My favorite race car driver
I cannot lay claim to being a motorsports fan. Despite this, I do have a favorite racecar driver. He has racked up local and international motorsports achievements stretching back to when he was 14 years old.
My favorite racecar driver was rather grumpy at times and made it his pastime to make fun of me, but I knew that this was just his carino brutal way of showing his affection.
My favorite racecar driver adored my two kids, and was ninong to my son. Every time he saw them, he would pick them up one by one, trap them in a big, bear hug and plant a big, wet kiss on their cheeks, much to my children’s dismay. “Tito,” my daughter complained as she wiped away his laway from her cheek “I don’t like your beard! It’s itchy!” My son, on the other hand, could only cry as he tried to wriggle his way out of his ninong’s inescapable grasp.
My favorite racecar driver loved my wife dearly. Unlike my children, my wife never complained when he gave her a big, bear hug. She even hugged him back even more tightly. She didn’t even mind that his beard itched against her skin.
On June 10, my favorite racecar driver came to my surprise 40th birthday party that was orchestrated by my wife, and grudgingly danced along with the rest of my family and close friends during a flash mob. Knowing my favorite racecar driver as well as I did, dancing in public was quite an achievement for him.
On the night of June 12, my favorite racecar driver — my brother-in-law Ferdinand “Enzo” Pastor — was mercilessly gunned down by a masked assassin’s hail of bullets while he was at a stoplight along the corner of Congressional and Visayas Avenue in Quezon City. He was 32.
My favorite racecar driver is survived by his parents, three sisters, two brothers, eight nieces, seven nephews, a wife and two young boys aged eight and six.
* * *
When I started making ligaw my ex-girlfriend (now wife), it was almost sacrilegious for her three younger brothers that I displayed nary an interest in motorsports or racing and, moreover, was woefully ignorant of the milestones they had blazed in the local racing circuit. They all conspired to test the sincerity of my love for their (at that time) last unmarried sister. And the brother who gave me the toughest examination — short of a body cavity search — was Enzo.
I tell you, nothing makes a man tougher than nerves that have evolved to adamantium after years of zipping around a racetrack. Enzo had more testosterone running through his pinkie than I had in my whole system. But I suspect the real reason Enzo made me feel like a worn-out tire while courting his sister was because he didn’t want to lose the only unmarried sister he had left. He was deeply attached to all of his siblings, and it tore Enzo apart when each of his siblings had moved on and left the family home. Although he would never admit it, Enzo bawled like a child who lost his matchbox when his sister (my wife) decided to pursue her graduate studies outside of Manila.
But after two years of subjecting me to intense kantiyawan, credit investigation and the occasional urine analysis, Enzo gave me the best underhanded compliment he could muster during my pamanhikan. “When I found out that you were dating my sister, I just thought you were a weird dork,” he wryly remarked. “But you were just a funny guy who made my sister happy.” He shrugged his shoulders. “As long as my sister’s happy, then I’m happy, too. Anyway, I don’t think you’re a dork anymore. I just think you’re weird.” And with that, I had his blessing to marry his sister. For the time being.
Sadly, I never had the opportunity to fully appreciate Enzo as a motorsports champ. But, truth to tell, I don’t think his biggest achievements were in the field of motorsports. Not even if he was the first Filipino to be invited to test with Formula One Team Minardi. Not even if he was the Formula Renault Champion in 2002. Not even if he was the first Filipino to have landed sixth place overall in his first NASCAR Wheelen Euroseries Open Championships in 2013 and was invited to participate in the K&N NASCAR Pro Series East in the US. I think Enzo’s biggest achievements in this life were his two beautiful boys.
He was the epitome of a doting father who infected his boys with the love for a sport that had gifted him with steely nerves, salt and pepper hair and a zest for life. He had methodically replaced his children’s blood with motor oil very early in their lives: he showered them with toy cars and racing video games, bombarded them with movies and cartoons on cars and racing and, as much as he could, he brought them with him to the race track. His boys were his confidantes, his barkada and his best friends. His kids were his world, and he, in turn, was theirs.
After enjoying dinner with his parents and his family at his home on June 12, Enzo insisted on personally driving the truck that would ferry his Asian V8 stock car from the Batangas Racing Circuit to the Clark Speedway for the third leg of the Asian V8 Championships. Enzo told his kids he would be home the next day.
The next day, his two boys came to visit their dad’s body at church.
* * *
All the evening screenings for How To Train Your Dragon 2 on Independence Day were packed. So we settled on a pizza date with the kids, then went back home to watch cartoons on my laptop. When my daughter had fallen asleep, my wife and I went online to check on the photos that had been posted by our friends during my surprise birthday party.
