Reflections on another year

Turning another year older is always a sentimental time for my family, more so this year 2011 was an extremely challenging year that was filled with some exquisite professional triumphs, but also personal pain that seemed almost insurmountable.

Much as I would have wanted the world to stop and grieve with me and my family, it obviously didn’t, not even when my world didn’t seem to make sense. After a month in hospital, my mother, Lirio, died in October of a rare condition that doesn’t even have any studies on it yet. It was devastating to me, my brother Luis and our sister Lizette. Mom was the constant in our family, the beacon of home. She needlessly died from unnecessary personal stress. Instantly, we felt lost on dark seas under starless skies. It was the first time in my life that I felt incapacitated and unable to function properly.

Personally, I felt ripped from my past. Mom was always my teammate and cheerleader. She never interfered, but only expressed concern when she felt I were drifting in the wrong direction. It was through her determination that I plunged into sports to save me from major childhood health problems, and beause of her that I mastered language. She lit the fire that, until her passing, fueled my sometimes lonely pursuit of excellence. She always insisted I was better than that.

Mom always taught me to believe in the Filipino. She was the main reason why I turned down offers to work abroad. I felt there were opportunities here, even when workplace politics and disproportionately low pay sometimes shook my faith. She was the only child from my grandfather’s first marriage; her mother died when she was a toddler. As her only child from her first relationship, it felt as if my last link to my past was severed. I know that that may not matter to some people, but it matters to me.

On this day that she gave birth to me, it will be saddening to not be able to thank her for choosing to give me life during an intensely difficult time in her own life. It will be an even more uncertain feeling to not be able to look into her eyes and see when I am doing the right thing, and if I am making her proud. 

That, perhaps, is the biggest adjustment. Men my age are supposed to undergo a midlife crisis and do all sorts of crazy, uncharacteristic things. Mabe I have. But more than that, I have had this feeling that I am starting over.

Sometimes, when I look at the repetitive cycles of athletes mired in politics in sports, I wonder if I have made any difference at all.  Is anybody listening? Does anybody care? Does it matter?

Through over a quarter of a century of being a sports journalist, I have seen many great, transcendent athletes call it quits, generation upon generation of them. I find myself interiewing world-class heroes who were born after I started working, some of them even friends of my sons. A few years ago, when I noticed more people calling me “sir”, I felt it was a sign of respect. Maybe now, it’s respect for their elders. I have to smile. Sports always will be, for the most part, the province of the young. And The Philippine STAR will always be around to document them for you, its loyal readers.

Time to close the book on this storyteller’s introspection. For now, there are stories to cover, conquests to chronicle, new records to document, heroes to trumpet, issues to tackle, the helpless to defend. We are, after all, merely the storytellers, not the story. It never ends. 

Lastly, as a message to my children, if I may borrow a line from Howard Stark to his son Tony in “Iron Man 2” : My greatest creation is and always will be, you.

Thank you for reading.

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My sincerest sympathies to the family of sports broadcasting colleague Moel Zarate and his family on the passing of their mother, Ma. Rosario “Chari” Cruz Zarate. May she continue to watch over you all from on high.