People in our lives

SINCE most of my friends are much older than I -- a handful are old enough to be my grandparents -- I have this glimpse of a future. Mind you it is not a pretty sight: doctors, hospitals, failing eyesight, bladder or memory, sitting alone and waiting for the regular Sunday brunch when children and grandchildren come to visit. Many of my friends are gone, but I didn't pay much attention until two classmates -- Leo Daez and Ken Ferrer, both fit and athletic -- passed away. Their untimely deaths gave me more reason to indulge in extra helpings of "chicharon bulaklak" (crisp fried pork intestines).

As a historian, the whole idea of time, life and death seems like a long unending stream. How one uses time, life -- and even death -- is what makes the difference.

While we will never come to know everyone, we must be grateful for the people whose paths we have crossed. The first time I had indirect contact with former vice president Salvador "Doy" Laurel was not very pleasant. I was then working for the Sunday Express Magazine. It was 1986. I was young and brash and, following the mood of EDSA People Power I, irreverent and iconoclastic. Someone, probably Laurel or his wife Celia, wanted to speak with my editor on the phone. A simple act became complicated when, instead of using the universal telephone greeting "hello" and asking to speak with the editor, the female voice at the other end declared officiously, "This is the Office of Vice President Laurel." My reaction was swift. I blurted out, "So what?" I did not care for a reply. I just hung up.

In retrospect, when I came to know the man behind the office, I realized it was rude of me to behave that way. Most of the Laurel secretaries have since become familiar and I'm too ashamed to ask who the poor person was if only to apologize. Laurel then and now was part of contemporary history, a face and name I see in newspapers and TV news. We are all familiar with his famous smile that didn't quite agree with me. It was a mischievous smile and now that he is but ashes in a brass urn, all we have are photographs showing that same smile -- actually a smirk -- I miss the most.

Appointed to the National (later Philippine) Centennial Commission in 1992, Laurel tried to establish contact with me in 1993. I was a cloistered Benedictine novice then. As it was a time of enforced reflection and separation from the world, I was not allowed to venture beyond the cloister. So, I gave up this column space.

To complete their separation from the world, Benedictine novices are denied newspapers, radio and television, the highlight of their lives being prayer, meals and mopping the floor. I don't remember how he got through. Obviously, the Laurel name and office worked wonders with the porters. Thus after a year of isolation, my first trip outside the cloister was not even to visit my family but to a meeting at Laurel's office in Ortigas Center in Metro Manila. Here Laurel fed the deprived (and depraved) young monk a Thai lunch and, over chili and conversation, we became fast friends.

He enjoyed my friendly approach to history, and perhaps it was the lawyer in him -- also the frustrated writer and historian -- that made him vulnerable to historical controversy. He was, too, supportive of a rewriting of our history. He always provided a sympathetic but critical ear, asking questions that made me do more research or rethink assumptions I had held valid. During our long conversations, I silently wished I had been born 30 years earlier so I could have known him in his prime and could have seen the Philippine Senate in a past age that now seems legendary.

In the past two years, I had been wishing I were the chairman of the National Historian Institute during the time he was the chairman of the National Centennial Commission. We could have made a good team, but then what he left us in 1998 was a short fleeting moment when Filipinos were actually proud to be Filipinos. Despite the criticisms hurled against the Philippine Centennial and the dark cloud that hung over Laurel's last days, it was his vision to get the nation to look back to our long colonized history and find a high point. The Philippine Centennial at least led us to see the Filipino capacity for greatness.

Now Doy Laurel is history -- literally -- and while others mourn the passing of yet another historical figure, I cherish fond memories of him, even as I maintain lungs tainted with nicotine. Laurel gave me my first pipe and my first whiff of mild mango-flavored tobacco. Thus, with each breath I take from my pipe, non-smokers warn me that I am taking one more step closer to the grave. But knowing that friends and relatives have gone before me to "the other side" wherever it is, it makes the thought of death seem less scary.

Another person who recently went ahead of us was Dr. Alicia Gamboa, mother of the late writer and professor Doreen Fernandez. My memory of her is always of the feisty, white-haired grandmother in sneakers who pushed her way through a thick crowd in Pulilan town, north of Manila, many years ago to see the kneeling carabaos up close. Younger people gave up because of the heat and the crowd, but she wanted to see "those darn carabaos." Trailing after her was a lesson in patience and determination. And the lesson learned has sustained me on many lonely days spent in libraries and archives digging up the materials that go into this column.

All people who cross our path influence us in more ways than we can imagine.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu