A personal loss

My father died when I had barely turned 32. I recall being numbed by the experience. Since I was firstborn, it felt especially cumbersome, inheriting the brunt of responsibility for a grieving mother and four siblings who were so much younger, with three brothers then only in their teens.

The challenge seemed daunting, yet it also provoked the instant swagger of youthful pride. I could take it on, and mine would now be the only manly voice to rule a household, even if I had left it early to chart peripatetic ways. Even overrule, quite often as it happened, the voice of the madre de familia, who was only too happy to cede authority to a son who excelled in braggadocio.

We hear of how some sons say they have to "eat the father" to grow into his shoes. I suppose I felt that way, so that the pain of loss was somehow mitigated by the opportunity of being thrust into that special void which impatient heirs desired to fill, if prematurely.

But my Daddy’s loss would be felt incrementally over the years. It wasn’t until a year and a half since he passed away that I finally wrote a poem for him, after a sleepless night abroad when I felt his presence in my bedroom. That poem is titled, simply, "Father," and it remains one of my favorite poems, for reasons of gratification having to do with substantial emotional release as well as the fulfilling sense of verbal and technical accomplishment.

The poem may have stayed future invisible presences, but my father loomed large in terms of absence. I have since noted that I remained hungry for a father figure.

The next ones I had were understandably of the literary world. There was Paul Engle of Iowa City, who felt like a father in the sense that we dueled craftily over cavalier manners and loyalties, let alone bragging rights to a seat for a football game. Thankfully, the relationship was as brief as it was touch-and-go. After three-and-a-half months at the International Writing Program, I bade him farewell.

But like a father, he surprised me by having the last word in overreach. Having moved on to Honolulu for a poetry fellowship at the East-West Center, I received an unexpected personal check from him one day, handcarried by a common friend passing through. Savoring the windfall, I could only smile beatifically at the realization that that’s what fathers are for. Like the law, their arms are long, and they never let go.

Before and after "the Paul," there was "Doc" Ed Tiempo who became "Dad" Ed. Again, our relationship seemed to have started on a sour note, but long years together, highlighted by three weeks of a writers’ workshop each summer in Dumaguete, made us bond quite genially and warmly. When he put an arm over my shoulder, I didn’t feel it was an overreach at all, but an assurance of genuine comradeship, kinship, as that of mentor-mentee.

And I appreciated it no end. Edilberto K. Tiempo bequeathed sly humor, the integrity of fiction, a "Mom" Edith to this day, and a soul sister and brother in Rowena and Maldon. When he was laid to rest in 1999, a platoon of soldiers paid tribute to the World War II veteran by firing thrice in the air. As they trooped off the open field I took their place and picked up a couple of empty shells from the grass. I keep them to this day.

When Franz Arcellana was interred at Libingan ng mga Bayani a couple of years ago, I tried to do the same souvenir pick-up trick, but was disappointed to learn that the military contingent had fired blanks to honor the National Artist. All I could do was shed tears, as I did over Dad Ed, over the passing of yet another father.

Neither was just a literary father. I felt a personal loss each time. They had both taught me about integrity and pride, and how to keep these distinct while in place, within the fiction we wrote or even that in our lives.

Last week I lost my father-in-law. To say that Catalino Macaraig Jr. had turned into another surrogate parent for this aging orphan would be to make light of the honorable memory of the man.

In a sense he became a real father, if another of those who filled up part of that void I could not entirely occupy.

Let me explain. While I do not believe in religion for myself, I am sure it is a necessary drug for a lot of other people. Short of agreeing with cynics who call it an emotional crutch, I fancy that its deleterious effects -— as in mesmerizing a horde in having to turn umbrellas upside down as a show of faith in golden bounty – are compensated for by the grandeur of pomp and ceremony, by organ music, by architecture inclusive of flying buttresses, and primordially, the mass acknowledgment of fear of the unknown.

A man’s gotta believe in something, yes. And so I choose to cast my lot with the ephemeris employed by the astrologer, and when I tire of science there are always the "Omens, Oddments, Inklings" that poet Alasteir Reid wrote about. Faith not in a god but gut instinct, yes. (Perhaps I lost my Fathers always too early.) Oh, but I digress.

With "Mac" or "Taling" I enjoyed a possibly curious relationship for all of 17 years. He didn’t approve of me initially. I like to think however that his early concern over the fate of his second daughter was eventually assuaged, and not only because I made sure to prepare his favorite sinigang when I invited him, Mama Celi and Lola Asyang over to my place to meet my Mom and break the ice on impending nuptials.

