BENCHWARMER

Family loses one more to cancer
RAMON DACAWAI

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – Mourners gathered at the edge of a hill here last Wednesday for another funeral, the second in a span of six weeks for a family still reeling from the loss of one of its daughters.

Juliet Tumpao-Oakes, a 49-year old mother of three, was buried at noon beside the fresh grave of her daughter Dorcas, below the hill in barangay Pico where the family had built a two-floor house some four hundred meters away from a subdivision road.

Fr. Charles Carino of the Episcopal Church celebrated the mass in open air, his third on the pine-clad bluff that offers a panoramic view of the valley floor of Benguet’s capital town.

Four days before, he offered his second to mark the symbolic 40th day of the passing on of Dorcas, who succumbed to melanoma, a fast-developing form of cancer, last Sept. 12. She was 20, in her senior year as a nursing student.

Juliet’s own 15-month battle against cancer ended evening of that 40th day memorial for Dorcas, hours after she listened to the hymns and prayers from her bed, by the window of the second floor of the secluded home her family of four built a few years back.

Before the sudden seizure, she showed no signs of going. She was in high spirits receiving well-wishers one after the other when the mass ended, boosting them up with stories.

When her sisters Apoles, Pacing and Lillian peeped in, she sprung on them with a “boo!”, relishing their scare with laughter, her husband Dick recalled at her wake.

“Mama, sutil ka pa rin up to the end. We love you. - Dick, Poca, Libnah,” a note posted on the wall beside her pine coffin read. As they did during Dorcas’ funeral, Dick and his daughters
Pocahontas and Libnah took turns belting out Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game”. A family favorite, they had sang it for years in benefit concerts for indigent patients.

As in Dorcas’ funeral, close family friend and doctor, former Mankayan town vice-mayor Mario Abuan delivered the homily. He spoke of unusual, almost blind courage and faith that saw the orphaned family through the twin tragedies.

Since Juliet’s diagnosis for cervical cancer came on her birth month in July last year, Dick, Poca and Libnah – and Dorcas -had been hurling questions to the sky. The groping for answers gained intensity last July when Dick had to tell Juliet about the doctors’ diagnosis for Dorcas.

Dick kept his calm throughout, until the other Saturday night. Folksingers were jamming when Dick heard Poca, who hurdled the last nursing board exams, shouting for him from her mother’s side. It was like a cloudburst for Dick, recalled columnist March Fianza, who stood by Dorcas’ baptism.

Coming home from the wake before dawn, March e-mailed the news to Conrad Marzan, Joel Aliping, Richard Arandia, Estoy Aglit, Felix Tayaotao, Bryan Aliping and other Baguio folksingers now based in Northern California.

The expatriates had just sent $2,800 they raised in a concert they had mounted for Juliet and other patients here. Fr. Leonard Oakes, Dick’s younger brother who performed at the concert, came home for Dorcas’ memorial. He again did the reading at the requiem mass for Juliet.

As relatives were about to lower Juliet’s casket, he led Bubut Olarte and other folksingers to a chorus of “You Raise Me Up” and the country gospel “The Circle Can’t Be Broken”.

“Please see to the family, as the hardest part is yet to come,” Fr. Oakes asked friends, referring to the quiet on the bluff after those who came for the rites had left. Pocahontas’ former nursing classmates came in the evening after her mother’s burial for a bonfire. Dick’s friends Paul Cuyopan and Art Tampoa also lingered behind for company.

“Please come this Sunday, when Libnah turns 16,” Dick told them. To cope, Libnah vied for Sangguniang Kabataan chair of barangay Pico. With no time to campaign, she finished third. “I guess I’m not for it but perhaps another, when I reach the minimum age qualification for one to serve in the municipal council,” she quipped.

Over in neighboring Puguis barangay, seven orphaned siblings are also coping with two losses. They recently came home for the wake their mother, widow Julia Jacinto (nee Pontino of Tublay, Benguet). Two days after her funeral, her son Sony, who was working in Italy, succumbed to a stroke.

“It’s not possible for us to personally thank everybody who stood by us but we will cherish their kindness,” said Susan, Sony’s elder sister.