When I saw Raul as a little boy, I didn’t think he would be an extraordinary person. He seemed to have problems with his speech. He had this whiny voice, coupled with stuttering his sentences, I just shrugged my shoulders and wished him luck in the future.
Every religious woman dreams of having one of her sons to become a priest. This was San Luis, a small town, and religion played an important part in people’s lives. There was always Mass in the morning, a novena in the afternoon, and festivities celebrating the lives of saints and the Virgin Mary dotting the whole year. I will never forget this woman, who wore brown the whole year, in honor of Saint Anthony. I met her when she was old, and the red spittle of bettel nut matched her dark brown dress. I later found that my Dad, the great Luis Franco, also wore a dress for a year after he miraculously escaped death due to typhus.
Raul had many playmates of the same age growing up with him. Soon they found themselves studying in a Seminary, to become priests! To fulfill their mothers’ dreams of having someone pray for them the whole eternity. Raul went on to wear a cassock at his father’s funeral.
I was a few years older than Raul. I had my own issues, so I never really paid much attention to him. I was closer in age with his eldest sister, Mel. She shared my room for many years when she and I went to college.
What I particularly noted about Raul was that he often wrote to the Editors in the newspapers. My aunts would be thoroughly shocked about what he wrote. He talked about landlords not giving adequate shares to their tenant farmers in the splitting up of the harvest. “How can he forget he is the son of a landlord?” was the main theme of the discussion. The aunts forgot that Raul had the blood of a hero, Casto Alejandrino, running in his veins. I knew I had clipped some of the articles that Raul wrote. But having moved house, those are now gone.
I don’t know why all of a sudden, the sheen of priesthood disappeared. Was it because the two Ibañez seminarians died of drowning? Or the fad just went away? I found Raul had “gone out” together with his cousins Amable, Freddie Boy, etc., etc. When I saw Raul next, he said he was taking his Master’s in Theology. Wasn’t that being the same as priesthood, without the celibacy and cloistered life?
Pretty soon, Raul’s mother, my godmother, Ninang Vi, started talking about preparing for her sons to marry well. She was quite excited about Raul’s future wife who lived in an exclusive subdivision close to Ateneo. Then a grandson arrived. Then the split.
That must be part of Raul’s life that he would prefer to bury in the center of the earth. It was a tumultuous life, with court hearings, recriminations, heart-wrenching scenes. Let us not talk about it.
The thing that struck me about Raul during this episode was his undying love for his son. It would be the equivalence of a movie of titans– battle to the ground, to death! Poor Ninang Vi was absorbed by it all. I bet she suffered as much as all the other protagonists.
At one point, Raul approached me. By this time, I had made my “empire” of medium-sized apartment buildings that I built on my parents’ lots. Raul had this ingenious idea of bringing the upper-middle-class Maryknoll students into the lives of those fishermen who lived in Binangonan, Rizal. They would stay a week with a family, eat and sleep the way their host’s families lived. With this experience, they would know more about how the poor lived.
Raul proposed that I hire as a Building Manager, the head of the fishermen’s association, Ka Sonny. He was a short, stubby, man with a broken tooth in the front of his mouth. I decided to see whether this fisherman could use his leadership skills in an urban setting. Raul’s pitch was that, the waters of Laguna Bay had brought less fish, so he wanted Ka Sonny to have a better-paying job, with me.
I humored Raul. After all, I had a few buildings that needed managers. I could lose nothing by employing Ka Sonny. Looking back, those years were the best years of my managerial life. There two of them, Ka Sonny and Nani Alquidano. They were at home in t-shirts and loose pants. But they ran my buildings as best as I could ever imagine.
Through this experience, I saw the humanity that knew no economic boundaries. Honesty. trust, ability to find solutions to any situation. In time, I lost Ka Sonny and Nani to death. Ka Sonny was run over at dusk, and Nani suffered a heart attack. I really miss them. One of the truly best people one could meet at a corner.
Raul found another woman and had another son to replace Franco who left for the States. His life settled somewhat into a normal one.
How does one sum up Raul? Family-oriented, loving, an intellectual, a true concern for those in the lower rung of society, a true Son of God on earth. In many family gatherings, Raul would lend his quiet self to show support for family unity. I can see the love his students have for him, how he remembers each and everyone’s birthday. As a brother, he is always with Cristan during important holidays.
We all must go and leave those on earth. Raul has been different. I will treasure the memories of him, his mom, his siblings. They have been my rock. I have had no one but them as my family all these years. Thank you for walking with me in this journey of life.
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