To Francis K. and others: May they rest in peace

HAPPY WEEKEND

Gina Dizon

I remember Francis Kilongan, one cool guy, neighbor, cadre, community leader, father, and husband of a friend and a classmate.

A neighbor who lived six houses away from my house in Dagdag barangay of Sagada.  I said cool, as I never heard of him get into petty fights, did not get drunk nor shout his way along the road like how I would hear some  drunken guys wobble and swear their way home down Dagdag road  at the dead of night.

A cadre I came to know when he surrendered after staying some time in the mountains and be with his family. His wife is Sofia was my high school classmate and a friend. They have four children.

I cannot imagine how it is to be away from home and embrace an ideology whom he has come to know – the call for justice and a dream for a better place to live in. Not every ideologue would choose the path to hold the gun and meet the guns of the enemy. But he chose to do that. Walk cold, sleep cold on rainy stormy nights. What sacrifice it must have been to have chosen that path to be away from one’s family, to be away from the comforts of walking free on the road of what is called civilization.

That must have been not easy to do. That ideology he belonged to still calls for social justice. Up to now, it calls for peace talks to happen between the Communist Party of the Philippines- National Democratic Front - New People’s Army and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines.   

Came the day that he went down from the hills and be with his family and the rest is history. The next thing I knew, Francis Kilongan was elected as barangay captain of Ambasing. And then he must have done good as he got elected as councilor of the municipality of Sagada for the term 2010-2013.

Francis chaired the peace and order committee of  the Sangguniang Bayan  and authored the  Traffic Ordinance which paved the rules for parking at the proper sides of the road or no parking at all. An ordinance which is important  in a tourist town like Sagada visited by some 170,000 tourists a year, clogging the roads whenever peak times come.

Together with other councilors of that SB term, they passed ordinances among of which was the Revised Revenue Code having raised local income and other resolutions which facilitated funds for community projects  including the Boasaw  waterworks partly funded by CHARMP,  Dantay- Sagada Road,  and  farm to market roads for northern Sagada from OPAPP’s ( Office of the Presidential Assistant for Peace Process) fund for  conflict ridden areas in a program called PAMANA.

Thereafter, he went to private life and put up a winery business with an industrious wife and children and established Gabay a flourishing wines, cakes and  T shirt souvenir  shop.  He improved their house with him doing the carpentry.

Francis peacefully died in his sleep night of July 11, 2018 having suffered from that dreadful attacker called ‘stroke’.  

He had many plans he said, as shared by his older sister Cirene during the burial ceremony.

I came to know later that Francis talked through Cirene in what is called  “naluganan” in  Sagada  dialect meaning,  the spirit of the dead  talking though the living. According to Cirene, Francis told his children that they love their mother Sofia and grandmother Agnes and that they love everyone.

Whatever plans Francis must had, these must have been good as he was a good person.

xxx

Luisa Fanged Pelew is the wife of John Tay-og Pelew, a colleague in media practice and member of  Montanosa Press Club. John Tay-og  manages  Radyo Natin in Bontoc.

Last Thursday, I attended the wake of Maam Luisa. Co-teachers, relatives, friends, villagers, employees from government offices rendered  spiritual songs and condoled  with the family she left behind , her husband John and their only son Eljhay, now in high school.  

Her burial was set the next day, Friday. She died Wednesday, July 18.   

Luisa unfortunately met her death when a rock fell on the van his husband was driving on their way to Guinaang, Bontoc where Luisa teaches elementary grade.

Maam Luisa is a teacher at Guinaang Primary School. She must have been a very good teacher with the way how her child also conducted himself, soft spoken, obedient and with a calm and smiling disposition.

Sweet and loving to their one and only child, Luisa must have raised their son following her soft nature.  I noticed Eljhay calmly sing “And I love you so” to his mom moving many to shed tears.  Real tear-wrenching when he leaned softly crying at his dad’s shoulder after he sang, you see many wiping their eyes.  

The sad scenario switched on to singing   ‘I am resolved to follow the Savior”, each word trying to control the tears from falling to break the heavy sadness of the  moment.

 “Be strong in the Lord and be of good courage” as the local government employees sang when they delivered their tribute song to the bereaved members of  the  family of Luisa Fanged Pelew.

xxx

To the rest of the bereaved families of Francis Kilongan and all the others who departed especially in the very recent month who mourn and grieve passing of their family members -- be strong in the Lord.

They include families of Wanagen Mayocyoc, Waken Lagasi; and Auntie Dorothy ‘Dodo’ Magalgalit Calabias,  Auntie Carmen Bawing Pacyaya and the most recent Manong Teddy Gayman who passed away following lingering illnesses. May they rest in peace and let light perpetual shine upon them.

Be strong in the Lord and be of good courage. Dying is part of life and it tells that mortals, all human beings pass through this stage. And each one has his or her time to leave this earthly life and become the unseen soul and spirit.

And so after the eighth day of the nine days of ‘luwalo’ or prayers/novena done for Auntie Dodo, one of those who attended shared there is no heaven nor hell because elders when they do their rituals say that the spirit of the dead are amongst us, guarding and protecting the living.

They must not have left us and did not go somewhere else like a place called “heaven”. The seminarian intern who conducted the ‘luwalo’ said elders did not know heaven because they did not know about Christianity then.

Well, that calls for another sharing one of these days before this piece shall expand and that takes another space for that.