That was in 1986, the same fateful year in our contemporary history when Mac had been asked by then Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo, our wedding sponsor-to-be, to serve as Deputy Exec-Sec. for Tita Cory. Mac would serve longest as President Aquino’s Executive Secretary, or any other president for that matter. Yet never was he one to fluff himself up as the so-called "Little President," and would even shrug off the "Big Mac" appellation he earned.

In an Upsilon Sigma Phi rite last Wednesday evening at the wake at Santuario de San Antonio, Sen. Arroyo would acknowledge how Mac wasn’t ever one to upstage anyone, least of all someone higher in rank. Proof of this, our Ninong Joker said, was that as Justice Undersecretary in the Marcos years, Mac served under Sec. Vicente Abad Santos without calling attention to himself. And when Joker brought him back to government from the private sector in Cory Aquino’s first year in office, Mac was in his usual element, serving more than ably without his superior —- in this case his UP brod and old buddy – ever fearing that he’d get upstaged, let alone stabbed in the back.

When Joker left the office, Tita Cory asked Mac to take over as Exec-Sec. He formed his own team, with Magdangal Elma, Adolf Azcuna, Jake Lagonera —- names we would get familiar with over Sunday lunch at the Macaraig household in Urdaneta Village.

Adolf, now a High Court Justice, once said Mac was a genius in setting things in order. Part of that genius had to do with the paper chase. His long years in the Justice Department had equipped him not only with a sure grasp of legal intricacies, but a surefooted way of following up on the paper trail. A glorified apparatchik some would call him, but many of those who served with him paid tribute to how he concerned himself only with excellence as a bureaucrat, thus rescuing the term from its usual awful connotation.

It was a measure of the integrity of Big Mac, and I suppose our respect for one another, that throughout his years in the Palace as Executive Secretary, the only favor I asked him was to consider a request from the Writers Union of the Philippines for President Corazon C. Aquino to officially declare Balagtas Day.

Other than that, oh, when he was PAL chair we’d get some assistance through the luggage belts and Customs at NAIA. And once, I did enjoy an upgrade to a Skybed ride to London (on an economy ticket paid for by The British Council).

Much later, in the FVR years, he expressed some regret in not having known about my propensity to get into media-spin strategies and video-docu projects. Oh, yes, he could’ve probably helped me land some contract during the Cory administration. But then I guess we both thought we knew her well enough, even from a distance as on my part, to be assured that she didn’t need any spin doctoring. And so I had kept my distance. And there was never any favor-seeking.

Another instance I remember was having opened the door at the Macaraig residence to a Chinoy taipan who had been a friend of Mac. Well, Mac could get irritable sometimes. He felt he was being compromised because of the sudden visit, since ironically enough, a compromise arrangement was then being worked out with the taipan regarding corporate tax delinquency. So Mac bawled the poor fellow out, as I stood there sheepishly, hearing what was less than an exchange.

"I’ve told you already. We’re not friends anymore, not while I’m in government!" On the warm, familial side, I enjoyed talking with my father-in-law about sports (his Michigan Wolverine T-shirt would be a hand-me-down nearly worn out by our oldest son, Mac’s oldest grandchild, now 16), language and legal matters, and politics, in that order.

A few days before his demise, our other son recounts, Lolo Mac had asked him if LeBron James was as good as he was touted. And when Mac’s oldest son Mel and his wife Cathy had their first child, he heartily approved of the decision to name the kid Willis in honor of the fabled Willis Reed of the New York Knicks.

We talked shop about MJ (Jordan, not Jimenez), the PBA, chess, baseball. And until his recent debilitation as a diabetic, his was always the affable, knowledgeable voice of reason.

That rationality informed his low regard for much of media. Which is why he was hardly known as a familiar public face all that time, close to four years, that he managed the affairs of state at the Palace. He never granted interviews or curried favor from reporters or columnists. He believed he was there for a job, and it wasn’t as a spokesman.

Tita Cory so trusted him that she’d even take his counsel as to a good beach and beach house to spend Holy Week in – the Lepanto Mining cottages at Poro Point. There he also brought the whole family along every summer, with no wang-wangs or bodyguards, just drivers.

It became an annual rite we looked forward to, along with the increasing number of grandchildren, and together with the Mathays and Guevarras. Like Joker, Tito Pons and Tito Che were his lifelong buddies, from the time they became brods at UP in the late ’40s, and as part of that celebrated UP Law Class of ’51. Sometimes we’d also motor up to Baguio where he’d play golf, but he seemed to enjoy himself just as much teaching his apos to play mahjong where he was a shark.

I recall too his assuring voice on the phone when in 1989 that darned Gringo and his fellow putschists repeated their confounding efforts. My wife and I could hear machine gun fire around PTV-4 from our old place in Teachers’ Village. Just as we heard that Malacañang itself was under fire, he rang up to assure us not to worry, "something is being done." Soon the rebels’ Tora-Tora was being chased down by US fighter jets.

