Goodbye Sunshine

• By ebotpandayan
• Posted in Uncategorized
• On September 30, 2019
• 2 Comments.

Don’t be surprised if I address you by this endearing name. I know it was a term of affection you and my sister used, but allow me to call you Sunshine, just this once. To many of us, you were the ‘sunshine on our shoulders’, a person who played a significant role in our family. As your brother-in-law, I have always been in awe of your warmth and kindness, and your absence has left a void in our lives.

I remember meeting you for the first time on Christmas Eve, sharing Noche Buena at home with my family and friends. You may have felt that I was being indifferent to you, for no other reason. It was only because it was our first meeting. I knew so little about you. I didn’t know you, except that you were marrying my sister in a week. You struck me, though, as a nice guy—very polite and educated, good looking, too—the other boyfriends my sister had before paled in comparison, although you were darker in complexion. Just kidding!

My mom and my aunt puzzled me when I saw them pleased with you. They were never like this towards the boyfriends my sister had had in the past; they were civil to them, alright, my aunt was, but my mother avoided them like the plague. When my sister broke up with her first boyfriend and came home with another, I thought my aunt would die of shame. My mother? Not even Fernando Amorsolo could paint her face. He could have had if he were an abstract painter. But you, you were different. You stood out among the rest because of your unique qualities—your kindness, your respect, your intelligence—that my family couldn’t help but admire.

“What, you’re bringing home a new boyfriend? What would the neighbors think? That you were a ‘playgirl’, always with a different boyfriend every time you come home?” I remember my aunt confronting my sister. Playgirl? I waited for her to say Slut, but I didn’t think she knew the word, never heard of it. And if ever she did, she would cringe saying it. She never learned to curse—a mortal sin in our household.

Oh, really? In this day and age? I had a good laugh.  For my mom and my aunt, once you bring a boy home, that is the boy you were marrying and no one else. I was glad my sister had a mind of her own.

I wonder how they reacted to you the day my sister dared to come home with you, introducing you to them as her new boyfriend. I left in ’78, so I never got the chance to know. No one told me until the day I heard that my mom and my aunt had given their blessing for you to marry my sister. It must have taken a lot of courage for my sister to introduce you, especially considering our family’s traditional views on marriage. But she did, and I can only assume it was because of your love and determination. Perhaps it was because my sister was already past the marrying age, which was relatively standard in my family, where women often married late, or not at all. It was perhaps because you were a good catch, so Mother and Aunt blessed the relationship, or maybe you bribed them both.

You see, my aunt never married after a failed relationship, despite the many suitors vying for her attention and despite her ex-boyfriend’s attempt to win her back. You see, giving your love to someone was a sacred matter to her, just a tad less than the Sacred Heart image of the Lord displayed at the altar of our home. For my aunt, love was as holy as the Holy Spirit can be, so one must take it seriously; you don’t break it. She must have scared the living daylights out of Cousin Nora’s suitor; he never came back to see her, while Toya, Nora’s sister, never dared speak about a man who may have expressed his affection for her. The sisters remained single, and they will always be, cross my heart, and hope to die.

Go figure. My cousin Lina—yes, I don’t run ouf of cousins—ran off with her lover, and my aunt had to send an emissary to bring her back home, and asked the boy to do it the proper way—meet the family, ask permission to marry Lina, not abduct her, which he did not; I guess my cousin willed the ‘abduction’, worried perhaps that my aunt may disapprove of her choice for a lover.

On the eve of your wedding day, an earthquake occurred in Metro Manila. However, it was not strong enough to cause any damage; it was sufficient to scare everyone. Happening on the eve of what was supposed to be the day of something you will remember for the rest of your life, your wedding, some people interpreted this as a sign of something negative. I want to think of it as the work of the father of the bride— our father—sending good vibrations to his firstborn daughter and to the man she was about to marry. You may not know the story, so I am telling you now that my father waited four long years before his wish to have a daughter came true. She was the most beautiful daughter a father could ever have; he would brag in the neighborhood as he carried her in his arms for everyone to see and admire.

Unfortunately, he didn’t live that long to see his daughter walk down the aisle and say those famous words, ‘I do.’ He would have been sad and happy when the time came to give her daughter away to her groom on her wedding day. Sad because he was losing a daughter to some other man, and happy because she was marrying you. I stole Father’s thunder when, instead of him, I walked his daughter down the aisle. I wonder if he would have noticed you—dashing, strikingly handsome, and beaming with joy— standing at the altar, eagerly waiting for your young bride. His tears would blur his vision. Precisely why our only brother, the one who should have walked our sister to the altar, didn’t come to your wedding. He had always projected a tough image throughout his life—oh, beware of his famous temper. Still, truth be told, he was the most sentimental brother one could ever have.

I must confess I wasn’t pleased with the choice of the wedding feast, never mind that it was at a 5-star hotel, the Manila Peninsula, but why breakfast? What could you have for breakfast at a wedding? Rice porridge, or sunny side up? And there was no wine served. I wished the orange juice were laced with something to pep it up, something that would lift the spirits soaring high, to revive guests who had woken up so early so as not to be late to that early morning nuptial, at 7 a.m., or vaguely I remember. I couldn’t eat the dessert, which consisted of canned pineapple chunks, along with one piece of canned cherries. I can forgive the canned cherry, but canned pineapple? Give me a break! You can get them everywhere in the country.

