The grand patriarch has fallen. Mother was literally flushed in tears as we watched the coffin get slid through the hollow space inside the concrete tomb. I was behind her, waiting for her to fall out of losing what little strength remained in her body after several sleepless nights and days. It never came, but she was the saddest person I've seen in the crowd, relatives and strangers altogether. We were among the last people to leave the grave; mother was on the verge of hysteria and she hesitated to go home until the man fixing the stone tablet has firmly affixed the piece with the epitaph in cement. It was a dry afternoon as we finally left. Mother lost her father to cancer. We lost him forever.
His foot was already on the grave when I've heard of the news. He was a dying man in the hospital and nothing can save him at the time. He was 72 and the prospect of death was imminent. As the turn of events would have it, I was unable to travel home the soonest time possible. I barely had the resources to finance my trip back home, and so I decided to borrow some money. It was too late when I returned for he was already dead. I got to Naga City on an unholy hour on February 18. He was already lifeless on Valentines.
He was a grumpy fellow, and for his old age it did not come as a surprise. His younger years were nowhere near perfect just as well. When my mother was still studying in college, her father would not let her join field trips for he thought the academic expenses would take its toll on the family budget. Which it did, or might have had, given the fact that their family was a galaxy away from being rich. He had this tone in his voice which, at times when he is in a fit of rage, would scare the living daylights out of the pores of your skin. A strict man that he is, he fits your conventional image of a conservative father to his four sons and two daughters and a conservative grandfather to the rest of us.
But like your ordinary circle of family, we also had moments that border between the hilarious and the insane. Despite the gravity of stressful moments that cause his wrinkles to grow faster than his thinning hair, my grandfather was one who hid a funny bone somewhere and plucked it sometimes, much to our delight. He was a man of vice, liquor and cigarettes alike, but he too was a man of virtue. For those who knew him very well, he stuck to his every word like a leech would do to skin. Each word that escaped the crevaces of his mouth was a word meant to be treated with much expectation; he would do what he would say.
He was no surgeon or physician, but he was a man who wielded the razor and circumcised those young lads whose twigs are yet to shed their barks. Pay Pino, the folks called him, and his name drew fear in the eyes of kids who saw him as the man who transformed boys to men. I can still remember the afternoon when I tasted his scythe firsthand. It wasn't a bloody mess but the pain was there. And like all the first-born boys in his family, I became one of the broods who took the bold path to the backyard and knelt before a shaved branch of guava tree. A few minutes thereafter, the ritual was complete and I was a grown boy.
To this day, I pride myself with the thought that what I carry around is proof to his legacy. Seriously.
And now that he has gone somewhere else, there are no more backyard circumcisions. No more grumpy old man in the old house. No more patriarch. The wooden chair where he used to frequent on lazy afternoons will be as empty as the sofa he used to sleep late in the night. No one to drive the rugged yellow motorbike he used for his former work as an electrician in the City. No one to tell us that any time he would soon be gone and leave us behind to look after what little is left of the family. Life in the face of death and death in the face of life can never be as real as this.
Requiescat In Pace [RIP].
His foot was already on the grave when I've heard of the news. He was a dying man in the hospital and nothing can save him at the time. He was 72 and the prospect of death was imminent. As the turn of events would have it, I was unable to travel home the soonest time possible. I barely had the resources to finance my trip back home, and so I decided to borrow some money. It was too late when I returned for he was already dead. I got to Naga City on an unholy hour on February 18. He was already lifeless on Valentines.
He was a grumpy fellow, and for his old age it did not come as a surprise. His younger years were nowhere near perfect just as well. When my mother was still studying in college, her father would not let her join field trips for he thought the academic expenses would take its toll on the family budget. Which it did, or might have had, given the fact that their family was a galaxy away from being rich. He had this tone in his voice which, at times when he is in a fit of rage, would scare the living daylights out of the pores of your skin. A strict man that he is, he fits your conventional image of a conservative father to his four sons and two daughters and a conservative grandfather to the rest of us.
But like your ordinary circle of family, we also had moments that border between the hilarious and the insane. Despite the gravity of stressful moments that cause his wrinkles to grow faster than his thinning hair, my grandfather was one who hid a funny bone somewhere and plucked it sometimes, much to our delight. He was a man of vice, liquor and cigarettes alike, but he too was a man of virtue. For those who knew him very well, he stuck to his every word like a leech would do to skin. Each word that escaped the crevaces of his mouth was a word meant to be treated with much expectation; he would do what he would say.
He was no surgeon or physician, but he was a man who wielded the razor and circumcised those young lads whose twigs are yet to shed their barks. Pay Pino, the folks called him, and his name drew fear in the eyes of kids who saw him as the man who transformed boys to men. I can still remember the afternoon when I tasted his scythe firsthand. It wasn't a bloody mess but the pain was there. And like all the first-born boys in his family, I became one of the broods who took the bold path to the backyard and knelt before a shaved branch of guava tree. A few minutes thereafter, the ritual was complete and I was a grown boy.
To this day, I pride myself with the thought that what I carry around is proof to his legacy. Seriously.
And now that he has gone somewhere else, there are no more backyard circumcisions. No more grumpy old man in the old house. No more patriarch. The wooden chair where he used to frequent on lazy afternoons will be as empty as the sofa he used to sleep late in the night. No one to drive the rugged yellow motorbike he used for his former work as an electrician in the City. No one to tell us that any time he would soon be gone and leave us behind to look after what little is left of the family. Life in the face of death and death in the face of life can never be as real as this.
Requiescat In Pace [RIP].
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