Tatay Bebot

My earliest memories of him were of being carried in one strong capable arm while the other held a bottle of his favorite San Miguel Beer. He was the first person who taught me how to eat with my bare hands: dried salted fish with leftover rice crust scraped from the bottom of the pot. Shirtless. With one foot propped on the chair. All the while, my mom scolded in the background, scandalized at our apparent lack of civility.

One time at a big family dinner, an aunt caught me scratching my itchy ass with a huge fish bone. The table went into an uproar. He was the only one who chuckled and showed me how to relieve itchy body parts by rubbing them on the rough edges where the walls met. From then on, I never needed any help having my back (or butt) scratched.

After a night of heavy drinking with the neighborhood toughies, he would lay himself facedown on the bermuda grass, a hung-over penitent, allowing the rough patches of greenery to ease the relentless itch of his alcohol-related allergies. I would jump up on his back then, leaping and shrieking with glee, something my own dry humorless father would never allow. And I endlessly wondered how they could ever be related.

One day, I told myself, I would be just like him - my uncle. He was, for me, the epitome of freedom.

I missed him when he left the country, and whenever he arrived, my siblings and I would unanimously declare a school holiday. The three "salawayons", he would jokingly call us. And by doing so, he acknowledged that he was one himself. Blood always tells.

I would throw myself in his arms and begged to be carried just like a little girl. How we laughed. When I got bigger, I grudgingly accepted the proferred lap instead. And while he puffed on his cigarettes and chugged at his beer, I would listen to all his stories, and complain to him loudly about my own father's harsh discipline - something I could safely do when I was with him.

He was a generous man, sometimes too much for his own good. Several times he took the shirt of his back to give to someone who admired it. Sometimes that someone was me. I was the recipient of innumerable shirts, a pair of purple corduroy pants (which I wore constantly when I was pregnant), and a handsome 20-year-old leather belt that Woog's behind has had a passing acquaintance with from time to time.

I did try mightily hard to be like him. I did a pack a day (too bad my asthma and I were in constant disagreement), drank like a fish (and was rushed to the emergency room with gastroenteritis in the middle of exam week). I even strove to cultivate his laid-back brand of humor. Alas. I was destined to be as dry as my own father.

Just as he was godparent at my christening, he stood as godparent at my wedding, as well, smoothing over the rough spots and declaring to all and sundry that I peed on him at my baptismal party. Promise me, he exhorted my husband and I, visit your Tatay every Saturday. He needs the company. We promised.

He showed me how to cook sarciado and dinuguan, a great revelation for this eldest daughter who grew up in a non-cooking household. Heavily pregnant one Christmas, I gobbled up his delectable spicy prawns simmering in a stew of thick coconut milk, a dish he had cooked for his own in-laws. Never mind, you go ahead and finish that, he laughed, I'll cook up another batch.

The happy years seemed endless. He and my aunt came home for their 25th wedding anniversary, and when they renewed their vows, Atch & I laid gently lay the binding cord across their shoulders while three-year-old Woog bounced in his seat - a ringbearer on steriods.

Two years later, I talked to him over the phone for the last time. The cigarettes had finally done a good job on him. My aunt said the diagnosis was terminal - he had lung cancer. I'm coming home, he gasped on borrowed air, you wait for me, I promise I'm coming home.

And I fought against tears. And I waited.

My sister called me a day after the New Year, sobbing. He had died peacefully in his sleep.

I cannot think about how he is never going to walk through the door again, unannounced, surprising everyone and calling for a bottle of "whatever" - his favorite San Miguel Beer. Or that I am never going to sit on his lap again and listen to his rough soothing singsong talk. Or that he will never meet my second son. And that no matter how I look, I am never going to find a better father.

He is in a good place, my aunt tells me over the phone, I know because he has told me so. And please tell your husband for me, she begged, convince him to stop smoking...

But if this is a lesson, then it is late in the telling. I write this to try to ease the tightness in my chest each time I think of my Tatay Bebot. I write this to pave the way for my hot scalding tears to fall, as an ode to what he was for me. Because I will always prefer to remember him as he was: that tall, lanky, chuckling, laid back man. My uncle.

I sometimes wish he would visit me in a dream. Maybe there, he'd let me sit on his lap again. Even for just one more time.