General Admission
Pareng Louie
By Al S. Mendoza
THEY recently buried the remains of another of earth’s good men, Luis F. Apostol.
He was my Pareng Louie.
He made me godfather of his eldest son, who is now a civil engineer.
He made my only daughter, Malaya, the godmother of his youngest child—a girl.
He made me special all his life.
Before he had passed on, Pareng Louie was looking after my bahay kubo in Bogtong Silag in our hometown Mangatarem.
Without me saying a word to him about keeping an eye on the bahay kubo.
“Weeds have overrun your yard, Pareng Al,” he had texted me. “I’ll have them cut down.”
A week later came another text-message: “Your fences had been vandalized. But don’t worry, I’ll have them fixed.”
Nature is nice but, at times, it is also cruel.
Its meanness took Pareng Louie away—the cruelest joke on me in recent memory.
The news hit me like a bolt of lightning: “Patay na si Luis.”
Luis is dead.
The text-message came from Pareng Julian, Pareng Louie’s older brother who, like Pareng Louie, is more than a brother to me, too.
Alexis (named after the legendary boxer, Alexis Arguello) is Pareng Julian’s youngest of three boys. Alexis is my godson.
“What happened, Pareng Julian?”
“Leptospirosis,” came his reply.
Pareng Louie, a wound in his leg, waded through floodwaters in his farm at Bogtog Silag in the aftermath of typhoons Pedring and Quiel.
As we all know, floods infected with rat urine can be fatal to those suffering from wounds.
The stricken Pareng Louie was brought to Villaflor hospital in Dagupan. He died without seeing the dawn.
When he learned of his passing, Boni M. Sison texted me this: “He loved you so much he’d always bring you a basket of vegetables each time he comes back to Manila on Mondays from Mangatarem.”
I’ve known Pareng Louie since first year high school.
He came from an elementary in a barrio called Quetegan.
He was graduated salutatorian there only because “he deferred to a girl named Amparo.”
The first thing that struck me with Pareng Louie was, he was good in English.
During recitations in our English subject, he always came up with the correct answers.
The past participles, the future perfect tenses, which were all virtually Greek to us—he knew them all.
He always topped our quizzes in English.
We went our separate ways in college, only to reconnect after graduation—and with families of our own to boot.
We had become as close as ever again, beginning with my stint as sportswriter of the Bulletin Today (Manila Bulletin today). He was with the Professional Regulations Commission.
At one time, there was not a night when we didn’t drink beer inside what were then called beerhouses—at times, up to the small hours of the morning.
Ah, those were the days, err nights, indeed,
Pareng Louie is gone now. And a part of me had died, too.
Dear God, you have your reasons.
Whatever they may be, I do not question them.
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