Amazing Grace

At around 1 a.m. Sunday, Nelson Joseph “NJ” Ocampo Villafania Jr., son of one of my most beloved former teachers at the Assumption, Cory Villafania and her husband Nelson, was hit by a jeepney in Pasay City. He was on his way to his condo in Makati after visiting his girlfriend’s home. Eyewitnesses said he was dragged further down the road by the jeep after he was hit.

NJ’s family was in their Canlubang home for the weekend, and so nobody realized NJ, a freshly-minted architect, had not come home to the Makati condo, their weekday half-way house.

But when NJ’s older sister Michele arrived at 5 p.m. Sunday, she saw NJ’s wallet and cellphones on the dining table. She thought he had just gone down for a bite. But when he hadn’t returned by 9 p.m., she got worried and so she called the last person whom NJ was with, his girlfriend. His girlfriend was shocked that NJ wasn’t home yet — she saw NJ last at around 1 a.m. and he said he was going home to Makati. That was a good 20 hours ago — but no one had heard from him since then. People usually sleep in on Sundays and most adult children don’t really give their parents a status update on their whereabouts so the Villafanias at first did not find it strange that they hadn’t heard from NJ.

Alarmed, NJ’s girlfriend then called all the hospitals in the Pasay area and one hospital confirmed that indeed there was a Patient X that was admitted earlier that day. When she asked them to describe Patient X, she was instead referred to a funeral parlor.

NJ was dead. He was 24.

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Last June 15, Cory, Marilen Liwag Reambillo (another beloved former Religion teacher) and about a dozen of my batchmates led by Michelle Dayrit Soliven, had our monthly prayer meeting at the Assumption. Cory and Marilen had facilitated a life-altering retreat for our batch exactly two years ago, and we cling to them for spiritual guidance and practical advice as we navigate mid-life. It was Michelle’s birthday and as usual, we related that day’s Bible reading to everyday life.

Cory said that all good things that happen in life come from God. I asked, “How about suffering?”

“It doesn’t come from God,” she said, “but He allows it to happen. Because suffering can be redemptive, and it can prune you, so that you can be a better person and love even more.”

We ended the day with a salu-salo at Michelle and Benny Soliven’s beautiful home to celebrate her birthday.

And then suddenly, we hear of the death of NJ. Losing a child, they say, is the most painful kind of loss because children are supposed to bury their parents, not the other way around. And this was not the first time that Cory was going to bury a child. In 2004, she lost the eldest of her five children to kidney complications.

“So many trials for such a prayerful woman,” my batchmate Tweety texted me upon hearing that Cory had now lost two children.

Thus, I wasn’t sure how Cory was going to take the violent death of NJ, coming just seven years after her firstborn’s death. Would she still be certain, as certain as she was on June 15, that suffering doesn’t come from God?

The Cory that Tweety and I saw at NJ’s wake the other day was a walking proof that God doesn’t give you a cross you cannot bear. Rather, Cory was a walking proclamation that God helps you carry your cross.

“Why you, Cory?” Tweety asked her. Cory loved and served God with all her heart, shifting from being an English teacher to being a Religion teacher, and touching many lives in her long teaching career (she had just retired).

“Why not me?” she answered Tweety. “We should love God not only when things are going right for us. That would be convenience, not love.”

Cory was sad, but not broken. She shed tears, but was not inconsolable.

“You are a good actress!” someone kidded her.

“No!” she replied immediately. “I am not pretending to be strong. I am drawing strength from somewhere and I know it is from God. He is my strength.” The funeral chapel at the Ceris 1 Village in Canlubang where the wake was held (funeral is tomorrow) was brimming with people and affection for the Villafanias.

“I told NJ,” Cory shared with us, “sa dami ng nagdadasal para sa iyo, kung wala ka pa sa langit niyan...”

