Remembering Emmett

BENCHWARMER
Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- At the wake, Nestor Gatchalon, ex-soldier, ex-Wright Park pony boy and father of four, admitted he never really knew Emmett Brown Asuncion, his friend for close to a decade. Emmett initially impressed him as fastidious and proud, almost rude, close to a snob he had to greet and eventually deal with because, as neighbors, they saw each other almost everyday.

He saw him better when Emmett’s former students at the University of Baguio Science High came in all ages and sizes to pay their respects. They turned the five-night vigil at Funeraria Paz into a season of gratitude, love and remembrance He listened enough to open up as he watched from the back of the funeral chapel.

He recalled how Emmett had to have him by his side at the x-ray room of the Baguio General Hospital. Emmett was then seriously ill, yet tried to maintain his independence and dignity, yet could do nothing but submit to the medical procedure, covering his eyes with a towel, as if it were Linus’ blanket.

Nestor recalled how it was for him also to be alone, that time he was wounded in battle, until a Muslim family took him to heal in their refuge, somewhere in the war in Mindanao.

He heard Emmett’s students speak of their own wounds he had inflicted - as if Science High were his own military training camp, only that Emmett his friend was the drill sergeant. Yet his students profusely thanked him for the scars that prepared them for the harsher (or kinder) realities after their graduation march from high school.

Many said they entertained and even mounted feeble flashes of rebellion, yet later saw – especially when they themselves had children – that the Emmett mold, mode and even mood of discipline trained them well to become what they are now.

But who was it who said that by the time you realize your parents were right after all, here come your children telling you you’re wrong? So they prayed their own kids would make it to and through the rigors of learning at UB Science High. After all, they were sure Emmett fit(s) that line from novelist Richard Paul, author of the best-selling “The Christmas Box” trilogy: “Those with softest hearts sometimes build the hardest shells”.

Emmett’s shell would crack each time a student would come to bid goodbye, saying he or she was transferring to another school. That’s why they, too, came to the wake as his children. The shell cracked after he scolded some boys he found drinking and smoking inside their classroom a day before their graduation, way back in ‘68. “I never scold people I don’t care about,” he said, enough to sober them up.

“You can’t give what you don’t have,” Emmett used to say. He was (is) not what he had, so he gave all he had, mostly for student scholarships, “without plaque, ceremony or audience”, to use another Evans quote. Except perhaps his long-sleeved shirt, necktie, attaché case – and umbrella, a yellow one his children hooked to a candle stand beside his white and blue casket.

Perhaps his only investment for himself was a plot at the city public cemetery he visited eight years ago. Nestor said he had a pebble-washed tomb built on it. Chances are it would also be given away, as his children laid him to rest last Sept. 7 at the less crowded – and more orderly – Baguio Memorial Park below.

Beaulah Badua (Class ’70), who, with Liza, Nestor’s wife, spent most of the last six months in Emmett’s room at the dear old Baguio General Hospital, the best medical center around, saw how he hopelessly and helplessly tried to keep his independence and dignity being eroded as his medical condition worsened.

Emmett’s fear was another teacher’s dread in Mitch Albom’s book tribute “Tuesdays With Morrie”. In his bed waiting for the inevitable due to a debilitating and paralyzing disease, teacher Morrie Schwaetz was asked by television host Ted Koppel what his greatest fear was. Morrie replied it would be the day when somebody would have to wipe his ass.

“I will always respect your dignity, and you, as my father and teacher,” Beaulah had to reassure Emmett. Yet she told him he was so proud because he was so intelligent, which he admitted – humbly. Muhammad Ali quipped that “when you’re as great as I am it is hard to be humble”. Yet the parody of another quote is that Emmett was that great to have the right to be humble.

Like Morrie, Emmett taught his students how to feel for others, and as such, to be human -as he was. He taught them how this journey to the grave called life – triggered by birth – matters not how long. Its meaning lies on how one helps other passengers, especially the young, undisciplined ones (like us then), prepare to face, with confidence and comfort, the bigger challenges that come in the latter part of their own journey.

Emmett’s children are indebted to so many people, some of whom he never met, others he hardly knew. His children thanked them - his fellow teachers, school administrators and others who felt there was really no need for such gesture. After all, they all belong to one grieving, yet thankful family.

In keeping with Emmett’s wish, some of his children quietly planted a pine seedling, as a living memorial. It was September 11, so they added one more pine, in memory of those who perished that day eight years ago.

An hour after his time was up, nurses came to transfer Emmett to a stretcher on wheels. Perhaps not knowing him, they were reluctant to hold his emaciated head so it won’t sag. It was an honor I took, gingerly propping his head up - a repository of abundant wisdom generously shared through the years by one who had fully lived out the lesson of James 2: 14-24. To have cared for him during those difficult times was also signal honor for the doctors, nurses and medical staff, some of whom were his students.

For Nestor, it was an honor having been Emmett’s friend. That’s why he sat there in the chapel until dawn the first two nights of vigil. (email:mondaxbench@yahoo.com/ecowalkmondax@gmail.com for comments).