Alex, my Swiss friend, wondered if the celebration was soon over, with the last porridge served and no more fried rice cum sunny-side-ups, and guests started to leave. What, no dancing? I remember him asking me in that heavy Swiss-German accent. In Switzerland, it would have lasted all day, and all night long, he reminded me. The saving grace was the reception your parents organized at their home, with all your Ilocano relatives talking at the same time—tipsy, maybe, but not drunk: it would happen much later during the celebration.

The next time I saw you after the wedding was three years later, when I went home for another Christmas break. You and my sister will have a son by then, a 2-year-old bundle of joy. I could see how you adored him, always taking him in your arms every time he cried, whispering comforting words that would make him cuddle up to you tight and fall asleep on your shoulder. You were such a loving and dedicated father to him. Thus, I could not imagine the pain you must have felt when I heard about the rift you had with the apple of your eye, whom you had held in your arms years earlier, comforting him. I hope that you did not dwell on it for a long time, because you are kindness-incarnate, not capable of holding grudges even against those who have knowingly and deliberately done you wrong. You may have displayed an occasional burst of temper; who hasn’t? Even Jesus lost his cool at the temple, but you, you were not a raging bull. I didn’t see you losing your temper in my presence, not even once; maybe you were trying to keep that good-boy image everybody admired. Rest assured that you have always been a good brother-in-law to me; I would forgive you if you had any dark side. I hope that I have been a good brother-in-law to you, as you had been to me.

Fast forward to 2014, when you first came to Vienna. Those were happy memories we had together, with my sister and our friend Nestor. I always find myself smiling when I think of the time Walter and I were waiting for your arrival at the airport. We saw Myrna coming out, but where were you? “He was just behind me,” she said. It took a while before you appeared. Ostensibly, the Customs Officer stopped you to check out what you had in your carry-on luggage: a chunk of Aussie cheese you’d like to surprise me with, not worrying for a second that the airport police might catch you sneaking something forbidden by Customs. Let me have them next time I am in Sydney. Anyway, you brought me some of your wine collections. I was touched. Myrna didn’t have a problem with Customs. Kasi naman ang bagal lumakad was what she had to say (walking too slow, that’s why). Well, what do you expect when one has had heart surgery and is dragging heavy luggage, also, probably hers?

And then the laugh we had when Nestor heard that Walter was taking us to the Central Cemetery. It was Oct. 31, Nestor’s birthday. I assured Nestor that he would love the place, which he doubted. A visit to the cemetery on his birthday? You were all astonished when we got there. It was the most sizeable cemetery you have ever seen, with those magnificent Art Deco tombs and mausolea with muses and angels guarding notables resting in peace: Mozart, Brahms, Schubert, Strauss, Beethoven, Salieri, Schoenberg, you name it. It was far from morbid and scary; it was romantic. You can feel the history. Nestor was very pleased and took several selfies, with the muses and angels guarding the dead.
The Viennese coffee and cakes served in delicate Viennese china at the famous Mozart Coffee shop in the center of Vienna—with its opulent Bohemian crystal chandeliers—cheered Nestor up; you and Myrna beamed with delight.

Myrna was ecstatic about our shop-till-you-drop experience in Znojmo, a significant town in the Czech Republic, just across the southern border from Austria. She practically wiped out that particular shop of all its crystals, your hands getting blue with each heavy bag she handed to you to carry. It was also in Znojmo, where you had your first Martini goose, accompanied by glazed potato dumplings as a side dish. Martini goose is served in November as a tribute to St. Martin of Tours, who, according to legend, was betrayed by the noise the geese made when he hid in a goose pen to avoid the king’s order that he be ordained bishop. I can imagine the violence and bloodshed that followed after the village folks slaughtered all the geese in the peasant community to avenge their priest, sparing no goose and gander—a figment of my imagination to spice up the legend, you know.

We had a good time in Prague, Florence, and Venice. It was raining and chilly in Venice on the early November morning we arrived, but it did not dampen our spirits. We walked through the flooded Piazza San Marco, explored every little nook and cranny of the city, took pictures, ate pizza, and spaghetti. We spent a long time inside designer shops, with your wife inspecting every signature item she fancied, and left with nothing because she didn’t like the price tags.

Sorry that I could not join you in Paris, but I was happy that our friend Pining could. I heard you had a good time sightseeing. Pining was here the other day and recalled that time the three of you were on your way back to the hotel after a long day of touring and shopping. You were trailing them like their valet on your way back to the hotel, both hands holding shopping bags full of your wife’s new treasures, the word Sale printed on them. Now and then, Pining and Myrna would hear a thud, something striking: a fire hydrant or a wall maybe, but they were not paying attention to anything else, keeping up with the latest gossip about high school classmates, perhaps, until the thudding became increasingly impossible to ignore. They turned their heads, and there you were, dropped jaw, wandering—gawking at the prostitutes of Paris behind glass windows. Talk of multi-tasking. I hope you didn’t have breakables in your shopping bags.

And then your holiday was over. You would like to come back, but not on a winter day, I said. Come back when it’s warm; late summer to early autumn is the best time. You were supposed to be here this August, but you couldn’t make it. There’s always a next time, I said, which I didn’t know would never come. You left for somewhere else, where there will be no shopping bags to carry, no Martini geese, no prostitutes standing behind glass windows to gawk at, just angels playing harps and trumpets. You play the guitar and love to sing; you may enjoy it there. I hope there is no karaoke. You know how I feel about those darn karaoke. If they do, then I don’t want to go there— at least not yet, not soon, and not for a long, long time to come.

Goodbye, Sunshine. Goodbye Sonny. You are the kindest soul. I love you, Brod, and I will miss you very much.