Some transitions

BENCHWARMER

Ramon Dacawi  

The news is again on the obituary page of the weeklies. We are into another season of wakes and funerals that  comes whenever a couple or more of such final transitions are of those familiar to us who had the chance of growing up when  Baguio-Benguet was one community, not over a hundred  barangays.

Some of the names are still familiar, an indication that this upland community of natives and migrants has not yet grown too big for relations, even among neighbors, to  have become so impersonal. That’s the case in in Metro-Manila where such transitions are hardly news unless they are of the newsmakers or triggered by violence.

Some of us who knew them, even only by name or up close and personal, are still around to remember who they were for us and to our community.  Wakes and funerals are  for us who were left behind, for us to share memories of them,  even for a fleeting moment, before we go back, or try to go back, to our daily,  normal lives.

That’s a relief compared to what a TV reporter’s summary of the aftermath of the killer tsunami at Christmas 10 years ago in Indonesia: “In this village, no one was left to bury the dead.”

This Monday, the community will rest Judge Fernando Cabato, a Baguio boy who, Auring Bautista told me last Thursday morning, passed on in his sleep.  Mang Nanding, as others who grew up in Baguio and Benguet were honored to call him, distinguished himself as presiding judge of Branch 62 of the Baguio-Benguet Court of First Instance. After retirement,  he went back to law practice and, until his passing on, gently  provided guidance to the Baguio Apaches, the aggrupation of Baguio boys who needed and will miss his wit and wisdom.  

Some of us used to rib him as a pistol-packing judge, after he had an operation that required the placement of a medical gadget on his waist. I would have asked if he still had it when I saw him, but reined in the urge to intrude while he was enjoying  breakfast with his wife and relatives in a café along Session Road about a week before his transition.

The couple would not have minded the intrusion, for both knew and treated many families up here as their own, not necessarily by blood but by choice.  Doktora Cabato (nee Camdas)  remains  many a family’s  pro bono physician.  The last time we met, Dr. Julie  was concerned how I already was, given the complications after I became a sugar magnate without a hacienda.

Retired police sergeant Augusto Mendoza, whom retired city prosecutor Gloria Agunos swore was the best cartographer Baguio’s Finest ever had, will also be rested this Saturday morning..

In my years covering the police beat for the Midland Courier, it never occurred to me how crucial August’s work had been towards  identifying suspects in crimes by his drawing distinct and identifiable countenances of crime perpetrators  based on descriptions by witnesses, thereby providing  crucial  leads that resulted in arrests, trials  and convictions.

His vital task, which would have merited a who-done-it feature, we in media took for granted. It was overshadowed by his gentle demeanor and that undying anecdote about his being summoned by then over-all national police chief and eventual President Fidel Valdez Ramos.

August wore his uniform and reported to the chief, saluting him and waited to know whatever reason he was summoned. Ramos reportedly asked him outright if he was that good in cooking goat meat, a delicacy among those who trace their roots to Northern Luzon.

Former Benguet political contender (albeit reluctant)  Frankie Abalos will also be rested this Saturday, for him to join his life-time buddy and fellow cockfight aficionado  Bonnie Tandoyog, the best mayor Kapangan town never had.  As was Bonnie, Frankie was a friend who supported and even initiated derbies-for-a-cause, mainly for seriously ill patients. The duo were not content on and went beyond the regular throw-in of coins and paper bills among aficionados each time the fight announcer would introduce someone in dire need of cash for a sick relative or friend.

Hail and farewell, too, to Baguio senior citizens chief Ador de Guzman. Also to kidney  patients  Almario Benitez  of Campo Sioco and Leonard Nalos of Purok 8, Dontogan Barangay, Baguio. Those they left behind reiterate their gratitude to the numerous individuals and institutions who had helped sustain their life-time dialysis treatment that provided them additional lease on life and time to be with their kin.(e-mail:mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments.)