MY GRANDFATHER
by Bianca Locsin
(Adapted from the eulogy given on the occasion of his funeral mass and published on page 27 of the Philippines Free Press on February 5, 2000)
His father was a poet, I have been told, but to me it will always be my grandfather who gave birth to and nurtured our family’s love affair with the English language.
After i received my mother’s call in early 2000 about his collapse, I sat in my small room in China wondering what to do. I was young then and thought, I guess, that i could somehow ward off his death, as one does a curse, with some form of activity. I remember walking down to the pool in the middle of our centre, sitting on a stone bench and staring at the still dark waters. I thought then of writing? That thing we all did. That thing he did all the time, from 4:30 am in the morning, whether in his own hand or through the use of a clunky typewriter. Of what use was the talent for stringing words together in an interesting way to him who was at that very moment raging against the dying of the light? Upon his passing, articles in various papers sang his praises. Hagiography would not, however, bring my grandfather back. Of what use is writing?
As he lay dying, we tried to think of things to make my grandfather happy. He never seemed to like music save for what he could sing himself. He liked pretty faces. He had my grandmother to give him that. When he was conscious I would hold up the newspaper pages from a Shakespeare play or his own book for him to read. I watched his eyes move from right to left, right to left, and then eventually close in drowsiness. I hoped it was pleasant exhaustion. In the respite reading gave him in his final conscious moments, he had given me an answer to my question.
Writing is maybe a poor weapon against fate. It cannot hinder the turning of its wheel nor, for those who practice it, does it often bring much in the way of psychic and sensual benefits. But it nonetheless retains a power, even in its most pedestrial form, to pull us out of the hum-drum or catastrophic moments in our lives and provide us brief moments of peace and revelation. Shakespeare, Hemingway, Rizal, my grandfather, all writers try to immortalize what they love and what they will lose - a woman, an idea, a country. Between their birth and their passing these “ painful warriors” work on what will eventually be left to us as no more than the exquisite wreckage of their futile visions. And these broken dreams we can then use for our purposes - to escape our lives, to live another or, in one case in the early days of the decade just past, to bring a sense of home to a writer who had hoped to die surrounded by walls of his books rather than the sterile ones of a hospital room.
Close to the time of his burial, we were told that my grandfather would be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani among the national artists and scientists. I had known he had been, in his hey day, an important man. The stories that were published about him at the time lauded him as a titan of morals, a man passionate about politics and ardent in his love for his country. These pieces revealed to me much of his past life, almost too much. For I did not know Teodoro Montelibano Locsin the war veteran, the fighter for land reform, the jailed journalist, the great man, that hero. I had only the fortune for twenty-three years of my life to know a very old man, tottering on thin white legs, whose smile at the sight of me would light up his whole face and evoke in me that now irretrievably lost feeling of being safe, home and loved. I did not know the awe-inspiring editor-in-chief of The Philippines Free Press or the charismatic literature professor. I only knew the old man who kept all my letters on the shelves he could reach from his wooden rolling chair, a contraption to which he was largely bound in the last years of his life. I did not know the man who ha built a vast library but the aging poet who lived in it - my implacable foe in the battle over his meager breakfast, which he would push toward me and I would push back; my quiet morning reading companion.
My sister said to make sure to say that he was the best grandparent anyone could have, because he loves us merely because we existed. I have learned since his death and my parents’ transformation into grandparents themselves that that trait is a common one. But there was a unique quality to his regard for his grandchildren. He never looked at me or any of his grandchildren but with a soft look of gladness that we were there near him. He never said a word in our defense but in the power of his presence and everyone’s deep respect for him and his opinions we often sought and found the most profound sense of security.
I am proud and fortunate to be his granddaughter - proud because he was a good man and a good writer, fortunate because he gave himself to me forever in his writings. Your grandfather will always be with you, my tita told me. But where? I asked her. Not in the tissues of my heart but perhaps in the rhythm on which the words of his poems and short stories float. And in the love for literature he instilled in me, I have a refuge that will sustain me until I make my own journey into that good night wherein he now sleeps.
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