This is the eulogy my father gave for my grandfather when he passed away ten years ago, this past January. I miss him dearly and dwell frequently on the life lessons that I gained just from him being around during my childhood. It’s worth a read if you’ve got some time and are interested in my family history.
Simkins Funeral Home
6251 W. Dempster St., Morton Grove, IL 60053, USA
Eulogy to Tatang / Vicente Santarinala
January 10, 2003
On behalf of everyone in our family; Deanne –my partner for life and our three children, Ian, Sheila, and Dean, my older sister Inne, and my aunt Regalada –who is now the only surviving out of the 6 siblings of my father, my brothers – Cecilio, Severino, Fernando, and my younger sister, Gloria, along with their respective families who are now waiting for our father’s coming home to the Philippines, I thank you for coming tonight to join us in prayers and to remember the life of our father.
On May 4, 2001, we tendered a surprise party for my father’s 91st birthday here in Chicago. We planned to put on a formal Filipino wear on him and told him that he would be a principal sponsor to one of our extended family member’s wedding. My younger sister from the Philippines sent him the native barong that is on him now. When he received it , he wondered and said , “Why would your sister send me an outfit like this that would be more fit to wear on my ‘THE END ? – meaning his passing away’”. My father had such a good time in that party, he even delivered a poem in Filipino. Much of the honoring that I will tell you today, my father heard in person in our native language —Tagalog. He was so thrilled when I was giving him honors that he kept interrupting me by adding to what I was missing. Tonight, I feel so blessed that the honors I will tell you to extol our father , were heard by him in person and he was obviously very pleased.
My father arrived here in Chicago in the spring of 1985 by virtue of the immigrant visa petition that I filed for him after I became an American citizen in 1984. He was 75 years old at the time. Before he came here , he thought that he was born on January 22 . In preparing his documents for immigration , he realized that his birthday was May 3, 1910 so we only started celebrating his birthday on the right day after he came here in the United States.
My father was born of poor parents . His father died when he was only 10 years old leaving his mother with five young children. Because of this, education was not an option for him and his siblings. He learned how to work in the fields very early in life. At 21, he married my mother who was nineteen at the time. I am the youngest of their four children. My mother died at the age of 32 when I was only six months old . Our folks told us that some of our relatives wanted to adopt the four of us separately but my father refused to let us grow in different households. With the help of my aunt, he raised us with the trades that he knew—farming and carpentry.
When I was six years old, my father married the first cousin of my mother with whom he had two children. This blood relationship made it easier for my father to raise a nuclear family. We grew up loving and caring for each other like we came from only one womb.
From childhood, I had seen my father’s hard word and diligence and admired him for all his work. He was both a farmer and a carpenter and he loved his trades so much. He was a workaholic. His pastime was to work in the fields or in our backyard planting vegetables or keeping an orchard of fruit trees, and making handicraft products like baskets, winnows, cribs, and sofa-beds out of bamboo and rattan to add to his means of livelihood. He never had any time left to gamble or just have plain good times like some of his contemporaries. I remember the comments of our neighbors that he must be the earliest riser in our place because our house was always first lit at dawn everyday.
Despite his lack of formal education, my father earned a lot of respect and admiration from his peers as a carpenter. They said he was a very fast learner and his work was very precise and polished. They looked up to him as a master carpenter and his work to build houses was always in demand.
One of my father’s finest qualities was being a people person. He was very generous and kind and our door was always open to visitors and friends. He was extremely hospitable that people who came to visit us would always be offered coffee or meal depending on the time they stepped in. My father was very compassionate, friendly, and helpful. He always volunteered his expertise for free in our neighborhood. When people borrowed some thing like bamboo shoots for example he would say they could have them for free.
My father brought these innate qualities here in America. He used to rake leaves from the neighbors front yard in the fall or shovel snow from their sidewalks in the winter despite his great fear of the cold. One example of his kindness that I believe is worth retelling happened last December. His illness brought him to the hospital for two days last December 17 and 18. When my aunt, my sister , and I picked him up after his release on the 19th , he asked if we could eat out because he was very tired of the hospital food for two days. We took him to Chinese restaurant close to home. While we were eating, two gentlemen (one white and one black) kept looking at us . Finally, the white guy approached our table and asked us if we remember them and I said No. He told us that they were the garbage collectors at our neighborhood in our house in Chicago where my father lived with my brother and they remembered my father very well. They said that during hot summer days, my father would wait for them in the alley with some cold canned pops many times. He offered to pay for our food and I said that it was really not necessary. He insisted and said , he sincerely liked to do it for my father. My father did not know what was going on so I explained it to him in Filipino. He looked closely at the guys and said, “Oh yeah…I know them” . He shook their hands and thanked them. My father’s love of people would truly prompt him to do something like this or even more.
