In memory of Millette Mendoza Ruthledge

By Rex Catubig

 

I was in bed watching the ABC7 6 o’clock Eyewitness News when the phone rang. I reached for the bedside phone and limply said, “Hello”. “It’s Millette!”, exclaimed the voice on the other end.

It took a trillion secs before the name registered an image on my mind and the voice became the image. My heart leaped when I realized who it was: Millette, my college friend, the tall, leggy girl with the raspy voice. The college actress whose poignant yet fierce delivery of the heart rending line in our theater guild’s production of Six Characters in Search of an Author resonated across the years in memory: “Cry out, mother, cry out!” We were both in a couple of stage productions and that’s how we struck a deep friendship.

That was the best news bulletin that night and the beginning of a daily newscast between us—but sadly only for the remaining two years of her life.

We lost touch after graduation. Finding each other again was one of those against-all-odds moments. A meant-to-be happenstance.

There was so much to catch up on, and so little time, as Millette intimated she had been pulled out of the experimental alternative treatment that was the last defense to combat her end-stage cancer twinned with diabetes. Still, she was obstinate to battle it out. No retreat, no surrender even when defeat is at hand.

Much was in store in life to live for. But because time was mercilessly stealing that life away, we seditiously held time captive for a while.

After thirty some years, we agreed to meet in San Francisco for her birthday weekend. Discounting the fact that she’d be taking her husband along, it was a romantic getaway in the most romantic US city. I was certain with a smile, that the top floor corner suite I booked at the Hilton San Francisco on Union Square with its panoramic view of the Bay Bridge, would surely make her leave her heart there.

To surprise her, I arranged the delivery of a Coffee Crunch cake and a bottle of Moet & Chandon at the stroke of midnight. Right on cue, my accomplice, the room service captain waiter, knocked. She was incredulous someone could be knocking at that hour; and when I opened the door and a white linen covered cart pulled into view, her jaw dropped. Even her husband Dan was in joyful disbelief. I bet it was her best birthday ever.

Her birthday was February 29th but the calendar ended on the 28th that year. So we celebrated birthdays past and birthdays future.

The afternoon after, we caught a matinee show of Abba’s Mamma Mia. It brought us right smack back into our cheerful college years. And at the rousing finale, we stood up from our seats and jumped for joy as we gleefully sang and danced along with the cast. For a chimeric instant, Millette was full of life and was the “Dancing Queen”.

How I wished there would be more magical moments like that. But there would be less and less days ahead and no more intercalary day on a leap year. The hands on the clock would no longer hold still. And the death knell that sounded from afar would toll closer and louder.

The newscast would be signing off.

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