God’s ‘Pandangat’ Always!

MY FATHER CALLED me up from the province in the morning of his 70^th birthday, the thirty-first of October in 2003. I heard his deep low “hoooy,” his distinctive version of “hoy,” followed by a hearty laugh. My father had a habit of calling me up at any time of day, or night – whenever he felt he missed his eldest and only son, me. Our conversations would always be about anything and everything – from how I was doing with my work, how his grandchildren were, to how I intend to lose weight or when I was planning to go home for the holidays.

I felt bad talking to my father that day for I knew my apologies for not going home for his birthday were not enough. But he understood – as he always did – that I had work to do, and whatever plans he might have always took the back seat over everything else, including his simple joys of seeing his grandchildren and our family coming home for this rare occasion.

We said our goodbyes with the usual endearments; he called my sister and me his “mga padangat ko,” or his loved ones in the Bikol dialect, and he had a way of saying it that it always made us feel that no matter how old we become, in his eyes, my sister and I will always be his little children.

That morning of my father’s birthday would be the last time I would ever hear his voice. That night, my father suffered a massive stroke. The call made by my sister at dawn the following day, her sobs at the other end of the line told me that this was a serious matter. I was wrong. This was to be the greatest tragedy that our family would go through.

My father survived brain surgery, but gone were his speech and his memory, and he was paralyzed. He remained bed-ridden for the next 17 months, and he would pass away on a Palm Sunday in 2005.

This story about my father is not unique in that many other people succumb to strokes and even much more painful ailments. The tragedy that has befallen the lives of people who love them and care for them is no different from ours. What makes this story different is that this was how God fully manifested his love for our family at a time when our hearts were being forced to be angry at the world and at ourselves.

In that dark moment of tragedy, God never left us. Not a single moment passed when we did not feel His presence as we went through the daily routines of taking care of my father. And while there were rough times that came, they only made us cling more to Him who knew what to do.

He was there in our throng of friends – mostly former co-teachers and students of my parents, and fellow members of the Couples for Christ – who visited us and consoled us in our sadness. This was particularly helpful for my mother who bore the burden of the tragedy. As she slept on a bed next to my father’s, a person made of lesser stuff would not have the strength of seeing life slowly leave the man whom she loved so much for more than forty years.

There were prayers storming the heavens just to ensure that all will be well. At a time that we were at our lowest, God kept sending angels to lift us up. Anyone who has gone through the experience of taking care of a bedridden patient will tell you of the difficulty of the task. At worse, a mixed feeling of loneliness and despair haunts you everyday, especially when you are alone.

The miracles continued that to this day we have yet to accept that we deserved so much to be so gifted with them. My sister who kept tab of the expenses – among the many other responsibilities she had as overall monitor of my father’s care – could not even believe how we were able to move on with the meager resources we had. But we knew that God lifted us from our financial sorrows and made us strong against the waves.

Bedridden as he was, my father never suffered from bedsores, much to the surprise of his doctor who visited him every month. It looked as if the love we and others gave our father was increased a hundredfold by a God who never abandoned us, not even for a single second. We never lacked of good and efficient caregivers who doted on my father like he was their own. Truly, they can only be but angels sent by God.

Even if my father never regained his faculties, he was easy to take care. He never made it difficult for us, especially his caregivers, because he was never irritable. He simply stared at us with loving eyes, and allowed us to caress his forehead. Occasionally, we saw a glint of tear from the side of his eyes, perhaps in a brief moment of remembering, he pitied us whom he loved so much.

The greatest sadness I felt on what happened to my father was seeing a man who was so independent in everything that he did suddenly becoming incapable of doing anything at all. My mother always told us how blessed she was to have a husband who spoiled her so much because my father did almost everything around the house, including the payment of bills and other transactions outside of it. Even as I was already grown up, he never imposed upon me a job he could not do himself. Every time that he would ask me to help him with the handyman’s work around the house like putting up a new room, he usually did it himself, with me his assistant, handing him the tools or holding the boards as he nailed them down.

My father’s passing, as I said, came as we celebrated Palm Sunday in 2005. God scheduled his journey home quite well.

My sister got through my cell phone as I was attending the afternoon Sunday mass with my family; my father was slowly getting weaker and his breathing more labored. This was the moment, I sensed, and my sister told me to talk to my father as she put her phone to my father’s ears so that he could hear my voice.

Tearfully, I told him what I thought I would never get to say to a man whom I have loved so much and whom I was about to lose.