Personally, my father was very neat, well-groomed, modest, and prude. He liked to dress up and always asked me for cologne. He wanted to smell good all the time. While he was very sick in the hospital, he would always insist to go the washroom and did not want to have even the nurses or the aids help him changed if he could help it.
Another quality that made me very fond of my father was that he was a believer. He lived his life by the sign of the cross. I would see him many times displaying it as he left the house, got on the car, got down the stairs, before a meal, and in many other movements of his life. Before his death, he stayed in the hospice for two weeks. One day, I brought him a crucifix from home and he gently asked the image of JESUS to help him. Towards his end, I heard him calling on GOD to help his children and his grandchildren.
This quality most likely moved GOD to change the life of my father. Many in our hometown could not believe the twist of his fate. From a very humble and uneducated farmer / carpenter, they could not believe that he would have a chance to come and live in America. They could not believe how four of his six children would have a chance to finish college. They could not comprehend how he would have a chance to speak well of his family especially his children.
Each one of the six of us was our father’s little hero or heroine. My eldest brother , Cecilio, worked hard by my father’s side early in his life. My older sister, Inne, became a beautician and helped start the transformation of our family by providing for us while at the peak of the practice of her trade. My brother , Severino, learned the dignity of work from my father. He worked his way through college and his way up the Philippine Air Force retiring a few years ago with a Colonel’s rank. My father looked up at him and always referred to him as his “Colonel”. I am very fortunate to have done a little something that earned me my father’s pride. Our hard life taught me to love and excel in school to raise the standard of our family life. Modesty aside, I became a constant top finisher for four years in high school. So, my father’s pride of me came from his going up the stage every year at graduation time in our high school to pin a ribbon or hang a medal of honor on his son. If you had met my father when he was alive, I am sure you had heard all the stories before maybe many times. He could not stop talking about it . It sometimes embarrassed me but never did I burst my father’s bubble because I knew where it was coming from. After college, I helped my younger sister , Gloria, got a college degree of her own. She became my father’s hero because he believed she was her most gentle care giver especially when he was sick. Towards the end of his life, my father said that his glory would be to take a final trip home and be cared for by his daughter , Gloria. We helped our youngest brother, Fernando, got a college degree as well. Sometimes, he felt bad that my father would not proudly talk much about him but I know that my father was very proud of him as well. Fernando is very kind to my father and my father knew it. My father had always enjoyed staying with him. He did many things generously for my father and if my father did not talk much about it , I am sure that familiarity could be a very good explanation.
I honor my father for his great love of his family and for the example that he showed on how to keep our family together united in love, understanding, and peace. He never wanted us to be apart from each other from the beginning. So much so, that when he was here in the US , he wanted to go back to the Philippines and when he was in the Philippines, he missed us here in the US. Many times, he had expressed that he wished we , his children, were not physically this far apart. He knew that emotionally , we were very close.
Each one of us loves our father to the same degree. We wanted to serve and love him forever, as we all know that he would want to do the same for us as well. Personally, I kept on praying to GOD to extend my father’s life because I was emotionally unprepared and not yet satisfied in providing love and comfort for him. When I saw my father suffering , I changed my prayers and surrendered him to GOD’s will. I told my father that if it was GOD’s will to make him better and take a last healthy trip to the Philippines, I would travel and accompany him to his final dream of resting for good in his native land. No matter what , I promised him that his will to be laid to rest in the Philippines was sealed.
I am going to miss my father. I am going to miss all the times that we were together . I am going to miss the simple pleasures of taking him for a walk in the mall, out to eat, or simply being with him at home. My consolation comes from the thought that my father went in peace to answer the call of the LORD to come home to HIM where he will be much healthier and happier to the end of time.
I like to thank GOD for giving me the grace to honor my father while he was alive and well and to repeatedly tell him how much we cared for and loved him while he was still alert in his final hours. This makes this honoring without any regrets and much easier.
Again , thank you all for your prayers and for your being here. GOD bless us all!