Coffee and Cigarettes

The death of a family member isn't a pleasant topic and it's hard to write about it as it is to read. Last Saturday morning, November 8, 2014, my grandfather died. He was already very old and his health had been steadily deteriorating this past year. His body could no longer fight back the infections and he died of septic shock. He was ninety-one. He was laid to rest today.

Regrettably, I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't know him as well as I should have. We weren't particularly close on a deep, personal level but with such a large family and many more extended family here and abroad, I was a little further out of the ring, if you know what I mean.

My fondest memory of him was when I was still a little kid. Every afternoon, he would sit at the dining table for merienda and would have a cup of coffee. He would sit me on his knee and bounce me up and down like I was riding a horse. "Cigarette! Cigarette!" he would say it like a "giddyup". I think the reason why he said this was because I wanted to try things I was too young for and he was probably mimicking me trying to ask him if I could try a cigarette. Cigarettes were a no-no for a kid of course but he would let me try a sip of his afternoon coffee. This was a treat since I considered coffee to be a drink for sophisticated and mature adults. I tried it only to find the coffee too hot and bitter. I think I burned my little mouth but hey, adults could take it so why couldn't I? I thought. Nevertheless, he would let me try it if I wanted. It all seems so long ago.

But what I can say about my grandfather as a person was that he was the sort of man that had an aura about him that commanded respect. He was a lawyer and being a lawyer in the days of old Cebu meant that his name and reputation carried a lot of weight.

He was cautious and protective of his family. He was also a conservative and frugal man who was not given to the excesses and needless extravagance that befalls the nouveau riche of today. Yet, he knew the value of generosity. He was a noble and magnanimous person who helped a lot of people in his lifetime. And I mean a lot. He had a practice of repaying people who gave him personal service or even for no other reason that he wanted to, by sending them or their children to school. This included assorted cousins and relatives, even helpers, drivers, clerks and messengers. Such was his wisdom that he knew that education was a more lasting gift than something as crude as money. Many of those he sent to school have moved on to have successful careers and well-off families because of his kind spirit. His liberality made him a figure worth emulating. You don't see that kind of openhandedness in today's society; everything has strings attached nowadays.

Come to think of it, that's the image of my grandfather that's stuck in my head. He was an upright man of virtue who had a higher sense of morals than the common man. Though he seemed distant at times, it wasn't because he didn't want to be bothered but because he was busy working to make things better not just for his family, but for everyone else.

Reminiscing now, I remember the day my youngest cousin met him. It was one of the last times the family gathered together before he was bedridden. One of the last things he said to her before he became too sick to speak was a poem. He always had these sayings, jokes or figures of speech. I have no idea where he heard it, but I'm sure it was an amusing story. The poem went like this:

Drink hot coffee, drink hot tea,

Burn your lips and think of me 

I'm older now and I drink my coffee every morning but I think I'll always look back at those carefree days with my gentle, bespectacled grandpa and the little kid playing adult.