A Final Goodbye

I found a stack of papers lying on the desk one afternoon. I picked up a pencil and proceeded to draw cars and human stick figures on them. I drew and drew and had a lot of fun. But then, those papers turned out to be your students' examination papers that you took home to grade. Instead of getting angry, you laughed the whole thing off and simply explained to your students the next day what had happened and that your nephew did it. I was three years old then.

Dad and Mom took me to Manila's South Harbor one clear August night to say goodbye and to wish you well. They told me that you were going to attend some school in Hawaii on something called a "scholarship" from your old university. You boarded a huge boat called the SS President Wilson. It was the biggest boat I had ever seen then. I was five years old.

It wasn't until years later in December 1976 when I saw you again. It was your first trip home after years of study and it was the happiest Christmas reunion the clan had in years. Although, I didn't get to talk to you much, I remembered that you expressed surprise upon seeing me because I was no longer the chubby boy you last saw when you left the country years earlier. We were all happy to see you and we were all fascinated with the stories you shared about life in America.

Not long after you flew back to the States, I learned from Dad that you had become a professor at a certain school in Philadelphia called Wharton. It was the first time I heard of the school and all I knew about it then was based on what Dad told me. He told me that it was one of those schools that bright students attended. He was very proud of your achievement. So proud that Dad again reminded me that my cousins and I should try our best to do well in school so that someday we would have our own achievements to be proud of. I was 11.

A couple of years later, word reached the family that you garnered the Outstanding Professor award at Wharton. What made the award so special was that aside from making us all proud, not only were you the first Filipino to win it, but it was also the first time that the award was given to an Asian. You made us prouder still when you won the same award again two years later.

With your smarts, you could have easily made a lot of money working in private industry or in government. But you refused. You considered yourself a teacher, nothing less and nothing more. Teaching was your passion. Even if the other jobs would have meant a lot more money and personal fame, you steadfastly refused to consider them. You stuck to what you loved doing. In doing so, you showed us that although money was important, it wasn't everything. You taught us to place a higher premium on doing what we loved doing. I was 13.

It was also around this time when I noticed your generous and caring side. Your eldest sister, Tita M, was raising four kids on her own. Although you didn't make a lot of money as a professor, you shared part of your earnings to support her and her kids' education. Dad and his other siblings also did their part to support her with whatever resources they had to make sure that she and her children were properly cared for. It was a model of true family solidarity, one that my cousins and I still remember and respect to this day.

You came home for a brief visit when I was 15. I was in my teens and you had apparently heard of some mischief Cousin G and I engaged in at the time for upon seeing me, you slapped me in the arm and said "Walanghiya ka! Panay ang panood mo ng bomba!" ("Shame on you. You've been watching too much porn!") You laughed afterwards and knew that I was just being a teenager.

However, I still remember the day you informed Dad that you were diagnosed with diabetes mellitus. Your voice over the phone sounded apprehensive. We were all worried too because diabetes was the scourge of the family. At that particular point, no male member of the family who suffered from diabetes had lived past 65 years. Although we were all worried, we were optimistic that with the proper medical treatment, you would still end up fine. I was 17.

In college, I majored in the same field as you and Dad. Upon graduation, I was hired by the professional firm that you yourself almost joined two decades earlier. From the US you called to congratulate me. You even addressed me by the nickname you gave me when I was still a toddler. Through the use of that nickname, you expressed pride not only in your little nephew's achievement but also with the realization that he was now a young man. I was 21.

Your love for your nephews and nieces knew no bounds. The following year, you expressed joy and pride upon learning that I was coming to the US for an 18-month long assignment. Within a few weeks after my arrival, you invited me to see you and our relatives in New York. You proved to be a very good tour guide for you showed me the sights around Manhattan. The tour was also memorable for the "long walk" you and I took where we started from Battery Park in downtown Manhattan, made our way through the Wall Street financial district and New York's Chinatown, and trekked all the way up to Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan, a distance of at least 60 city blocks.

You visited me a couple of times afterwards and helped me shop for things I needed. You even helped me clean and fix my apartment up. You even stayed up way past midnight one time to make sure that the whole place was neat and tidy. I was 22.

This was a time when I began to really know you a lot more. You loved to talk and joke around. You were the life of every party. As a sign of affection, you loved giving everyone a funny nickname and these nicknames were often bastardized versions of people's real names. Matthew became "Matias", Nicholas became "Kulas", and Toby became "Tobias".

