On May 19, my uncle, my only maternal uncle, died. So did his wife, Tia Pearl. Actually, Tia Pearl went first, then my uncle. The ties in Batangas must be really tight. I heard of this story before, of a wife waking up her husband from an afternoon nap. Finding him dead, she utters a cry, then dies, herself. This happened in Batangas.
So it was with my uncle and aunt. My uncle, Tio Tito, finding Tia Perla dead from a heart attack, also dies shortly after. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing her thus. Perhaps it was the exertion of trying to revive her, trying to shout for help. Who knows now? Someone says he heard a voice crying for help, but he couldn’t place where the voice was coming from. Ultimately, the cries for help stopped.
Tio Tito was a part of my happy childhood, part of which I spent in Balayan, Batangas, with my maternal grandparents. Tio Tito was the youngest and just 6 years older than I was, so I became a sort of younger sister, someone to do nice things for, someone to tease. He would pick aratilis fruits for me, and he’d become so associated with the fruits that I’d never see an aratilis tree, later in life, without remembering him. He and my cousin Junior engaged in boyish pranks, like tickling a chicken, such that the poor chicken, when cooked, was as tough as a pangsabong na manok. Fortunately, my Lolo had plenty of chickens. Otherwise, we would have gone without lunch.
My stay with my grandparents, and Tio Tito, became longer when my parents’ house in Batangas City burned down when the public market did. I had to study in La Consolacion College in Mendiola from Grade 4-Grade 7. Tio Tito was then studying in Ateneo High School in Manila. He had such famous contemporaries like Butz Aquino, and several well-known public officials; also, infamous ones, like Erap. In fact, for the longest time, his brods in Beta Sigma at the UPLB, where he studied college, held hazing sessions at Tio Tito’s farm at Lian, Batangas, or at nearby Matabungkay Beach. Fortunately, no one was hurt in those sessions.
When Tio Tito was studying at UPLB, he would bring to Sta. Mesa, where I was staying with my grandparents when I went to UP Diliman, a sackful of lansones, when these fruits were in season. In the 60s, these fruits cost just 10 centavos a kilo.
When I got married, and my Tio Tito also did, years later, it wasn’t that easy maintaining close ties. I was in Diliman Campus, he was in Balayan. We did spend a short vacation in Balayan one time. I already had two children, Fevi and Boboy; he was newly-married.
A few years later, FG got a Rockefeller Fellowship and we stayed at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. It was even harder then maintaining close ties. Tio Tito was not a letter-writer. The only thing he sent me was a birthday telegram card when I was 11, and staying in Batangas with my parents. I had just graduated from La Consolacion, and my parents had decided that I should study high school in Batangas.
But even if he wasn’t a letter-writer, Tio Tito loved discussions. In fact, that’s what brought him and FG together–they shared this love for discussing anything and everything. Sometime after my Lola Bambe died, FG and I would drive to Lian, stay overnight and leave the next day. We spent the night endlessly talking, the four of us–Tio Tito and Tia Pearl, FG and me. We’d wake up all bleary-eyed early the next morning and continue talking as if we hadn’t already stayed that way until the wee hours. Tio Tito liked the fact that FG wasn’t as “pasiklab” as the typical Kapampangan male. Also, FG wasn’t as fashion-conscious like the typical Kapampangan. He loved to wear old, comfortable clothes. At one point, he had plenty of designer clothes in his clothes, thanks to our oldest son Bob, but often, he would opt for his favorite blue Thai shirt that a former advisee from Thailand had given him, a fact that we’d often deplore.
Now, we’d like to think that Tio Tito, Tia Pearl and FG are holding their interminable discussions somewhere in The Great Beyond. It’s just the way to cope with the sadness of their leaving, one after another.
Bon voyage and adieu to the three of you, who have left for that ‘bourne/From which no traveler returns.’
[Our utmost condolence go to their three children Melissa, Anna Christine and Emilia, and to their 4 grandchildren. You aren’t alone in mourning them.]