“Papa,” I said, “if you wish to go, we’re letting you go. Much as it pains us, you have suffered much just so your presence could still give us strength as a family. Now that you have taught us well to take care of ourselves and to move on, please have your much deserved rest. And thank you, Papa, for loving Mama, Nini and me so much. Padangat mi ikang pirmi! (You will always be loved). Thank you for everything."

Less than a minute after I ended my sister’s call, she called back. My father decided it was indeed time to leave.

At a time that we were celebrating Jesus’ entrance to Jerusalem, the angels were celebrating my father’s glorious entrance to heaven. Hossanah! Hossanah! Our tears were of sorrow, but deep within we knew much of it were of joy. God had kept his promise to be with us – His padangat – always.

Stepping back to move forward... as a father

BEING RAISED IN an era of almost unbridled modernity, as we always contend, our children, we often fear, are possessed with values that are far different from those we grew up with. Unlike us, we say, our children are not as concerned about their families as they are of themselves; they will always insist upon what they want regardless of what their elders tell them. No thanks to advanced media technology in this day and age that has infused western values and morals that are overly liberal into our children’s psyche.

As I am writing this, my son, Shin, would be on his fifth day in our local community hospital. His doctor is treating him for dengue, and the critical signs have been stabilized. But the recurring fever still has everyone perplexed, the doctor included.

Yesterday morning, as his doctor went about his regular rounds, my son heard him tell my wife that he could already go home if his fever subsided and if he regained his appetite. That morning, my wife told me, my son beamed with joy, and even if he didn’t exactly liked hospital food, he forced himself to eat.

But our anticipation was short-lived, depressingly so for my son as his fever shot up in the late afternoon. He was in tears as my wife read the thermometer results.

She tried to comfort him as best as she could. “Don’t worry, you’ll be well in no time and you could already play with your friends and go to school next week.”

But my son just looked at her, tears welling in his eyes.

“It’s not that, Mammy,” he said. “If I stayed on for another day, how can we afford the growing hospital bills?” his voice trembled. “It is getting very expensive here and I know how you and Pappy are trying so hard to save money.”

My wife was speechless. She had to look the other way to keep my son from seeing her cry.

When my wife told me what happened, I found myself restrained in sadness. I remembered the many times I reprimanded my children for not taking care of the things which I have sacrificed so much of myself to provide them with. Many times have I ridiculed them for being insensitive to my concerns as the sole breadwinner of the family.

My usual tirades would be: “Why are you not eating? Don’t you ever pity me for working hard just to put food on our table?,” “Where did you put your toys and books? Now, they’re all lost, just as the first ones I bought. Don’t you know how much they cost?”

Sometimes we tend to underestimate the capacity of our children to fully understand the issues that bear on us daily as adults. And most of the time we think of our children as hopelessly different and indifferent, rendered incapable of empathy by the present environment they live as we ourselves can only hope to contain the myriad of social and societal influences that affect their lives.

As I remember what my son said on that hospital bed, this I have learned:

There is danger in opening our children’s eyes to our problems as adults. That responsibility still lies in their near future which they will get to in God’s time. For now, our children need to grow up secure in the thought that their parents can always be a wall to lean on to, not a façade that’s ready to crumble at the slightest tremor. They need to be spared of the consequences borne out of our shortcomings as parents.

As a proof of your strength or stability, our children will never demand that you show them money, or the lack of it. Our being there for them, no matter what the circumstances are and will be, will be more than proof for that. And if we need to teach them to appreciate our sacrifices, we need not worry. That will always come as matter of consequence.

If at all, the sacrifices I have made for my children are nothing that I should even harp about; it is an obligation I have sworn to fulfill before God when my wife and I decided to have them. It is an obligation which does not and must never demand something in return. Our sacrifices are what my children deserve to be given in the first place.

If God, even in my old age, continues to treat me like a child who is incapable of standing and walking on his own, why should I be so demanding on my children? If God continually assures me that all will be well despite the problems that beset me, why can I not give the same assurance to my children? If God always reaches out his hand to me at every moment that I call on Him in despair, why do I deprive my children of a hand for them to hold on to?

I only need to see how my God has been so good a Father to me to realize that my children deserve no less than that kind of father, of me, as well.

(nscatura)

A Jackfruitful of Faith

FRIENDS HAVE OFTEN asked me how I got myself immersed in spiritual renewal. And I would always be met with a quizzical stare when I tell them that a jackfruit – yes, the real pimply kind – made me realize what I have been missing all my life.

