A Memorial Tribute to Daddy

My father was a simple man. He lived life by simple principles and he remained true to his principles throughout.

He loved his mother dearly, and inspired by his mother's care and concern for her children, he continued to take care of their needs after she died. Apo Sitang told me once, that among all her children, she favored my father because he was obedient. Upon seeing his dirty face filled with soot and mud with a hard hat on, when she visited him at a mining site in Benguet before the war, she immediately ordered him to quit his post, and get a safe, hazard-free, white-collared job befitting a proper engineer instead. And that's how he got into the Bureau of Coast and Geodetic Survey, where he served for almost 4 decades as a geodesist, geographer, cartographer, oceanographer, and finally, bureau administrator and technical adviser to the Philippine delegation to the United Nations' Convention on the Law of the Sea. In his retirement, he continued his work at the Cabinet Committee on the Law of the Sea under Presidents Marcos, Aquino and Ramos as consultant, and like Christopher Columbus,he circumnavigated the world preaching the "archipelagic doctrine" to be embodied into the law of the sea.

He loved my mother for over 58 years, despite her bed-ridden condition, for she suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for forty years until her death. They celebrated their golden wedding anniversary mass at home with my mother lying on a cot why he stood beside her. Once he told me that my mother drew her strength from him. That's why he felt so bad that he was not around when she was hospitalized for pneumonia, a few days before she died. He believed that she could have survived that fatal illness had he been around. My mother died not knowing that what prevented Daddy from coming home sooner from LA was because he had undergone a brain surgery due to a serious fall he suffered while on his way to church there.

My Daddy's life was a life of humor. He saw the fun in many things. Driving to church and to his ministry, taking his grandchildren for a ride, going to his hometown in Pampanga, eating his favorite pancit canton at Joe Kuan, and reading the daily newspaper's Obituary page. Many times, what was fun to him wasn't funny to many of us, of course. He scared the daylights out of his fellow lay minister every time he cuts corners and crosses intersections when driving his owner jeep. He was reprimanded by his youngest son for taking his grandchildren on a joy ride without their mother. He was scolded on numerous occasions for going to San Simon alone especially after he was stranded by the highway because of a flat tire, or a broken radiator hose. And finally, he reads the Obituary page to find out how many familiar people he had overtaken. Daddy is one happy man who loves to laugh, and he laughs even before he finishes his joke, leaving everybody breathless in suspense while he rolls in laughter. Daddy also could laugh at himself - throughout his later life after he retired, he tackled handyman jobs with enthusiasm, which ended in burnt table tops, bursting pipes, a bleeding thumb, or worse, a cut head.

My father was a man who lived by faith. A committed Roman Catholic, he lived his life by Christian principles. He was a lay minister for over twenty years before he retired from the ministry when he could no longer go to church unaccompanied, or bend his knees in genuflection. He lived by a code of Christian ethics and like a true Grand Knight of Columbus, all his dealings were honorable, decent, and fair. Two years after he was already stricken with this rare degenerative neurologic disorder, he still went to church every Saturday evening, accompanied by his sons and their children. He was lifted from the car to his wheelchair and carried back to the car by his sons after mass. All his life, he prayed the rosary every night, without holding rosary beads in his hands. Before he left the house, he would never fail to go back to his bedroom and make the sign of the cross before his altar. That early rainy morning before he died, while he was laboring and gasping for air as he lay dying, he listened to his eldest daughter sing religious hymns that she learned in high school as a colegiala, and soon after his breathing relaxed, and his arms rested on his side, she continued with prayers, something she has not done in a long, long while, and this gladdened his spirit. He died even before she could finish the rosary.

The vulnerability and fragility of the last two years of his life are in stark contrast to his earlier years. But he was Dad. We never looked any further for the meaning of what a dad was because he embodied the word. With Nanay, he created a family environment for his family and his legacy to us, his seven children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, is his exemplary attitude in life, and the principles he lived by--- honesty, integrity, humility.

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[mara114828]

So touching! May God bless you and yours

[MrCrazycardz]

my favorite number is Q hbu?

[angelica97007]

Good job on the vid.. It looks like ur daddy lived a long, happy life and he died peacefully.,. God Bless

[fear1no1man]

i lost my dad 3 years ago god bless i fell your pain

[alim611]

Very well done.

[emeritamanansala]

I love this...I miss my Lolo - Rio

[lazysquirrell]

Beautiful

i feel your pain