IN HIS 1996 essay, “Memorizing A Face,” Resil B. Mojares wrote about his daughter’s confession after a long nine-month trip abroad. His daughter, Ressa, told him that she had “studied” his “face, hands, gesture, look intently,” while they were in a car bound for the airport because she was afraid to forget her father.
Mojares “was touched” by his daughter’s revelation.
The National Artist for Literature has become a memory to his loved ones, friends, former students, scholars, writers and strangers who had chance encounters with him in bookstores. He died on Sept. 5, 2026, a day after his 83rd birthday.
The news of Mojares’ sudden death came as a shock to people close to him as he was up and about on the day of his birthday.
Last Saturday, Sept. 12, the man who had worn many hats (teacher, fictionist, journalist, essayist, scholar, historian) was given a state funeral as he was laid to rest in a Cebu City cemetery.
Malacañang also declared Sept. 12 as a national day of mourning, saying his death was a “great loss.”
It further said that Mojares’ “outstanding contribution as a pivotal figure in Philippine literature and cultural studies has significantly enriched the nation’s understanding and appreciation of its literary and cultural heritage.”
In his essay, Mojares states that “memory is a precious thing, and more so for being so fragile. We scatter in our wake — desirous to be remembered — singular deeds, objects, works of hand and mind that would conjure, so we hope, our presence in our absence.”
“We gather,” he further states, “and keep — desiring to remember — photographs, letters, mementos, the scattered pieces of life, anticipating absence.”
The humble scholar may be gone, but he left a body of work that will be read and studied.
Mojares had gifted Filipinos, present and future generations, a memory of a beautiful mind. / KAL