My parents are not home most of the time, they are still busy. I think they are united now with our other relatives. Unity is a rare thing in my father’s dysfunctional family. Death seems to unite them for now. It’s complicated. A time for me to say something cliché. Complicated.
I feel bad that I have no good memory of my recently deceased grandfather. You know how it is with people you are not close with, you have one good memory of that person, a nice, sweet moment, a tender spot in your mind and it is enough to think of them nicely. Like when my Tita Gemma who I remember having fun before leaving for the US and never showing her face again (that was when I was about five), my Uncle Joel (an architect) who lived with us when I was about eight and showed me things he drew… it’s fun, even some of our relatives I don’t like have their nice tender moments. Things that would be etched on my mind that makes me fuzzy when I remember.
My grandfather did not have any of those moments. He had little to do with me while growing up. He left my grandmother who I though highly of until she died when I was around 7. It was only when I was a teenager that I learned she had a maldita streak but it did not matter because I still remember the days when she picked me up at school and she gave me this expensive candy (that is for a kindergarten student). She had her tender moments.
My grandfather had a dark cloud above him, he was labeled a lot of things. This, I heard in an actual conversation.
“Mga apo ng Pio.” A woman told her husband.
“Si Pio? Sino sya?”
“Yung tarantado!”
“Aaaah.” A moment of understanding to those talking.
It’s something openly said by the true natives of my hometown even in front of us.
He is the grandfather that one could have been proud of, he was said to be a dashingly good-looking mestizo in his youth (a trait that I apparently don’t have) . Hepe ng pulis, quite influential in the community. Sabi nila may mga eksena daw yun noong araw reminiscent of action movies by Erap at FPJ sa plaza na nagbubunutan ng baril. I have not confirmed that but they say they did. It must have been an interesting story. But he is a womanizer and a gambler. He may not drink or smoke but he left his family for another, squandered a lot of our family fortune and he made a lot of people miserable. He was my grandmother’s pride and misery.They say he is the reason why most of is descendants are messed up.
I did not realize how messed up my Dad’s family was until I was 12. I just though they are bordering on the annoyingly melodramatic (bata pa lang medyo na-dadramahan na ako). When I learned that we are like Local Dynasty baduy style (think of those family TV shows of decades ago with names like Bacolod, Davao and Cebu which starred many of our older character actors during their days of glory and make jologs tingnan… that’s how it was with our family).
He died at age 99. He was a stranger while he was alive and a stranger when he died. I struggle looking for that one tender memory. I feel like I owe that to the dead. There are people who wishedd him dead, but he disappointed him and outlived most of them. I never thought of him dying, it’s like he’s there. It’s like you stop waiting. It’s like he’s gonna be there forever. A figure you don’t really see much but you know he’s there.
Let’s go back to when I was 15, I saw him more often but he was already old then. There was little to talk about. But he knew his properties by heart. He wants us to be proud of who we are, maybe just as he was proud of who he is.
It then sparked in my mind. I was around 10 I think, he saw me one time walking alone. he called me. It was awkward because I really don’t know him well. I just knew he was my grandfather that don’t get along well with his children. He called me and made me sit on his lap. I did not know anything during that time. What he was thinking, how the situation was.
Maybe that was the tender moment I was trying to look for.
There are things I will never know and things I will never ask. I am not sure of what I feel. Do I admire the man? He’s my father’s father. Who am I to pass judgement on how he lived his life? I will never understand the why’s on it. And it’s too complicated for me to think about, gotta worry about many things in my own life. I am sure he will be remembered.
I don’t know how I feel about the old man. Again, the cliché. It’s complicated.
My Lola also passed away just recently. She’s 93.