Once upon a time, when snail mail was still the fad, my daughter conveyed a project which required Overseas Filipino Worker [OFW] parents to write a eulogy for their children who were enrolled in their school which, incidentally was founded by Maryknoll Sisters. I have since forgotten what the teacher's rationale for this rather odd requirement - eulogy for the living - was, but rummaging through my files, I found the draft of what I sent her.
The Draft
I am afraid I hardly knew my daughter and therefore, consider myself less competent for this task at hand. I don't even know what her favorite color was.
Ethel was just ten years old when I started working overseas and would only get to see her for 21 days every 6 months. During those intervals, I would always look forward to spending quality time with her but more often than not, she would be busy with her classes in school.
And, when she's not in school, she seemed to be always asleep. I wonder what kept her so close to her bed. It seems to me all her life, her mind was not able to prevail over mattress.
Despite all these, being a doting daughter, as she always was, Ethel tried to bridge the necessary evil of separation by writing letters.
Those seemingly eternal, "Musta na po kayo? Sana'y lagi kayong nasa mabuting kalagayan, mahal na mahal po kita" [How are you? Hope you're doing fine, I love you much] greetings and assurances in her letters always appeared fresh to me and were enough to make my day. She wrote so neatly but it kept me wondering until now how her teachers were able to suffer her size 8 fonts. If she managed to extract 3.5s and 4.0s from them, she also made me keep on upgrading the lens of my reading glasses.
She has a penchant for coming up with codes and acronyms. I've grown very fond of her KTMD, which dictum I would admit had helped me a lot in surviving the rigors of an expatriate's life sans the family. As long as I live, I will always cherish such compact but meaningful aphorism, "Konting Tiis, Maraming Dasal." [Have a bit of grit, pray a lot.]
Instead of reminding me to make ingat [take care], the conya that she was, she would write CHESS. This is the real chess from where she gleaned a lesson early in life. She learned the rudiments of the game when she was just about 6 years old. All the while, we thought we had a child prodigy in the making. Such thought, however, was cut short by an overlooked enemy bishop lurking along the diagonal line leading to her queen. She seemed to have lost her interest in the game after that.
But the lesson was deeply ingrained in her. To her, chess is the way of life itself. Early on she realized the dangers lurking everywhere. That, somehow, an enemy bishop is always out there to get you if you are not careful; if you don't plan well enough and focus. I'll never forget that.
She may no longer be with us but I will always see her smiling and laughing heartily at my oftentimes corny jokes. I will always feel her love in every letter neatly written for a father oceans away. I will always feel secure in her admonition for my safety - to be always on the look-out for that wayward bishop, in every step of the way.
May God bless her soul.
End of draft.
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