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After I left NJ’s wake, I was reminded further by one of the reflections of Cory during our last prayer meeting. As always, she related her reflection to everyday life — not just doctrine. She recalled the movie Shall We Dance starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez, who played the part of Gere’s dancing instructor. As Gere was about to lead his partner in a dance, J. Lo told him, “You are the frame, your partner is the portrait.” She told him he had to lead her in her steps so that she would give a good performance and be a beautiful picture to the audience.

Cory says God is our frame. And if we let Him lead us, as a dance partner guiding us with our steps, we will be the perfect portrait inside His frame, a Mona Lisa of sorts. And as time goes by, as we let God continue to lead our steps in the perfect dance, as we let Him be our frame — in the end, it is not us that the audience sees in the portrait, but God.

How rewarding it is when people see the majesty, the kindness, generosity and mercy of God in us. That would be better than being painted by a Da Vinci.

Goodbye, Jo

I was introduced to Josephine “Jojo” Ramos in the early ‘80s, when she became the cover of the then STAR! Monthly magazine published by Isaac Belmonte and edited by his mom, the late Betty Go Belmonte. I was assigned to do the cover story, and the interview took place in the brand new Alabang house of then Armed Forces Vice Chief of Staff and PC chief Fidel V. Ramos and his wife Ming. Jo did the interiors of the house. I think that that was the very first interview she ever gave to the press.

“My life was never like a goldfish bowl. Crowds and too much attention take off something natural in me. I grew up in a simple home and I go for the simple things in life,” Jo told me during the interview.

She added, “Life is what you make it. You have to be what you want to be. Life is short and you cannot turn back the hands of time. In every step you take there are responsibilities to be met and people to please before yourself. In your climb to your pedestal, do the best you can, always, because life is not blessed with luck at all times. And in the final analysis, it will not so much be your success or failure that will count most but the determination, hard work, sincerity and honesty that you put into your endeavor that will.”

She was softspoken and sweet, and an artist. Aside from interior design, she was into music and dancing. We lost touch over the years and I was shocked, as most people were, that she had passed away on June 27.

I visited her wake last Tuesday and was awestruck by the wall of flowers that lined the sidewalk of the Manila Memorial Park, from the gate to the door of the funeral chapel were Jo’s (she was “Jo” to the public) remains lay in repose.

She was loved, obviously, as her parents FVR and Ming are loved and respected still by the Filipino people.

When I entered the chapel, I immediately saw FVR, disciplined still in his hour of grief. “O, Ate!” he kidded me. He used to call my late dad Frank Mayor “primo” because one of his favorite aunts is married to a Mayor from Romblon. He was distributing copies of the family’s official statement on Jo’s death, which was prepared by his foundation. On the left margin of the statement, he had signed, “Ok,” as if to clear the statement for dissemination. Vintage FVR, stickler for procedure and records. Perhaps he is compartmentalizing his grief, and as the man of the house, taking charge of everything and anything.

Mrs. Ramos was composed and said her daughter had kept her illness from the family. She only suspected once that Jo was ill, when she couldn’t walk straight to one of her appointments with her doctor. During that doctor’s appointment, she had borrowed her mother’s driver.

Perhaps she kept her illness from you because she didn’t want you to worry and she wanted you to remember her healthy and active, I told Mrs. Ramos. She nodded. “That is also why her son Sergio wanted to keep her casket closed.”

Jo’s 17-year-old son Sergio was sitting quietly in a pew near his mother’s white casket. A baseball cap covered a third of his face.

The wreath from President Noynoy Aquino was to the left of the casket. Among the photos displayed on top of it was the one taken during the STAR! Monthly magazine pictorial almost 30 years ago.

Jo’s younger sister Cristy said that Jo had to be intubated and sedated during her final days because she was in extreme pain. But she seemed to be holding on because their youngest sister Margie was in the US. A few hours after Margie arrived from the US, Jo breathed her last, her beloved son, parents and sisters by her side.

“Maybe she was just waiting for Margie to arrive...” Cristy said, tears glistening in her eyes.

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