Sunday, June 29, 2008 Cariño: Quiet Passings: Dave, Martin, and Janet By Linda Grace Cariño Paradigm Shift
DAVE Tabligan. Some months ago I wrote of whiling away an evening at the Manor with the ol' high school gang, and how the pianist on board was our old music coach/pianist Dave Tabligan.
Even as Dave acceded to requests for this song and that, to which we sang happily sang along, the quiet word went around the table that our old friend was going blind.
Which made the treat of being with him that night doubly precious. Our friend Dave passed a few weeks ago.
Janet Ramos. Janet and I were in high school together, though in separate departments.
Still, we knew many of the same people. She passed at about the same time as Dave, doing so suddenly and quietly.
I'm told that she was in the bathroom when she suffered a heart attack. And that her grandchild found her on the floor.
The child reportedly asked around why her lola was sleeping in the bathroom, which led to the household discovering her, gone.
Felix Cabading. This dead ringer for Martin Sheen once shared office space with my father, and then went on from strength to strength to end up the Provincial Prosecutor of Benguet.
Since I was rather young when he was in the office next to that of father mine, he was Uncle Martin to me.
We kidded each other with the greetings. I would say, "Hi, Uncle Martin!" and he would come back with an unlikely and funny... "Meryl... "He, too, passed some weeks ago.
It was discomfiting to simply read about Martin in the past tense without having known he was gone.
It was awful to be told on a Monday, when one was thinking about having lunch with her, that Janet was dead and had been buried several days just past.
It was sad to receive the text that Dave was in the funeral parlor.
Death can indeed come like a thief in the night, and we can but bid adieu, sweet friends, to include Grace Erong of University of the Philippines (UP) Baguio.
To end with matters of the living -- the city of Marikina now allows families to buy their whole ration of NFA rice once a week, instead of lining up everyday.
Why oh why is Baguio so slow about these things! We seem to have to eat Marikina's dust in all matters that have to do with innovation, urban management, and plain common sense.
