapter was finally available for pickup left me, to stick to understatements, extremely delirious. But the excitement of seeing my computer light up with life was dampened by the news that two people I had known at some point had breathed their last: former Senator and presidentiable Raul Roco and my grandfather's best friend.

The computer death story is interesting enough on its own so it should warrant a separate entry. Besides the life and death of machines and people may be disparate but not in all aspects. Machines, for one thing, run on electrical power and as long as there is the presence of such a power source, generally speaking, there should be no problem. The same is true with the human being although the power source in this case is almost equivalent to the human soul. As long as the soul and the body are one, there also should be no problem...generally speaking. Once the soul departs, the body becomes useless except as detritus feeders' fodder. When my laptop adapter died on me, I had to rely on batteries for the next two hours or so but soon when the batteries ran out, pressing the "Power" button did nothing but make the indicator lights blink for about quarter of a second then go out. It was like watching doctors trying to revive a patient using a defibrillator. The jolt given the body is so strong that the entire exercise almost seems violent. Defibrillators are meant to save people from the brink of death and sometimes people get a flicker of hope when they see tiny wave patterns in the heart monitor but when the tiny wave patterns appear for a fraction of a second and disappear into a thin flat line again, nothing more can be done.

I addressed my grandfather's best friend with the same degree of respect I gave my grandfather. Several times, my Lolo recounted to me how Lolo Etic saved him from death, even putting his own life on the line in the process. When Lolo Etic was debilitated by a particularly nasty stroke about five years ago, my grandfather was greatly affected by it. There was always the grim possibility that he would die at any moment. My grandfather's love for his friend was unquestionable and they had gone through so many things in their lives that my entire lifetime could never make me fully comprehend what Lolo Etic meant to my grandfather. During the weekend, he was carried off to Heaven in the hands of Jesus. He died quietly while receiving Holy Communion.

My sister was particularly saddened by Lolo Etic's death because she felt that our grandfather had lost one of the last links to his time. Among his brothers, he is the only one alive. He was also particularly close to his brothers-in-law but only two are living. Most of his contemporaries in the law practice have already passed away. He has a very few bosom friends left. To put it cinematically, my Lolo is the Last of the Mohicans (Daniel Day-Lewis) or The Last Man Standing (Michael Douglas, I think!). My sister thinks that this was a moment in his life that Lolo must have felt alone. Aside from that, it made the reality that Lolo's turn was coming very soon all the more evident.

I do not have a granite heart beating within my rib cage so I naturally understand her sentiments. If my sister chose to look at it from the point of view of solitude, I would rather see it from the perspective of legacy. I am not saying that death is the ultimate bad guy who snatches people's souls like a thief in the night and stuffs them in a roughly-spun, grimy sack, not to mention bearing a heavy-looking sickle at that. But I am absolutely sure that people would want to spend more time on this Earth with family and friends before actually moving on to a higher place. I said to my mother "I'm sure heaven is a great place but people there would not be hypocritical enough to say they would have wanted to spend more time here on Earth despite the fact that we're practically wallowing in misery."

This brings me to Raul Roco. My cousin Barbie texted me last Friday, informing me that Roco, touted as the greatest president the Philippines NEVER had, had succumbed to cancer. I was stunned when I heard the news primarily because I had never heard that his condition had gotten worse after his cancer remission went public during the 2004 election frenzy. He was even one of those who called for PGMA to resign following the "Hello Garci" controversy.

But then Roco was not one who usually tried to draw attention to himself. Perhaps the only thigs conspicuous about Roco would be his brightly-colored flowery shirts. His lineup during the elections consisted of the least popular candidates. He sincerely believed in change and I have always been amazed by his brilliance. I admire his usually calm and composed exterior. Unlike other politicians who resort to shouting, screaming and basking in the brilliance of their bald heads, Roco's speeches were like fire racing across water, clear and mild but equally fiery. The first time he ran for president in 1998, I wanted to vote for him but then I was not yet of the the required age. In 2004, he ran again and when he announced his bid for the highest seat in the land, I made up my mind to vote for him without batting an eyelash.

Meeting Raul Roco in person is a memory I would forever hold dear in my heart. As I read the newspaper articles which announced his death, I could not help but cry as I remembered seeing him in person when he was hot on the campaign trail. I had seen his campaign ads several times but everytime it came out on TV, I'd drop whatever I was holding, watch it and start getting tears in my eyes. I was in the province for vacation with my parents. We were eating an all-seafood lunch in my favorite restaurant when my mom and my dad met a doctor-friend of theirs who turned out to be Roco's campaign manager in our area. He excused himself but came back after a while with Roco himself. He greeted us with a warm smile and there I was staring at him, as if I were a kid seeing Santa Claus, never mind that at that moment he looked jolly, had a rather rounded tummy and wore red. My parents were introduced and he shook my dad's hand and then my mom's. I do not really recall who introduced me to him because my mind and my tongue seemed frozen. It's like meeting someone you've idolized for so long but the major difference in this scenario was that it was totally unexpected. All of my normal body functioning seemed to be focused on only one thing: to gawk at Roco as if I were brain-dead. Even breathing seemed to be forgotten, thank God it's an involuntary action. The next thing I know he turned to me and held out his hand. At that moment, all of my sense came back and I froze for a moment of indecision. Minutes before he sauntered into our table, I was literally diving into my food, having abandoned my eating utensils for a severely sloppy rendition of hand-to-mouth existence. Everything on my plate was practically greasy it could have violated Newton's laws of motion - crabmeat, fish, fried rice, buttered shellfish. So my hand was a sticky mess of the combinations of the food mentioned above. Oh crap, I get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet someone I've idolized for so long and all I can offer him is a slimy handshake! I let out the most stupid smile ever and apologized, saying my hand was dirty. But he said something like it was all right and it would be unwise and impolite to refuse so I shook his hand. I was so happy I immediately texted my aunt and my friends. I was just so sad later on that, first, I did not have a picture taken with him and, second, I had to wash my hands a little while later. It is even sadder and more regretful to note that at the last minute I did not write his name in the "President" blank in my ballot because of the news about his ill health.

Roco's death has left another gaping hole in the very small throng of people who compose the guardians of Philippine morality. I have always believed in his integrity and dedication as a public servant, especially in his adherence to the truth. He was an idealistic man and, at times, even ambitious in his efforts to carry out authentic reforms in a society which pessimists proclaim is going to the dogs. I laud his courage for choosing to work for the good of the country even when he is very much aware that in doing so, what he would meet would be disappointment and discouragement in their purest forms. Conrado de Quiros wrote in his column that Roco believed in the Filipino, that there is a lot of good in our race despite all the negative comments slammed into our already mangled faces. He believed in the Filipino's ability to make the right choices, even if money runs our present society like a power generator. All in all, Roco believed in hope for a supposedly doomed country but emphasized what all of us already know but refuse to hear: that true change for society can only be effected when the person himself initiates a change within himself.

Roco deplored about the state of our country but he singled out the fact that young people today lack the proper figures to look up to. Of course, a mango tree cannot bear apples inasmuch as demons cannot bring forth angels. But young people need someone to follow and emulate and since they cannot have the taste of the best, they settle for what's better or good. Bette r and good are all right but they are not the best. In our current circumstances, it is not a remote possibility that we are emulating what's bad (ranting madwomen), worse (organized crime masterminds) or even the worst (plunderers and sons of plunderers with superiority complex and really long nails for more effective tenacious clinging to power). His death leaves a void which would take a long time to be filled and his legacy as a good leader would never be enough to heal society but, to quote Roco's son, the seeds have been spread and, I believe, have taken root. You don't have to be president to do that.