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BY JULIA CARREON-LAGOC
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Before the curtain closes…
IF WILLIAM Wordsworth (1770-1850) could write Intimations of Immortality, why can I not write Intimations of Mortality on the flipside? I can, although I can’t measure up to the stature of the distinguished English poet.
Nevertheless, here I am stringing along words before the curtain closes on my mortal self. Thus, from the torn pages of memory, I’ve picked up scraps that never ever could come back — given wisps of life in this piece culled from my personal archives:
I wish I could say the nicest things about another while she/he still breathes life, could hear or read about them. But who amongst us is never, ever plagued by the what-might-have-beens? Who has never been hounded by the sin of omission – putting off the course of action because there is always tomorrow? Who could truly say she/he has always done what should be done because it is the right thing, the right time, and the right place?
How this niece wished she could have shown more concern, little more acts of kindness and caring to her aunt, Nanay Celsa, as she slowly wasted away from a debilitating stroke. Excelsa Rivera-Arroyo was the youngest of seven brothers and sisters, my late mother Cristeta Rivera-Carreon being the eldest.
Before I left for the States, I visited her for a brief goodbye with a box of Oreo, banishing the thought that this could be the last time I was seeing her alive. So frail, so weak, so helpless. I could hardly hear her utter my name as she tried to move her fingers in sad farewell. Oh, that it should come to that — she who had been a dynamic speaker and declaimer in her hey-days.
I couldn’t quite remember whether I was in Grade III or Grade IV when she was the Commencement Speaker in our elementary school. But I recall her being introduced as a fresh college graduate, a BSE, magna cum laude, major in English.
It must be our love for literature that made for a strong bond between aunt and niece, all the more strengthened when she became our teacher in English at the Oton High School where she taught until she retired. A stream of professionals — doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers themselves — had passed fourth year literature, grammar and composition under her, and who of them could not attest to her being an A-1 academician?
I think many of them remember, as I do, the pageants she wrote for the graduating class to perform. Those were social commentaries on the good, the bad, and the ugly in Philippine society that the audience of Otonians had come to look forward to at graduation time.
She continued to be a voracious reader, even more so after retirement. We exchanged books and discussed them during slack times. One late afternoon she came to the house, trying to talk out her anxiety over her only son, Toto Boy. He was supposed to be home from Antique the day before but had not turned up so far. What might have happened? Ylang-ylang, her only daughter who could have shared her worry was not around to lend solace. That time, Inday Ylang, a bank personnel, was I think in Manila or in an out-of-town assignment.
I reminded Nanay Celsa of the quotation from Beowulf she gave us in the exam at fourth year high: “If a man be only bold of heart, and if his time to die has not yet come, Fate will often spare him thus, and lead him safely out of the hardest strife.”
She smiled at the reversal of roles — a former student consoling her teacher — and was relieved somehow. Then we recalled how she would test us on the gems of thoughts in the poems and novels we took up in her class. Those were nuggets of wisdom, she said, that would carry us through the vicissitudes of life.
I wasn’t home to see Nanay Celsa to her final resting place. I was in U.S.A., helping take care of my two-month old grandchild. There was a birth and there was a death. For such is life, we all say, from whose cycle there is no escaping. Perhaps, the thing to do is just to make a difference however humble it may be — a difference for the common good as what Excelsa Rivera-Arroyo had done.
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My aunt died at age 80. Next month, I’ll be 80 myself — still engrossed in the passing show — for instance, contemplating on mankind’s mortality. What needs to be done? With conscience as our cue, face up to the challenges on the stage of life before the Director Up There closes the curtain. (juliaclagoc@yahoo.com/PN)
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