A long time ago, The Preacher preached with these words so loudly which still hold true as they are being preached in the wilderness till today: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. . . . A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-6).
Truly, no event in a man’s life gives around so much pain than the one moment in time when there must be parting.
After faithfully serving the government for about three decades with all his best, last January 1st, effective immediately, my one and only known “Maninoy” in life finally called it quits.
Last Friday, I witnessed one if not the most heart-rending testimonial lunch program ever in sole honor of him, launched privately by his peers, wherein everybody in a sea of tears did swim. And it cemented my belief that all eloquence and mastery of prose and poetry would be poorly no match to the plain words coming out freely from the heart of the simple and the ordinary.
Had it not for “Maninoy” and his insistence to convince me to become a modern day Philippides who’d do nothing but run and run, I’d end up probably in Erap’s allegory as someone who’d be “pupulutin na lang sa kangkungan.” When I imposed self-exile in Metro Manila more than two years after the first people power show, I vowed to myself never to return unless I’d be with me that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
But with his soft approach with the voice of an angel and gentle persuasion, I knew I had then to make once and for all a lifetime decision. Thus, “Maninoy” plucked me out of the planet of the unemployed, where wallets and pockets were like a newborn Earth: dark, without form and void. Of course, my Auntie Yet was reliable as ever and supportive of me together with T’yoy Nilo, but sometimes a man has got to do what a man has got to do.
Sometimes I wonder either, if comes the time of my turn to retire from service and retreat to my own sick bed, will there be tears too to shed by colleagues or they show festive mood and great revelry instead?
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