Sometimes the nicknames were based on how people looked or worse, the opposite of it. You called a friend who sported a mustache "Max Alvarado" after a Filipino actor who always played the role of a villain in Filipino movies back in the 1960s. You called a friend with a number of deep pimple scars on his face "Mr. Pogi" (Mr. Handsome). A lady friend named Bel became "Bella Flores" after a Filipino actress/villainess also from the 1960s.

But you were indeed intellectually sharp. I enjoyed our talks about academic stuff and I learned a lot from you then and in the years that followed.

You also were a great friend to many of your former students. Even when many of them became successful in business, not once did you approach them to ask for personal favors. You never used those friendships for personal gain even when a nephew or niece badly needed work. You wanted us to believe in ourselves and in our capabilities. You wanted us to make it on our own steam. It was a valuable lesson in character development for it helped us develop both self-confidence and independence.

However, although you still had a lot of energy, I sadly noticed signs that the effects of diabetes mellitus were starting to take their toll on your body. By then, you had quit teaching and had to settle for a desk job with the government. Your kidneys were starting to fail to the extent that you no longer had the energy required to conduct lectures on your feet for long periods of time. I also noticed that the skin on your feet were quite dry. There were deep scratches that would have made a healthy person wince in pain but you obviously were numb to them. I realized then that you weren't getting the appropriate medical treatment.

In the years that followed and through the 1990s, although you still tried to put up a brave front, there were more signs of physical weakening. You got tired easily and you began showing signs of congestive heart failure. You always felt cold and needed a sweater on you even in the heat of summer. Problems with blood circulation limited movement on your arms and legs.

You showed some renewed energy and signs of improvement after the doctors performed a quadruple bypass surgery along with a removal of your kidneys back in 2000. You were forced to quit your job not long afterwards. In spite of the fact that you now had to go through regular dialysis treatments, your spirits improved and you regained some of the weight and appetite you had lost. However, we all knew you were living on borrowed time.

Problems with blood circulation reappeared within a year after your surgery. It manifested itself through the dark spots we started seeing on your feet and lower legs. A few years later, you had a series of mild heart attacks. It seemed that some of the problems were coming back.

You asked me one day to see you in Philadelphia. It was a rather sad day because when we met, you started leaving instructions on what to do in the event of your passing. You spoke to me of your desire to be cremated and for your ashes to be brought back to our hometown in the Philippines for internment.

You left the East Coast a couple of years later to move to the Western part of the country, closer to the Pacific and closer to home. Although we talked on the phone for several more times since then, I didn't realize that that would be the last time I'll see you alive.

Two Sundays ago, July 13, I drove down to Alexandria, Virginia for a one-week assignment. Aside from Philadelphia, Alexandria was the other city you lived in and loved in the East Coast. As my car drove into town, a feeling of sadness suddenly came over me. I couldn't explain it. As soon as I got into my hotel room, I immediately called loved ones to check if they were alright. They were. I tried to rationalize the cause of such sadness by thinking that maybe I was in Alexandria for the first time without any close relative nearby. The sad part about the whole thing was that it never occurred to me to give you a call to ask how you where.

It was in the evening of the following day, July 14, when I finally found out. While having dinner with a co-worker, I got a call from your youngest sister, Auntie E. She had just gotten a call from the police who informed her that you had died. People at the dialysis center you went to had called the police when you failed to show up for your scheduled treatment earlier that day. The coroner said you suffered a fatal heart attack and died peacefully in your sleep. After all the years of suffering and pain, your heart finally gave up. You were 64.

You probably felt and knew the end was coming for close to the spot on the bed where they found your body, they also found a news clipping that dated back to 1961. The brief news item was about how your high school had awarded our dearest "Nanay" (my late grandmother) the "Mother of the Year" award because you graduated as the high school valedictorian.

Last Tuesday, July 22, we had your funeral and performed it according to your wishes. Auntie E will be flying you home for one last time this Wednesday, July 31. As you wished, you will be buried in the town we all love.

Thank you very much for everything that you've done for us, Dear Uncle. Although there may have been times when you and I had disagreed over the approach to take, never for a moment was there any doubt that we both meant well. You were an inspiration to your many nephews and nieces and I hope you will be proud of the fact that to a person, all of us obtained college degrees. Thanks to your help, Cousin G, one of Tita M's four kids whose education you supported, became the closest to you in terms of academic brilliance. Like you, he was a product of the public school system and graduated cum laude.

There were a lot of other things you did for all of us, too many to mention. Aside from the achievements, we will always remember you for your selflessness. Goodbye, Dearest Uncle. Rest well and in peace. We love you.