Perfect Love: Remembering My Lolo Daddy
I have a memory of Lolo Daddy which I have not shared with anyone --- until now. When I was about 4 years old, Lolo visited me, my brother, and my parents in Pampanga. My youngest sibling had not yet been born. At some point, rain began to fall as I was playing with my grandpa outside the apartment. I then told him, “Lolo Daddy, buy me chips!” He replied, “But it’s raining” because he didn’t have an umbrella with him. Yet I persisted. “Lolo, I want chips!” I said. He looked up to the dark skies that hovered above the porch and glanced around the houses nearby. “Alright, wait here,” he said, before marching down the street and disappearing into a corner of an alley.
A few minutes later, I saw a figure through the rain. There was Lolo shuffling towards me --- his head bent beneath his hand to shield his face from the downpour, his other arm swinging slightly at his side while he grasped a small pack of Pee-Wee and a bag of potato chips.
As an occupational therapist, I often tell the families of my patients not to acquiesce to children’s unreasonable demands. They must learn delayed gratification, I said --- and I still believe that! But during that rainy afternoon in Pampanga, Lolo Daddy, in his wisdom, demonstrated to me that loving someone entailed enduring inconvenience, even risks, for the sake of the other person’s happiness. And for him, that someone whose happiness mattered more than his personal comfort was four-year-old me. I learned through Lolo’s life that love does not consist of grand gestures that are meant to impress or manipulate. Rather, love is the quiet yet faithful giving of oneself, even if there will be neither applause nor accolades.
Our Safe Space
Lolo Daddy’s kindness towards us, his grandchildren, certainly went beyond potato chips. The truth is that he and Lola could’ve spent their senior years just relaxing and traveling around the United States to be with relatives. They could’ve left us to the yayas if they didn’t want us to bother them. It would also have been perfectly understandable if they refused to raise us while our parents worked abroad. After all, they’ve had their fair share of raising their own children, which was already an amazing feat.
Instead, our grandparents dedicated the twilight years of their lives to taking care of me and my brothers. Because Papa and Mama needed to work in Saudi Arabia to provide for us, our grandparents gave us our ultimate safe space: a loving home that was free from strife.
My grandparents wisely spent our parents’ financial support on everything that we needed, from high-quality school materials to healthy, delectable meals. The house was also well-kept. Lolo was often busy doing repairs to ensure that we never had accidents during playtime no matter how rowdy we became.
But more than the physical orderliness, my grandparents filled their home with laughter and music. Mealtimes were a no-holds barred discussion about anything, may it be about politics or our personal crises. In their Quezon City house, we spent our childhoods playing and studying without the fear that our grandparents might deprive us of what we needed if we offended them. It was there in the Payongayong-Milo home that we freely explored our interests because our grandparents never forced us to change the kind of people that we were to earn their approval. We knew that we could be ourselves around them.
I, for one, am certain that my grandparents liked me for who I was, not for what I could do for the family. It didn’t matter whether I was acing my exams or struggling over a math problem under Lolo’s tutelage, whether I was basking in the spotlight for my accomplishments or cowering in a corner because I refused to sing and dance during a family reunion. My grandparents loved me just the same.
My Highly Accomplished Grandpa
For me, Lolo Daddy and Lola Mommy were the epitome of unconditional love, albeit in different ways. My grandma Edita was basically a classic liberal: she accepted people no matter what they had done and allowed them as much freedom as possible to live according to their conscience while supporting them in practical ways. My grandfather Ernesto also loved us as we are --- but he held us to high standards! His criticisms of people’s deficiencies were always painfully accurate. Yet his reproof was an expression of confidence that innate in us was the great capacity to cultivate the gifts that God has given just like what Lolo accomplished in his life. For example, do you know that we have electricity here in Metro Manila because of my Lolo Daddy? He was one of the top engineers who designed the power transformers of our big cities! He also spearheaded many charity projects that uplifted the poor.
Moreover, Lolo was the most cultured member of our family. As a boy, he spoke Spanish and he could converse in basic Japanese at the height of his professional career. He played the piano, organ, guitar, drums, and accordion. He had the steadiest hand when sketching beautiful drawings. Because he was raised in a household that prized refinement, his manners were always impeccable. He knew which utensil to use for which food, how to position them on the table, and he never hurried through a meal because for him, dining was not merely for physical sustenance. Rather, mealtimes were for bonding with the family over conversations about life that he may pass on the wisdom that comes from on high. And in situations that required much delicacy, Lolo chose the most precise words to communicate his thoughts in the most respectful manner.
Finally, Lolo Daddy was our clan’s patriarch. Relatives sought his counsel and he generously imparted to them his insights. What I wish I appreciated more when Lolo still had a keen memory was his role as a family historian, because through his stories about the past, I grew strong spiritual roots that were nourished by the long Christian tradition of our family through the generations.
All the Cinnamon Rolls and Beef Nilaga
But of course, Lolo was imperfect. Many times, in the final years of his life, our relationship became fraught with so much negativity because he remained obstinate even if he had become more dependent on me. I often exploded at him in anger whenever I deemed him to be reckless out of fear that he might permanently maim or even kill himself. Besides, there was a part of me that just wanted to be his granddaughter again. Not his caregiver, or his parent, or his therapist --- but that little girl who wanted her Lolo to buy her potato chips.
To be honest, he never really grasped how much I sacrificed for him and Lola Mommy even if I was not his favorite grandchild. That’s why as Lolo neared the end of his life, I grew more frustrated over the many opportunities that I lost because my family needed my help to take care of him. I lamented too that Lolo used to be the one who continued believing that I was a good person even when I needed to take unpopular, drastic measures to accomplish what had to be done. He defended me by saying, “Annie always has a good reason for what she does!” But in the end, Lolo often became upset with me for reprimanding him.
If I knew that he only had a few weeks left, I would’ve dropped everything just to stay by his side. I would’ve been kinder. Gentler. More patient. But I was afraid to admit that he was dying. My greatest comfort now is that my Lolo is finally safe in the presence of our Lord Jesus, who has loved and will love him in a way that I never could. I rest in the truth that Lolo is still alive in Heaven --- his body is merely a shell that has become too weak, too broken for all the enjoyment that God has in store for him. The night before Lolo died, he told me that he was going to run in a race. And indeed, a great cloud of witnesses is now cheering on my grandpa for finishing the race marked out for him.
I am deeply sad, nevertheless, because Lolo no longer answers whenever I call out to him. Gone are the days when I would see the beautiful smile on his face. I will never hear him crack jokes again. When he was still alive, I would always save for him those creamy cinnamon rolls from Cinnabon that we both loved because he disliked the ones with too many toppings. And no matter how much I relished eating the bone marrow of beef nilaga, I would give them to him while assuring him that I did not want them because I knew how much he enjoyed them. Now I can have all the cinnamon rolls and all the nilaga…but I don’t want them. I want my Lolo Daddy! I want to give him whatever it is that I can still give him.
However, that chapter of my life has ended. I thank our Heavenly Father for welcoming Lolo into His Kingdom. I’m also grateful to the Lord for teaching me to love. Not to love mere abstract notions of humanity, but to serve the people in my daily life because no matter how infuriating they can be, I am just as deeply flawed as they are. Finally, I thank our Heavenly Father for humbling me to accept that I too need love and forgiveness for my sins as a granddaughter. In the past forty years, I was never apart from my grandfather for more than twelve months. Now I face an entire lifetime without him. But with the Lord Jesus by my side, I will continue to run my own race until I reach the finish line where my Lolo Daddy is waiting for me.
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