When the takeover attempt fizzled out, Teddy Boy Locsin paid tribute to Big Mac in a memorable column, with his inimitable prose winding down on the image of a man putting his hands in his pockets and walking away quietly, content that he had done his valuable part.

Before his resignation as executive secretary, he assembled the family, including the sons-in-law, to seek inputs before finally articulating the reasons for his decision. We all knew that government needed a sacrificial lamb in the wake of the power crisis. Mac was only too willing to fill up that need. Perhaps he was even happy to relieve himself of long hours of pressure, which he could now devote to patrician enjoyment of his grandchildren.

President Aquino invited us to a private dinner at the Palace as a tribute to their years of work together. She made sure to award him the highest possible distinction for someone who had served government. The citation read:

"In recognition of his outstanding meritorious services rendered to the Republic of the Philippines in the span of 30 years, culminating in his three-year tenure as an Executive Secretary of the Office of the President.

"For his steadfast leadership and action at the time of grave danger to our democratic institutions when he successfully, courageously and quietly coordinated the task of saving the Republic.

"For his dedicated performance of his duties and functions in assisting the President with her task of governance and public service.

"For his numerous and valuable contributions to the promotion of public projects without attracting attention to himself but often giving the credit to his fellow workers in government.

"For his exemplary efforts and zeal and for pursuing the national interest and ensuring that the presidency and our people are served, foregoing credit for himself.

"For his attitude of service and deep humanity in dealing with others in the rank and file of the service, and the citizens at large.

"For a record of honesty and integrity worthy of emulation.

"By virtue of the powers vested in me by law, I, Corazon C. Aquino, President of the Republic of the Philippines do hereby confer upon Catalino Macaraig, Jr. the Philippine Legion of Honor, Degree of Commander.

"Awarded in Manila, this 26th day of December in the year of our Lord 1990."

Again, at the necrological rites held last Friday, former President Aquino extolled the very same attributes she and many others had appreciated in Mac. She wrote, in part: "Dear Mac, I want to thank you for all the kindness and support you gave me when you were Executive Secretary. Most of all, I thank you for being so loyal to me. You and I really got along very well and I felt comfortable with you and I hope you felt the same way about me. I truly believed I could confide in you in both public and private matters. We had tremendous problems then, but you gave me excellent advice on how to address those problems. In fact, it was you who suggested that I form a special committee composed of the heads of the government financial institutions or GFIs so as to help me make the best decisions possible.

"You were truly humble as a public servant should be. You never wanted to be on center stage. In fact you never wanted to be interviewed on television and you told me that I could ask you to do almost anything except that. You certainly did not have any political ambition and there were times you would give others the credit when I would tell you how much I appreciated what you were doing for me. I don’t remember getting any complaints from any Cabinet member about you and I know that many public officials including senators and congressmen were glad that you were so accessible to them.

"Thank you, Mac, for your friendship and for your thoughtfulness… You made me feel that we would always be friends, no matter what…

"So long for now, Mac. I hope you and Ninoy have finally met and that Ninoy has thanked you for all the tremendous support you gave me. God bless you and your family!"

My wife’s words at the last rites encapsulated the same appreciation for the self-effacing ways of her father:

"…Everyone would add an anecdote that exemplified my father’s sterling qualities as a lawyer, teacher, mentor, friend and public servant.

"The poet Gémino Abad who e-mailed his condolences from Singapore said it best: ‘Our country owes much to him who served all of us without fanfare.’

Indeed, that was Papa, as I learned to call him down the years.

I like to think he appreciated that part of me that devoted itself to our own kids, as well as the literary honors I would occasionally earn. I recall how he said with a faint smile, when the manuscript of my second novel Voyeurs & Savages won "only" third (if yet a hefty) prize in the Centennial literary contest, "I know it’s probably disappointing for you to get only third prize, but congratulations, anyway; it’s still an honor."

And I believe he was particularly pleased when not too long ago I served as a co-editor for the Legal Write coffeetable book trilogy, one of which enshrined literary gems from the decisions of the Supreme Court in the last hundred years.

We will all miss him. I will miss his humor. Once he was asked if he had been a Fulbright scholar, and his reply was: "I’m not even half-bright."

I may not claim as much of a loss as would his real children, but he was nearly as much a father to me, and the appreciation is doubly felt since I needed another one these last 17 years. Papa Mac helped fill that immense void. His loss I take as deeply personal, and I grieve as much as his grandchildren, whose memory of him as a selfless hero I pledge to help them uphold.