Memories of La Loma

In Spanish, hillock. In South America, beyond.” Thus came the text reply from trilingual poet Marra PL Lanot, my colleague at the MTRCB, a fellow author and literature instructor, and the better half of Salinawit pioneer and exponent Jose “Pete” Lacaba, himself an author, editor and bilingual poet.

It was in response to an SMS query as to the meaning of the word “loma.” Whenever we’re stumped over a passage in “Espanggol,” we turn to dear Marra, who once helped translate and edit an anthology of Filipino poets for a publication with a Madrid imprint.

Of course. “Hillock.” How could we have forgotten? The quaint district of La Loma in Quezon City referred to an erstwhile vantage point that eventually overlooked particular landmarks.

One was La Loma Cemetery, contiguous to but distinct from the North, or Cementerio del Norte, which was larger and nestled between the former and the even smaller Chinese Cemetery.

Another landmark, indisputably more familiar to Manileño generations from the 1950s to the ’80s, was the La Loma cockpit, where as a boy I learned the distinctions between “Texas” and “talisayin,” “lo-diyes” and “doblado.”

Across that cockpit crowed another institution: Lechon ni Mang Tomas, soon followed by others of its kind. Now the cockpit is no more, and La Loma Cemetery is all but eaten up by Norte, so that no one refers to the smaller resting turf. Only the lechon stalls remain, while continuing to proliferate, pushing farther up Retiro St. — such as Mila’s Lechon, which operates a take-out stall and resto on the corner of Mariveles St.

Across it still stands my ninong and ninang’s house, the residence of the Cabayan family for over half-a-century now. I was the ring-bearer at their wedding in the early ’50s. Clara Aguinaldo was my mother’s younger sister. Before she married Isagani Cabayan of Binondo, they had become my godparents. 

Ninong Isagani passed away several years ago. He and my dad, who had gone earlier, were the whisky drinkers in the clan that partied every Christmas Eve in the Cabayan house, and reunited a week later for the New Year’s Eve dinner which my mom hosted, as it was also her birthday.

Now all four are gone: my parents and godparents. Ninang Clarita passed away, at 85, close to midnight on Rizal Day 2008, an hour before her older sister’s birth anniversary. We laid her to rest at Norte two Sundays ago.

In the anthology Belonging: Stories on Relationships, edited by Erlinda Panlilio, published by Anvil and released last October, I contributed an essay on godparenting. Cited was my ninong and ninang’s benign influence on my own narrative as the “caring proxy” — or how I took my godparenting role seriously because my own godparents had set an example.

“In San Beda College, at Catechism classes in my early youth, we were told that the godparent was the proxy parent, or even had to become the foster one should the real parent leave this life. As I grew up, my experience on that score proved to be exactly how our Roman Catholic mentors said it should be.

“My ninong and ninang were a couple. Ninong Isagani had paid a 10-year courtship to my Ninang Clarita, who was my mom’s younger sister. They finally married in time to become my godparents. And through the decades, they functioned as such, religiously, giving me Christmas presents until these became token items when I turned adult. Sometimes it wasn’t so token from Ninong Isagani; it could be a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.

“I was really close to them both, and loved them both as persons and role players. On Christmas Eve, the clan would get together at their place; it would be my mom’s turn to host the affair on New Year’s Eve. On both occasions, when my dad had already passed away, as he did rather early, I’d take his place among the titos and clink whisky glasses with the senior guys. 

“Until this past decade, it became just Ninong and me. He had shown particular concern for me as the firstborn, and often told me how I’d have to take care of my mom and siblings, from the time of our dad’s demise. But in the last few years, as he himself started to hover past the pre-departure area, he just smiled toothlessly at me as I took on much of the whisky bottle for the two of us. Then he’d go into a coughing fit, and I’d help lift him up and retire him in his bedroom.

“His departure some years ago marked the end of a long era for me. Now his widow, my ninang and Tita Clarita, has been beset with Alzheimer’s. She recognizes no one, even this eldest of her nephews and nieces, and whom I know she truly cared for.”

That was written four months ago. Early in December, I visited Ninang at the Capitol Medical Center where she lay in a coma after suffering another stroke. Two weeks later my cousins took her home, along with a hospital bed, medical contraptions, and a nurse.

On Christmas Eve, our clan tradition pushed through, with the guests taking turns checking on the matriarch asleep in her room. It would be last time I’d see her alive.

I understand that after Christmas, they still managed to wake her and sit her up on a wheelchair for a family photograph in the sala, amidst all the season’s festive decorations.

On Rizal Day, it was her first time not to show up for the New Year’s Eve party that had been moved a day forward. Her oldest daughter Marissa, vacationing from Jeddah where she supervises a hospital, had to stay with her in La Loma. When the rest of her daughters and the growing brood went back to her house, it was just in time to bid her farewell, as she had another seizure.

Receiving a voice call from La Loma that night, I knew my beloved aunt and ninang had gone on to join my mom. And the inevitable process of deepening sadness started. 

During the funeral procession from Lourdes Church on Retiro, past Mayon thence Mariveles towards Norte a little over a kilometer away, there was occasion to gaze up at the blue house where countless kids had scrambled on all fours for the largesse of coins tossed every which way on Christmas Eve.

And as her casket was borne inside the family chamber off Norte’s main street, I peeled away from the crowd of grieving kin to indulge alone in bright crisp sunshine. Soon it would be noon.

Lining the avenue were painted concrete statues that included that of a lovely, sad-faced angel with one arm shorn off. Past her photogenic mien and figure was a bountiful jackfruit tree guarding another graveyard — groaning with over a dozen fruits, the beneficiary of fertile ground.

Life’s cycles spelled yet another ending and beginning early in January. Memories of La Loma unfold as a continuum.