Monday, May 05, 2008 Dacawi: Farewell, Tinong By Ramon Dacawi Benchwarmer
AT 37, RADIO journalist Florentino "Tinong" Lardizabal has become the youngest member of the Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC) chapter in the sky.
BCBC is the umbrella organization of print, radio, television and electronic media practitioners here.
Tinong will be welcomed by his seniors up there who used to insist, when they were down here, that the acronym actually stands for Baguio Characters Before Christ. They didn't mean to be blasphemous through claims of antedating the Lord Jesus, but proved themselves right when they stood before the Supreme Editor.
Being the youngest, Lakay Tinong (as he is called among peers more than a decade older than him) will feel at home in the company of Peppot Ilagan, Willy Cacdac, Freddie Mayo, Manny Salenga and the rest of those who went ahead.
He will be doing what he was doing down here, even after he was no longer the youngest in the BCBC -- going for this and for that, including fetching six packs for Steve Hamada, my former editor at the Baguio Midland Courier who never believed there's no beer in Heaven.
It's an unwritten, yet inviolate BCBC tradition: the youngest around the table is always the errand boy.
My elder brother Danilo might have offered Tinong flowers at the end of the welcome line. It's all he tried to produce when he took over our father's job of coaxing petunias, carnations and snap dragons into bloom as a gardener at the Pacdal Forest Nursery.
He could have introduced himself as the fellow dying of a plastic anemia, to whom Tinong infused his own blood to extend his time on this mortal plane, for him to prepare his family for the inevitable.
Tinong never saw his own transition coming. He was waiting for a ride to his radio board work at RPN-DZBS last Monday morning when he collapsed by the roadside.
A familiar figure with a wide circle of friends from all walks, he was recognized by passers-by. They scooped him into their vehicle and rushed him to the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.
He never regained consciousness and slipped away three hours before sunrise Wednesday.
Before that, doctors faced the dilemma of having him wheeled down to the nearby Baguio Medical Center for a CT-scan. Moving him might worsen his condition. Rather than having their four young children watching him comatose for hours that gnawed like forever, his wife Juvy had the scan done. The result proved the doctors' fear - blood has spread through the brain.
Tinong left behind Von Charles, 16; Yvonne Charielle, 10; Trisha Loren, 6; and Florentino III, a year and nine months.
Gin flowed on the first night of the wake at the lobby of the Baguio Memorial Chapel, yet talk remained low.
Those who couldn't find space took refuge in nearby bars to steel themselves, pacify their minds or, perhaps, drown their own thoughts on their own mortality.
It must have been Trisha who wailed the moment she reached her father's hospital bed Tuesday morning. The older siblings and her aunt led her out of the intensive care unit, into a bench at the anteroom where she sat with eyes filled.
At the wake, she quietly moved around the crowd, offering candies from a tray.
Tinong, the vice-president for print of the BCBC and kagawad of San Vicente Barangay, will be laid to rest on May 8 at the Baguio Memorial Park, after an 8:00 a.m. mass at the St. Vincent Church. The grave is below a row of mature pines standing like sentinels over where Willy Cacdac was also buried in July the other year.
"I don't know him personally but I feel the need to send my condolences," e-mailed Ron Bernardo, a multiply.com friend of newsman and artist Art Tibaldo.
Last Friday, Art prepared a collage of Tinong's photos with the BCBC members, mostly taken just after he ran and lost as president of club. Rudy Aguilar, also his senior at RPN-DZBS, noticed that in one photo, I was between Tinong and Willy.
When I told him Tinong was between him and me, Rudy said "aglagtaw ti saggaysa".
Tinong will be memorialized with a tree, to be planted by those he left behind, on a secluded portion of the Busol Watershed, along side those of Willy, Peppot, Bagnos Cudiamat and other members of the BCBC who went ahead of him.
It was Peppot's idea to remember with a tree whoever among us who writes 30 or signs off the air. It's for the living to cope, as they watch the living memorial grow.
BCBC president Pigeon Lobien assured tradition will be kept, which means asking a "mambunong" to pray and offer a native pig for the repose of Tinong's soul. And to pray no member would kick the bucket for sometime.
As the late columnist and human rights lawyer said in one necrological rite for a friend: Ave atque vale. Hail and farewell, Lakay Tinong. (email:rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments)
