It was a classic case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
If Charice did not pay her last respects to her estranged father Ricky Pempengco after the latter was stabbed to death Monday night, people would be quick to judge and criticize her.
But the 19-year-old international singing sensation’s instinct was to cancel her concert in Singapore and go home to Laguna to honor her father — even in his death, late as it may seem in the eyes of many. And even with her most sincere intention to mourn her father she had not seen since she was three and a half years old, people still had something to say. “Bakit ngayon lamang sya nagpakita na patay na ang Tatay nya?”
Even if you do good, people will always have something bad to say. It’s human nature to criticize because many people cultivate in them the culture of hate. And they hate it that Charice came home to find justice and to bury her father.
Who are we to judge how she feels? Here is a daughter coming home to her lifeless father. Circumstances — painful and tragic as they are — hindered her from seeing her father for 16 years. And because she allowed so much time to pass without them mending their ties, the girl is now judged.
Charice told me she is hurting with the death of her dad. “I really wish we were given the chance to become friends.” She knew it was too late to regret about lost opportunities. So, this early, she chose to move on and learn a lesson from this experience.
She does not concern herself anymore about the opinions of other people. She is too preoccupied with grief to think about how other people perceived her coming home to bury her father. For her, even if she and Ricky did not talk nor see each other for about 16 years, he remains the father she “loved and will still love” till kingdom come.
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In January 2009, Charice picked me up in the house to attend the “People of the Year” awards night of the People Asia magazine. Cha was one of the awardees. Inside her car, we were talking about her thoughts about the award, about the adulation the world was giving her after she was proclaimed by Oprah Winfrey as one of the most talented kids in the world. She was of course ecstatic that all so suddenly, after she was discovered on YouTube, her future was beginning to unfold. Add to that that a few days after the “People of the Year,” she would fly back to the US to sing in two of the inaugural dinners of President Barack Obama.
In the car, I dared ask her: “Did you ever consider sharing all these achievements with your father?”
There was silence in the car. I knew, somehow, it was as if I asked a taboo question. In the course of our more-than-a-decade friendship, Charice only talked about her father once. I will not go into detail but most of her memories of her father were sordid, traumatic. Yes, she learned to sing very well from her mother. But she admitted to me that it was the painful experience that brought more depth, more meaning to her every rendition — considering, that time, she was still a child.
“I grew up without him. But there were few times when I wished I had my father with me,” she said. Not a single molecule of bitterness or hatred was traceable in her tone.
Charice wanted to meet up with her father in 2009 but circumstances hindered again her intention of meeting him. She even told me that she was excited for her younger brother Coycoy to meet their father because her brother didn’t have any recollection of his father. Coycoy was only one year old and Charice was three and a half years old when their parents separated. But the well-meaning Charice and Coycoy did not get to meet their father. They exercised caution because it was the time when the family of her father asked her not to use the last name Pempengco anymore.
But everything is water under the bridge now. Charice said her mother Raquel and brother Coycoy are now at peace with the siblings of her father. She sadly noted that it took the death of her father for everyone to realize that harmony among them is a prized possession.
“We’re all moving on. Okay na po kaming lahat. The death of my father is a sad chapter in our book. We are all starting a new one. Magiging masaya kami lahat sa bagong kabanata. Tama na ang away. Tama na ang tampuhan,” she said.
With the perpetrator put behind bars last Thursday and Ricky laid to rest yesterday at the memorial lot in Cabuyao, Laguna that Charice purchased with her first earnings from her international guestings, the family of Charice will surely have time to catch up and patch up some more.
It may be too soon to realize it now but the death of Ricky, tragic as it may seem, is a beautiful experience for Charice and the entire Pempengco family. It is in Ricky’s passing that they let pass the hurts and pains of the past. In his death, his loved ones live anew.
Many may not recognize it but death has its own charm. It brings people together to celebrate life. Death has its own healing effect. It makes family members in squabble rekindle their ties. Death is the conclusion to questions that were never answered. Death is life’s own elixir — potent, healing, magical.
(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com or my.new.beginnings@gmail.com. You may also follow me on Twitter @bum_tenorio. Have a blessed Sunday.)