As we were getting ready for bed, my wife received a phone call from her dad’s cellphone. “What!?” my wife exclaimed “Enzo was shot!? Where!?” The replies of my in-laws were unclear, but it was in a public hospital in Quezon City. They were on the road looking for the hospital when they called us. “How is he?” her voice was trembling. My in-laws said they would call us back.
My wife and I hurriedly dressed up while awaiting more instructions. As she pulled out her clothes from the closet, she began to sob heavily. I squeezed her shoulder and prayed that when her parents called us back, they would tell us that Enzo would still be okay.
Then we got another phone call from her dad.
“He’s dead!?” she screamed. “Enzo’s dead!?” She fell back on her chair and wailed inconsolably. I hugged her tightly but she wailed even louder. It was as if the bullets that had ripped through Enzo had torn through my wife’s heart as well.
While we were in the car rushing to Quezon City, I held her hand in a bear-like vise as we intoned our prayers for the dead. “How could they do this to my brother!?” she cried again and again. “They treated him like an animal! Why? Why!?”
When we arrived at the hospital, the security guards directed us to the morgue. My father-in-law stood outside of the room with a glassy-eyed look on his face while my mother-in-law and Enzo’s wife were slumped together weeping right outside of the door.
A few minutes later, the pathologist opened the door to the morgue so that my wife could pay her last respects to her brother. The whole family shuffled into the morgue as the pathologist pointed us towards a blood-caked sheet. My wife edged close to Enzo’s body and began to stroke his head from underneath the sheet. She gathered the courage to lift the sheet that covered his head to see where he had been shot by his jawline. Then she covered his head again and stroked his hair, repeatedly mumbling, “I love you, Enzo.” I placed my hand on the sheet over Enzo’s leg. His body was still warm.
As we waited for his body to be transported to the mortuary for the embalming, Enzo’s friends related to us how Enzo demonstrated the tapang and presence of mind he had become legendary for in the racetrack during his final moments. While Enzo was being riddled with gunshots from his assailant, he screamed “Dapa!” to the mechanic who was seated beside him in the truck and knowingly took the bullets that were meant to silence the mechanic as well. The mechanic survived with only a slight gash from a bullet grazing his ribs.
Enzo died not only as a motorsports hero. He died as a hero.
* * *
Enzo will never get to finish the final leg of the inaugural Asian V8 Championships. He will never be able to take up the standing invitation to participate in the US NASCAR. He will not have the opportunity to mentor new racers at his Circuit Showdown Racing School.
Enzo won’t be in the audience when his boys graduate from elementary school. He won’t be able to give them advice when they make ligaw their first crush. He won’t be able to cheer them on during a podium finish. He won’t be there to teach them how to drive a car, or much less race one.
We will miss you terribly Enzo. We are still struggling to make sense of a senseless crime that has robbed us of a son, a brother, a husband, a father, a friend, a mentor, a champion, a hero.
During your wake, many people lamented that you were snatched from us at the prime of your life. But maybe what we view as accomplishments in your life may not be what the good and merciful Lord views as your accomplishments in His great and unfathomable designs. As the priest reminded us during your funeral mass, God called you at your right time because you fulfilled what He wanted you to accomplish in those 32 years that he blessed us to share in your company.
* * *
Being a racecar driver, Enzo always lived with the prospect that his next race could be his last. So it was hardly a surprise that he had shared his last wishes with his wife (although I’m certain Enzo would have rather gone down blazing on the race track instead of being felled by the barrel of a dastardly gun-for-hire).
First, he wanted his parents, siblings, wife and children to be given a pendant containing a bit of his ashes (I was moved when I read this post from Enzo’s wife: the morning after Enzo’s cremation, her eldest son cuddled beside her in bed. Then he propped himself up beside her, put the pendant of his dad’s ashes in her hand and asked her to squeeze it really hard. “That’s us hugging dad,” he said)
His second wish was that some of his ashes would be placed in the engine of his beloved car, a 1996 Toyota Corolla Cup Race car that helped him win Rookie of the Year in 1999. His youngest brother (and some might say, closest race car competitor) Don lovingly revved up the engine. And when the engine roared with the grit and testosterone of Enzo powering those pistons, his ashes were carried into the sky.
Enzo, whenever the clouds are heavy with rain and I hear a thunderclap before a storm, I will know it is you giving Dodjie Laurel and Edward Jovy Marcelo a run for their money in that great racetrack in the sky. God speed, our dear Enzo. God speed.
