Crossing the chasm (In memoriam)

Not being able to attend the funeral Mass for Teddy Benigno pained me, but the pinched nerve in my lumbar spine became quite intense that morning. I had, before that, endeavored to visit him in the hospital everyday, but could not make it a number of times because we had the same pulmonologist, Dr. Ruth Divinagracia, a brilliant young practitioner, who emphatically told me that I must not even think of visiting Teddy when he first got hospitalized until my respiratory condition got healed. After about five days, I was cleared to go to Room 705 of the Makati Medical Center.

What I witnessed almost on a daily basis since then was the constant love and care that his wife, Luz, gave him; saw the tortured look of his son Marc; heard the words of his daughter, Nena, who said in her eulogy at the necrological services, just a couple of weeks after, that Teddy, when first confined and diagnosed, had lost his voice but managed a whisper that was a cry of frustration: "I have lost all my powers. And I am facing my greatest nemesis." But both Nena and Marc told him that he had the power to hope and the power to believe. They both reminded him of Ninoy Aquino who lost all his powers in solitary confinement but that’s when he "discovered the power of faith, the transcending might of God."

In his journey to this faith and surrender, Fr. Catalino Arevalo SJ, who was the celebrant at the funeral Mass last Tuesday, said that when he was brought by former President Corazon Aquino to Teddy’s bedside after the latter had expressed his wish to receive the last sacraments, which happened on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, exactly two weeks before his passing, Teddy was "wholly lucid," one of his great gifts always. As all of those who visited him at Makati Med will attest, he was wholly lucid almost to the very end. That Sunday morning, he was entirely clear in mind and fully himself when he asked for the sacraments. In due course, he received those of reconciliation and the anointing of the sick, peacefully and deliberately answering the prayers.

Fr. Arevalo went on to say that those at his bedside heard Teddy say: "I believe I am at peace with the Lord. I have asked Him to take my life wholly in His hands."

A couple of days before this happened, however, on May 18, I personally witnessed his magnificent surrender to the Lord. This was after Brother Eddie Villanueva’s absolutely touching and powerful pray-over, in the presence of Teddy’s wife, who was holding his arm with her love unmistakably shining through her eyes. His daughter, Nena, held his hand, which had swollen from the fluids being poured through his veins into his body, while dear Marc, at 24 years, wore that stricken look at the foot of the bed beside me. My dear friend, also Teddy’s, Josine Elizalde, was in tears, as Brother Eddie spoke about surrender to the Lord. His brother and his sisters gathered around his bedside, with close friends Cesar and Teena Sarino, Louie and Triccie Sison, and Ernie and Bea Rodriguez.

It was then, after Brother Eddie’s pray-over – a ritual he used to do when we would meet in Josine’s or my home, before discussing the sad state of our country, with Teddy presiding – that I heard him say to Brother Eddie, the fire of passion burning in his eyes, the following words: "Last night, I talked to God and told Him: You and I have engaged in duels all my life and I have never allowed You to triumph. Now I find myself on the edge of a precipice, and I can either falter, fall or kneel. I choose to kneel, Lord. Please help me."

Immediately after he ended, I remember having grabbed my pen inside my bag and a piece of paper to write down the words so I would not forget them. Teddy had already been told by his excellent team of doctors led by Dr. Randy Francisco, cardiologist and the presiding physician, as well as oncologist Dr. Gary Lorenzo, that he could go anytime, for that’s the way Teddy wanted it. He wanted them to tell him, "Here’s the score."

That’s the reason he made his surrender to God Almighty asking for His help in guiding him and holding his hand as he "crossed the chasm." This man, Teddy Benigno, reduced to helplessness, lying on his bed, his passion still evident in his eyes, but this time it was passion in his surrender to His Creator.

As Fr. Arevalo so rightfully said: "Teddy Benigno’s life, his person, his spirited writing above all, were filled with passion – alive with it, his words ringing with it, paragraphs bursting like fireworks with it. His passion for his land and his people, his indomitable passion for freedom, for democracy, for human rights. His passion for truth and justice, his passion for the little ones of the world – everything he wrote was resonant with it, spilling over with it. His characteristic rhetoric: Its erudition, emotion, exuberance, energy – all were placed at the willing obedience of that passion. He was a man who truly loved his country and was consumed with the longing for it to rise to greatness."

As his daughter Nena reminisced: "From childhood he was Mr. Invictus. That’s from a poem he so loved to quote so much when I was about seven. I still remember his favorite lines: "I am the captain of my fate. I am the master of my soul. I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul."

Sonny Belmonte said at the necrological services: "Teddy walked with comfort and undaunted among giants, with figures who are in the Mt. Rushmore of Philippine politics and society. He was a man of lofty principles and almost unbending will. His column bespoke his principles; so uncompromising were these that they seemed etched in stone... He was ever ready to fight the good fight."

Sonny was certainly right. During our regular discussions about our country’s plight even almost up to the time he had to be hospitalized, he was not only passionate, but fierce in the pursuit of his principles, his rightful obstinacy strong as ever, that the system, the Filipino people, had to change.

Teddy’s eyes would turn gentle as Luz softly sang the French songs they both loved – La Vie En Rose was his favorite. Then he would sleep peacefully. When he was wheeled back from the ICU with hope of recovery gone, I knew I had to talk to him because he was awake though extremely weak. That’s when, after talking to Mila Alora, Ching Montinola and Boy Saycon, I entered the room and saw his son Marc looking anguished but resigned. And that’s when I said good-bye to Teddy without uttering the word itself. Instead, I told him that he will be my role model forever.

The next day at 6 a.m., the third of June, God in all His mercy embraced him as he breathed his last.

Marc would later say at the necrological services for his father, how he regretted not having been with him more and drank from that spring of unending knowledge he had to share. "I would have loved for him to guide me and show me the path he took. I cannot talk to him now and ask him for guidance, but I can look into my heart and see his example."

And as Nena said after her father’s passing, "We, his family, no longer owned him. He is yours, the nation’s, he is God’s. He belongs to all of you, his greater family with whom he shared his heart, his soul, his dreams. For decades, he waited to see Filipinos rise in revolution and take their destiny into their hands, but like Ninoy, at zero hour, he was abruptly called to cross the chasm."

Brother Eddie Villanueva had so simply stated that accepting the Lord and having the faith of surrender to His divine will is what God expects from all of us. Being "born again" is not a religion, it is precisely accepting God into our hearts. He had spoken at a service last Saturday.

It was Fr. Arevalo who, at the funeral Mass, thanked Teddy’s wife Luz and those he loved most in life, "who helped him keep alive and fearless that passion and that faith." At the Mass preceding the necrological services, what I remember so well from Bishop Deogracias Yñiguez’s homily were the words: "His life is a gift for all of us."

We all miss him now, just a couple of days after he was laid to rest, his friends who used to meet with him as regularly as possible, who benefited from his wisdom and the fierce passion his knowledge of events transpiring everyday in rapid succession evoked, and I cannot help but be reminded of what someone not too long ago said: "When we are fatigued – or believe we should be, when we are frustrated because we are shackled, not redeemed by our best hopes, the tension between perfectability and fallibility breaks us apart – and we share only a desire to lie low. This is not the time to lie low."

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