Eliadora Panganiban Deguito, 1942-2008

I wish to extend my sincere condolence to the survivors of Eliadora Deguito, my first cousin on my father’s side, who passed away about a week ago, and whose interment it was today.

Elia was my playmate during my early years in Batangas, before the ancestral home burned down. We’d stay in one of the rooms and play or tease each other about our last names, while all about us, in the fashion of the time, were huge pictures with huge frames. One of the pictures showed my paternal grandmother, who passed away when my father was but a small boy, leaving my grandfather to support and take care of 8 children, 4 boys and 4 girls. Financially, they were well-off, esp. at the start, when my grandfather had a flourishing lumber business. In fact, during the prewar years, my father drove a car, perhaps one of the few to do so.

Elia’s mother, Aurelia, was my father’s older sister. Esp. during my childhood, the siblings seemed to stay in one big compound with their families, so I never wanted for playmates. My uncles and aunts lived in perfect harmony, no voices raised in anger. Everyone seemed to speak in a soft voice.

I had occasion to be with Elia, after so many years, when my father’s stocks at the University of Batangas passed on to us, and I began to attend the UB’s Annual Stockholders’ Meeting. Elia, who was then working at the UB, would accompany us and introduce us to her friends at the UB, which was something I really appreciated as I had never been there before.

Elia never married, but she treated her nephew Sherwin as her own, helping send him to school. When he passed the engineering boards, she was as happy as if she were his mother.

With Elia’s passing, another part of me is gone.