Magandang gabi sa inyong lahat. Naimbat a rabii yo amin. Good evening, everyone. I’m Patrick, the middle son of Mimi, the sister of Auntie Uding. It’s an honor to be given some time tonight to say some things about my Uncle David.
I’ve spent the last few days talking with my cousins and their children about what they knew, what they remembered, and what they loved about him. There are factual things. He was born in Balacad, Ilocos Norte, the Philippines to Nicolasa Duldulao and Blas Narciso on December 29, 1936, which means he was only five when WWII broke out and nine years old by the time the war ended. Many of our parents and grandparents understandably don’t talk a lot about the war, but there is no doubt it affected several generations of Filipinos, Uncle David among them. He eventually went to grade school for a time with the intention of learning automotive skills, but as is the case with many poor families in the Philippines—after the war the nation was impoverished and there were many, many, many poor families— Uncle David left school to go to work. By the age of 17, farming was a logical choice as most of our province was almost entirely rural.
He went away to Cagayan and learned to grow crops, to tend to them, and to harvest them. He learned to raise animals. And I have to say, that a person who learns these things at a young age and grows into an adult who deeply understands farming, the weather, the water, the land has a different relationship to time. Someone who farms as a way of life must have a strong sense of what he needs and wants, but he can’t be too willful. He must acknowledge and even surrender to the powers of the seasons and their climates, but can’t give up too easily. He must be both passionate and patient. He must be both active and observant. I believe Uncle David cultivated all these traits.
Uncle David came back to Balacad from Cagayan and married Claudia Gelacio, our dear Auntie Uding. Their first child, Rosemarie was born in 1962 and Guillermo (aka, Gimmo, aka James) was born just a couple years later. Soon, they had a robust family with the birth of Manang Emy and then Edmond. Uncle David was clearly good at farming and wanted to stay in the Philippines to continue that work, even as many other men from Ilocos were going to Hawaii where the wages were promised to be more reliable and much better. Uncle David turned down many petition requests for a long time. By the time Auntie Uding was pregnant with a fifth child, Jay Mars, who would be their youngest, immigration informed Uncle that this was the last time he could accept a petition to go to Hawaii for work. Sponsored by his brother Bernard, Uncle David agreed, selling livestock to pay the required fees and to fund the journey. He left his family behind with hopes of a more stable life. Gimmo and Rosemarie followed him to Hawaii and they saw Uncle David’s hard work there, how he held down several jobs and walked a long way to the tourist-ridden zones of Waikiki to work in the hotels.
By the early 80s the Gelacio clan, through no small effort of my mother Simeona (aka Manang Mimi, aka Tita Mimi), started to grow here in New Jersey. Lela Menang was here for a while, Tita Mayda and TIta Mary came. Rosemarie arrived here in ’81 and Uncle David and Manong Gimmo the next year. By the time Tita Uding, Manang Emy, Edmond, and Jay Mars came to New Jersey in the mid-80s our house at Westervelt and certainly the house on Central Ave. in Metuchen were bustling with our extended family. Tita Uding and Uncle David continued to work hard, moving from residence to residence for a little while Iselin, Clara Barton, and Westervelt when Tita Mary lived there, until Uncle David and Auntie Uding finally bought their own home, there, in Bonhamtown on Cherry St.
This morning I went to our backyard to look at the garden that my wife, Mary Rose, has planted, she turned that bare lot into a thriving place of raspberries, native flowers, summer greens. And I walked out under our trellis to count how many paria (bittermelon) are growing. It’s the end of September and there are more than ten there now by my count. And I held the little fruit in my hand and I looked at the bee climbing inside its little yellow flower, and I stroked the bittermelon leaf so I could feel its veins in my fingers. And I thought about the work Mary Rose put in to make this whole place grow. And I know I was watching something of my mother. I was watching something of Auntie Uding. I was watching something of the work and the care and the tenderness and the joy of my dear Uncle David.
Two things that were consistent as I talked to all of my cousins and their kids. Uncle David’s garden was magical; and he was a quiet man. I believe those two things were intertwined for Uncle David. He walked to his jobs—whether the fields of Cagayan or the hotel in Waikiki or the hispital halls of JFK—quietly. It was how he cared for his family. He tended the stalks and vines of his garden, regarding their leaves and stems and fruit with a gentle quiet. The work was how he expressed himself. The garden was how he expressed himself. And sure he might hang a belt on the door to remind his grandchildren to behave. And he was no slouch with his fists as kapitan of the barrio. And he didn’t hesitate to slug a bigger man if he was disrespected. He might sing you a song you didn’t realize he knew the words to. Or he might break out into “God Bless America” or pull out his harmonica or ukelele to play. He even loved to tell the animated story of his right hook —PING! —But the quiet was how he expressed himself.
Transplanting a whole family whose stories are filled with the brutalities of colonialism, invasion, war, industrial coercion, and poverty, challenges that family’s connections. We, our family, struggled (and in a lot of ways continues to struggle) to feel connected to one another.
This struggle to remember our connection is true for every family. And every time someone we love dies, we remember that none of us has a story without the rest of us. The one true reality of a family is:We belong to one another. Love demands that we love the whole person and the whole family. For better or for worse. I confess that I am selfish, cranky, and stubborn... and so is everyone in this room. I, for one, am sorry to be that way from time to time. But I hope that selfishness is just a door to generosity, and crankiness a door to tenderness, and stubbornness a door to openness and forgiveness. We will hurt each other because we love each other. But just like marriage, we make a conscious choice to be a part of each other’s healing. I believe that is what Uncle David worked for. I know he loved to shop and scan the windows of the mall and department stores for the best brand names. I know he worked hard to buy his house and provide for family here and back in Balacad. And yet, I also understand that those are just material gestures for what his spirit wanted, which is a family that is healthy and laughing and alive, together. That was my mom’s spirit! and Uncle Charlie’s spirit! and Uncle Jose’s spirit! and Auntie Uding’s spirit! That was their real gift to us. When we remember them, when we remember Uncle David, we honor that gift.
There are so many details of Uncle David’s life. Eight and a half decades of a quiet man is impossible to portray in the five or so minutes I have here. But I wanted to end with a note of immense gratitude. In the last few days, I got to sit down with my cousins, my nieces, and nephews—Uncle David’s children and grandchildren. And I got to touch and hold his great grandchildren. There’s a linguistic tradition in the Philippines that we had before Japan invaded, before America invaded, before even the Spanish invaded. It’s this: If a grandmother is Lola and grandfather is Lolo, then the great grandmother is Lola Tuod and great grandgather is Lolo Tuod. It literally means Knee Grandmother and Knee Grandfather. The idea is that we are at the bottom of the generational line and each older generation goes farther up until you reach the the ulo, the head, the Heavenly Creator. That is to say, for us Filipinos, the family is a body together. We form a body across generations. We form a body across time. That body, when one part is separated from another part, is dis-membered. But when we come together, when we are really present with one another, when we reach one another, we literally and figuratively RE-MEMBER our parents and aunts and uncles or lolos and lolas our tuod and our ulo. I’m so grateful for these last few days for the chance to listen to my family. To remember Uncle David. To remember our family.