A jackfruit tree stood at the front of the house which my young family rented then. As fruit-bearing season came, my landlord would choose which fruits would be worth ripening and covered them with rice sacks. Covering the fruit was meant to maintain a certain temperature to let it grow well. But the sacks were securely tied to the branches to discourage theft.

After sometime, the fruits would emit a sweet fragrance. With a bunch of them, your entire front yard would smell like an open candy store. But, a fruit expert would tell you that there is always a proper time to harvest based on a kind of smell that came out.

After my landlord harvested the batch for the season, he left a slightly big one for our family’s dessert, hanging all by its lonesome. It already smelled nicely, but he said it would take a few more days before we could take it down.

But my landlord’s estimate was not as accurate. As I slowly loosened the strings holding the sack, I was greeted by the sight of a big rotten portion of the fruit. It was unsalvageable as the rotten part had crept its way to the core. Well, my family is not exactly a fan of jackfruits, so off went the jackfruit to the trash bin.

So, how did I go into this spiritual renewal again? Well, I realized I was no better than that jackfruit rotting on the branch. On the outside, I smelled sweet and clean. In the eyes of people around us, I was probably an epitome of goodness and upright living. But as my life was slowly unraveled by an unseen all-powerful hand, I realized the rottenness lurking deep in my soul, the putrid stench that was building from within.

In my earlier state of life, I would tell people I do not need God or I do not need to pray or I do not need to go to Church or I do not need religion because I haven’t hurt anyone, or that in general, I lived cleanly and righteously. I loved my family so much that I would accept any work and worked on it well just to give them a better life; and that made me a good father and husband. I respected my friends and colleagues at work, and never made enemies. And while I worked in government, I never allowed myself to be induced to go the way of the grafters and the corrupt.

There was pride in the way I said these things and how I justified what I was. And it is that same pride, a close cousin of arrogance, that continually blinded me from looking at myself in a larger plan which only God could have created.

Three years before that, my wife and I survived the difficulty of having our first-born. My wife suffered from UTI on her second trimester that my daughter was forcing her way out on the sixth month. Our daughter prematurely came to this world at 2.4 pounds; she had to be incubated for more than month and was only released to us when she made it to 3.5 pounds. She was so tiny when we finally took her home, the yaya my father brought from the province already wanted to leave when she saw her.

I never saw God’s hand in that miracle. I remember saying that good things do happen to good people. My wife and I are not exactly saints, church goers, or even believers, but we are good people in that we are law-abiding citizens, and we respect the people around us and especially the people who matter most to us – our family and our loved ones. Hence, by the karmic laws of nature, we deserve to earn the rewards of our good relations; after all, we reap what we sow.

My wife gave birth in one of the “bigger and better” hospitals around. Even if we had to stay at the ward, being there for almost a month before and after her birth affected our resources. Did God figure in resolving our financial crises? I couldn’t tell, and it was the farthest from my mind. As far as I knew, we survived the ordeal because I had my parents to call on. It did help too that our daughter’s pediatrician, one of the better known specialists on neonates, cut her professional fee by half and we were allowed to pay her within a year, much to the surprise of the hospital staff because this has not happened before.

Indeed, if there was one reason that my life was rotting without my knowing it, it was a despicable failure on my part to acknowledge God in all those things that happened in my life.

What I terribly lacked was a genuine humility to accept that all that I was, all that I had, and all that I wanted for myself and my family solely depended on what God wanted it to be. I did not have the humility to put my life and those of my loved ones in His hands. I did not have the humility to tell him how grateful I was for all that He has done for me.

But God, in His goodness, made me realize all my shortcomings in the most humane manner he could, by showing me his presence not in the shadows of a tragedy where I would call out his name in despair, but in the glow of life in my newborn where I could bask in deep and profound gratitude for a gift only a divine will would have given someone as seemingly insignificant and unworthy as I am.

God allowed my daughter to live. Despite our meager resources, God sent my daughter the best doctor to take care of her when she was fighting to survive. He gave us a good hospital and the medicines that were just right for my daughter to make it through. He gave us parents to help us in every which way we needed support. He gave us consolation through loved ones and friends who were always there at every instance that we found our selves alone and sad. Indeed, in all those moments, He never left my wife and me.

As I look at my daughter who’s now in her freshman year at the State University, a silent “thank you, Lord,” is all I can manage as I look up above.

God moves in very mysterious ways, this I truly know. Yet somehow, I couldn’t stifle a smile when I remember how he allowed a rotting jackfruit to transform my life.

