Epilogue for the merest child

MANILA, Philippines - We buried ma’am Edith Tiempo on a monday, the last Monday of August. Strangely enough, in the Visayas they never heard of the superstition that funerals should not be held on the first day of the week lest another would soon follow. But Ma’am Edith died barely two days after her good friend and fellow writer Kerima Polotan, who was buried the preceding Thursday in Manila, so here the old saying was turned inside out.

By we, this refers to Dr. Tiempo’s kin and friends, former students and fellows of the summer writers workshop ran by her with her late husband Edilberto that by itself changed many lives.

I attended quite a few of those workshops, beginning with the first one in 1962 as a three-year-old observer tagging along with his folks and elder sister, and where father was one of the workshop panelists along with Nick Joaquin. I remember nothing of it, except for a green swing on the second floor porch of a house on campus, where my sister and I would while away most afternoons pretending we were in a ship at sea.

The Tiempos with children Rowena and Maldon and grandchild Rima, circa mid-90’s.

In 1973 I returned ever the tag along of the panelist, and stayed in a cousin’s house on Rovira street a stone’s throw away from the beach, an ylang ylang tree outside our room filling the night air with its rare scent. On occasion me and my cousin would sit in the workshop sessions, and I remember once Ma’am Edith commenting on a line from a poem by fellow Mauro Avena, how the grating of an aratiles branch against the roof during a storm was like the rasping of a sick person’s throat.

By 1978 I had become a fellow, and came to the sessions lugging a lapad of ESQ the better to weather the critiques, but Edith was kind and patient, particularly to one of my early poems ‘At Nasugbu’ as she pointed out a line, ‘all your faith is tucked beneath that crease that separates the sea from the sky’, and when she recited it the rum suddenly wore off and I felt like a poet for the first time. It was also the workshop I met Grace, mother of my two kids.

I returned many times since, mostly by boat almost like a summer ritual, not only to drop in on the workshop and say hello to the Tiempos and the usual writers reunions, but also for the children to visit with their maternal kin.

State honors for Ma’am Edith; Maldon, Rowena, Rima and Rowena’s husband Lemuel Torrevillas watch as her casket is lowered.

The last time I visited was in 2009, as panelist of the abbreviated two-weeklong workshop, and unforgettable was the visit to Ma’am’s place in Montemar in the outskirts of Dumaguete, where she served us ice cream and palabok and gave a lecture of form and content in her inimitable, vintage style of passionate patience. A line sticks out, where she quotes a househelp in the midst of preparing a meal with the proper ingredients: ang hirap gyud gumawa ng tae… followed by hearty laughter.

I texted my friend Cesar Ruiz ‘A verse for Edith’ during one of the nights of the wake:

The last time I saw you

The dog bolted from the gates

As we said our goodbyes…

What was it I tried to retrieve

Going after the poor mutt Max

In the winding dark

But a childhood lost and found

In the great big blues

The Arcellanas before heading for the pier to take the boat to Dumaguete for the first workshop in 1962.

Of a verse for Edith, the view

From Montemar.

Hours after her death Cesar had texted that he couldn’t help but hug Edith’s son Maldon at the funeral parlor, both of them fighting back tears, and how Maldon had lifted the white shroud off his mom’s face so Cesar could see. The Tiempo son was with a group of friends near the body, Ma’am’s caregiver Helen was with another group by the parlor entrance. There was an SOP number of hours before Edith, 92, could be attended to.

Ma’am’s daughter Rowena and son-in-law Lemuel Torrevillas planed in from Iowa on a Friday, weekend before the burial. Granddaughter Rima arrived Sunday, also from abroad a week after the death. So it was an impromptu writers’ reunion of sorts: Ricky de Ungria and Joy Cruz from Davao, Dr. Noel Pinggoy from Gensan, Tony Tan and Christine Godinez from Iligan, Merle Alunan from Tacloban, Marj Evasco, Susan Lara, Danny Reyes, Nino de Veyra, Grace Monte de Ramos from Manila joining Dumaguete-based Cesar Ruiz, Ian Casocot, Bobby Villasis, the twins Myrna and Lorna Peña Reyes.

Ma’am Edith flanked by writers, including the author (extreme left), at a gathering in Manila circa early 2000s.

Suffice it to say that Ma’am would have been proud of this sendoff, and after watching General Patrimonio hand over the flag that had draped Edith’s casket to daughter Rowena at graveside, each of us threw in a final white rose for her.

Me and Ricky scrambled for some spent shells from the 21-gun salute following a text from bilocation guru Krip Yuson, and soon it was back to the city for us after laying Edith beside Doc Ed, 15 years apart.

There were times I wondered if it was worth dipping into whatever savings I had left to partake of the last rites for Ma’am, but since I missed Doc Ed’s sendoff in 1996, Grace said I would never forgive myself if I wasn’t there for Edith’s. “Sometimes you have to feed the spirit,” she said.

Which, come to think of it now, Ma’am Edith had done all her well written life.

Partners and soul mates: Doc and Ma’am.