Think about it
Time is short
By Jun Velasco
THAT familiar charming woman — Mrs. Perla Duque Novales — at the famous Marigold educational center is gone.
She was 86. We’ve known Atchi Perla since we were in the elementary grade as the warm and motherly proprietress of Marigold. She was second mother to most schoolers, for she personified the omnipresent “mother hen” to all who went to her Marigold, where we bought school materials, newspapers, comics, the memorable Classics Illustrated, and many items.
Little did we know that she was a sister of Dr. Paco Duque, father of Gonzalo, one of the earliest politician-friends we had, along with former Speaker Joe de Venecia.
Atchi Perla was a symbol of school work for it was at her Marigold that we deferred to when it came to school paper, Mongol pencil, crayons, water color, cartolina, pentel pen, Christmas and Valentine cards, basket ball materials, pingpong rings, racquets and balls, PMT and other brass materials, newspapers, name it.
Most Dagupenos and Pangasinenses wouldn’t have failed to go to her store on A. B. Fernandez Avenue — a complete store, if you will. And struck friendship with the sweet, pretty, charming, comely sales lady, advisor, friend, and Dagupan Lions officer rolled into one.
Atchi Perla has left for the Great Beyond to join beloved husband Pol Novales, who was the finest of ugali, too. We have no doubt they’re now having a sweet reunion in God’s Country.
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If you please, the common reminder to our graying years is obviously the changing scene. We don’t see anymore the faces we used to see in the familiar places. Many have died, and we can only sigh and say, we miss him and her, leaving a pain in our inside. Often, change hurts, and we receive it stoically because the passing scene is part of life.
We probably pause to look for a way out, something that heals. Some seek the comfort of home and loved ones. Others turn to the spiritual because it is in there where pain is irrelevant. We realize that there is only pain in the material world.
While we sat to write this, we learned that another friend, former Councilor Rudy Fernandez, has also died. We had many memorable times at the city hall, he as public servant and us, as journalist and friend. That’s another familiar face we won’t see anymore in Dagupan. Sad but inevitable.
A few months back, Dr. Ado Duque, older brother of Gonzalo, would tell us to look kindly at our fellowmen. Time, he said, is short, and so if it’s still possible for you to do something good for the person next to you, spouse, your children, parents, kins, next door neighbor, colleague, friend, enemy, your reader, anyone, do it now before it is too late.
Kuya Ado was a great man. He harbored no ill feelings against anyone. Whenever we saw something good that he’d done, he’d instantly point to God up there as the cause of it, the sole giver of achievement. How we wish we had his sense of equanimity.
Gonzalo wrote about him as a “great sportsman” having excelled in chess, basketball, pingpong and other sports hence his name etched on the LNU gym. But we saw his virtue in how he dealt with the ordinary people who he said deserved to be treated kindly. After serving in the US air force, the regional development council, the education and civic circles, Dr. Ado has placed family and beloved wife, Mita, over and above all else.
We are seized by the fleetingness of life because we are often overtaken by the swiftness of the changing scene. The faces of destruction in New Zealand, Libya and other terror-stricken countries should alert us to an uncertain future. The sages would advise us to live each day as if it were our last “because tomorrow might never come.”
Let’s make use of these gifts –this day and all opportunities to do good for others — to please God, and we add, there can be no eternity if we choose not to live today.
* * *
AWARDEE. We salute our brilliant kin Tony Patungan of East West Bank Dagupan Branch who was awarded as branch of the year during the East West Bank leaders nite at the Sofitel Hotel last Feb. 19. A topnotch Jaycee and Rotary leader, Tony Pats is married to the former Leah Ferrer, a banking exec and Rotary leader, beauty queen too.
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