(nscatura)

Angels Along a Muddy Road

by Nonoy Catura

THE RAINS THAT raged the night before stopped in the early morning. The day promised a sunny countenance, but our group of church workers which had scheduled an outreach program that day was apprehensive in pushing through because the road near the mountains where we were going could either be muddy or flooded.

But we needed to go. I headed this group which was to bring books and toys to a far-flung school in the hinterlands of Morong, Rizal. And we also needed to remit some cash which we raised for a raffle draw of the school, and which were to be used for the building of additional classrooms.

The books and toys were placed at the back of a 4x4 pick-up truck, while I rode in our old van, a 1990 Chevy Astro, along with my wife, who drove, and three others. Six others were in the 4x4.

The Chevy Astro van, to those unfamiliar with its make, is a short stocky vehicle which could be mistaken for a getaway car of bank robbers, thanks to the movies that often use it as such. But if there was one thing which made this car different, it is the fact that it is a ton heavier than most vans its size.

The Astro led this 2-vehicle convoy which, in no time, suddenly found itself on the narrow dirt roads, several kilometers from the town proper. We rolled on slowly, passing puddles of water along the way, careful not to get stuck on the road as houses were far in between to get help.

My wife, who kept looking at the rearview mirror suddenly noticed a third car – a truck – right at the back of the 4x4 which was directly behind us. She said she was beginning to worry that this truck might find our convoy much too slow as she was finding it difficult to maneuver our vehicle because of the soggy road. And since the road was quite narrow, it was impossible for the truck to overtake us.

Then it happened. As my wife was negotiating an upward climb to the left, the van slipped back to the right because of the soft earth. We were stuck. A male colleague got down, as I did, to lighten the load. And each time that my wife stepped on the accelerator, the van would slowly veer downwards. The tires which were now caked in mud were helpless for lack of traction.

Then, from out of nowhere came several men; I saw them jump off the truck which was behind our other vehicle. The truck driver asked my wife if he could drive the van while his companions pushed the van from the sides as it appeared that our car was starting to lean dangerously. A few sudden jolts of the engine and the smell of burning tires, however, told us that we needed real help.

The truck driver then suggested that he would tow our car with his truck, after we got the 4x4 on the side to make way for their vehicle. He got a tow-cable – it looked brand new because it was still wrapped in its case – and looked for a spot on the chassis to wrap it around. But the mud and the stones which scrapped underneath as the car screeched downwards made it impossible to even get a peek from under. But the truck driver was unperturbed; he then suggested to tow the car downwards.

That suggestion told me right away that as soon as the truck pulled from the back, the front bumper would easily detach itself as it would scrap the soil and the stones right below because of the stress. I was resigned to seeing the bumper torn off its bolts, but deep inside, I prayed hard to God for a miracle.

And before my unbelieving eyes, He answered. Just as the truck tugged from behind, the front of our van slowly heaved upward as if some powerful arms were carrying them as it plowed downwards. The bumper just went over the compacted soil and stones and not a single scratch was made. As I said, anyone who knows about this van will tell you how heavy this is; five to six muscular men at least would be needed to even lift a few inches of it off the ground.

As we said our thanks to the truck driver and his men, a man who stood by the road and who was observing us closely said, “a few inches more and your van would have gone off the ravine.” “What ravine,” I asked; there is no ravine, my mind argued. “Right there,” he pointed at a spot, right where our van was about to move downwards just before the truck driver and his men came to help. The ravine, whose edge was hidden by tall grasses, was as a high as a two-storey building.

I had to shake myself to my senses right after the man said this not because we escaped a possible tragic scene, but because in that difficult moment, all of us felt God’s presence. And with the wind blowing around us, it seemed as if His angels whom he sent to help were just about to take off.

We left the van in a clearing. Some of us went with the 4x4, some on foot, and the older ones were fetched by the teachers on motorcycle. Just when we were resigned to having a rough and tough day, God made it a chance to further our spiritual growth by making us realize that as we do His work here on earth, especially when it concerns the least of His brethren, He will always be with us and will never abandon us. And no rain-soaked earth or ravine would ever deter us from claiming victory in His name.

We later found out from the teachers we were seeing that day that the truck which was following us was a bakery delivery truck and it seldom made the rounds of the place since it was too far away from the town proper. Indeed, by whichever I see it, help came to our group that day from the “Bread of Life” himself, with his strongest angels in tow.

(nscatura)