reinvention

I started this post after my Tita Eddie Escudero Quisumbing passed away on 18 March 2005. Better late than never.

Tita Eddie was married to Tito Al Quisumbing, my mother’s youngest brother and only surviving sibling. I couldn’t attend her funeral, being in Darwin at the time. She’s the third aunty I’ve lost in the last twelve months.

First to go in the past year was Tita Chedeng Ramilo Fernandez, late in 2004. She was my father’s only sister, and youngest sibling; after she went, my father was (in his own words) truly “orphaned.” I also couldn’t go to her funeral, as I was in Darwin. Then while I was in Manila in January 2005, helping care for my sick father, my Tita Ludy Quisumbing Roxas died. She was my mother’s cousin and my father’s good friend, and close to my sisters and I — wasn’t able to attend her wake or funeral as I was concentrating on Papa.

I was unable to attend the funerals of most of my aunties and uncles as I was usually in Australia when they died. I was in Darwin (visiting, as I still lived in Sydney then) when Tita Madre (Sister Perla Quisumbing FMM) died in 1990; I was away when my mother’s two other brothers died: Tito Rety Quisumbing in the late 1980s (I think), and Tito Apong Quisumbing in 1992.

I was able to be at Tito Mike’s funeral I think, as I was in Manila then (in the 1980s) — he was my father’s younger brother, and the first of the siblings to die. I was away when Tito Tomas Ramilo died in the late 1990s (I think).

I was in Darwin when Mane (Mama Nene, Tita Nene Quisumbing) died in 1994. I flew home for her funeral, as she was especailly close to me and my sisters, and my parents. She died a few months before Bing, my eldest daughter was born; she was looking forward to seeing Bing (and she predicted Bing would be a boy, incorrectly).

I’ve had many uncles and aunties die over the years, but in the last few years I have felt that a whole generation (and their time) was going away. My father and my mother are a few of the last of their generation, so they postpone — for me, anyway — the changing of the guard, so to speak. I dread the changing of the guard.