THE MOST PAINFUL GOODBYE

 I remember this kind of pain. 

It has been quite some time since I felt this ... pain.  It is different.  It is like a corkscrew has been aimed at your heart and bit by bit the instrument is twisted shattering pieces of the very core that is you.  You break down into sporadic tears, unconcerned that you are giving the world your ugly cry.  

But that is the only way you can relieve yourself.

You hope that will be the final cry --- the last attack of tears that distorts your face and sends a river down your nose.  Yet it is not. You do not know how long the pain will last ... or when, how or why it will diminish. It will eventually happen but you do not know at what point the heart finally gives in and says, "OK, time to move on."

This is the pain of losing someone you never realized how much you valued --- how much you loved.

There is this thing about the people who form your household.

There are the yayas who take care of your clothes, your food, insuring that your house is neat and would water the plants, take out the garbage at exactly the same time every day --- and would spend the rest of their free time glued on the tv set watching Koreanovelas. 

Then there is the driver who is literally with you the whole day.

The driver knows exactly where you go, who you are with, where you spend the most time, where you shop, what you eat and the conversations you have over the phone as you are going from Points A to B. 

It is the driver who knows where you bank, what medicines you buy, the condition of your car --- and even your state of mind.

I do not drive so my driver is my appendage.  He is literally my right hand because, after a while, there are no more instructions needed.  Everything is done on autopilot. It comes to a point when I ask, "What is good to eat tonight?" and he would suggest, "Sir, matagal ka nang hindi bumibili sa Rubs sa Roces" or "Sir, malapit tayo sa Campfire Burgers sa Limbaga."  Things like that.  

If you are lucky, you can be gifted by the heavens with a driver who is not only a driver but a caregiver.  He earns your trust to the extent that you send him to Mercury Drug with your prescription and Senior card to collect your monthly supply of maintenance meds. He reaches that point when you can send him to the bank to encash checks, withdraw petty cash without any doubt that he will do anything that will diminish the strength of the bond between you.

He more or less knows your secrets because he knows who you are seeing --- when "entanglements" begin and when they unravel themselves from such complicated relationship knots.  Drivers become personal assistants --- and even more than that.  They end up knowing more about you than your closest of confidants.

If you are lucky, then you will meet not only a good and efficient driver --- but someone who you know you can really trust and eventually become part of you and your family, your inner circle and even your work.

I was lucky to have been given Arnold de la Cruz twelve years ago.

When Arnold first came to me, he was a company driver.  He had a whole set of polo barongs which he would wear when we would go out. In the world I live in, drivers who look like members of the Presidential Security Guards are looked at with either surprise of awe.  Arnold was tall and lean and a health buff. I looked like I had a bodyguard with me with the two-way radio hidden on the back pocket of his trousers.  Eventually I told Arnold that this was not the best dress code to wear when I am in shootings, tapings and the likes.  He eventually got the drift: he also inherited all my clothes that did not end up in boxes for Caritas.  Pretty soon, my Arnold had become a t-shirt and jeans guy.

What made Arnold exceptional was his inability to stay still: he would always find ways and means of keeping himself busy even when I do not have appointments and decide to stay home.  Arnold brought his own welding equipment and built multi-level iron planters for my garden when I entered my manic plantito phase.  Arnold used to work for a landscaping company so there are mornings when I wake up and find him in the garden rearranging the potted plants or proposing projects to enhance the flora in my residence.

He was such a health buff that he built his own gym in our backyard.  I gave him my dumbells and other exercise machines and he would spend at least an hour each day pumping iron. Or he would go jogging around the village.  Arnold would always take pride in keeping himself healthy and strong, telling me that I should really cut down on red meat and choose and veggies instead.  When the pandemic stretched and I bought a spinning bike and an elliptic machine, Arnold would suggest what exercises I can do to further enhance my strength and muscles.

He is the only driver I know who is ecstatic each time there was a Big Bad Wolf booksale and I would dump exercise  and health books on his lap for his further reference.

Arnold also built his own gym as a business in Cavite. He was telling me of unfinished house and lots he purchased on amortization for his family, especially his children.  He took great pride in the fact that he owned his own  house and business. Whenever he took time off, he would go back to Cavite to make improvements to his properties while engaging in other forms of money making ventures like selling sacks of rice to our neighbors and acquiring assets for his kids.

Arnold's greatest pride is that his eldest daughter will graduate from college this June.  His other daughter is about to enter college while his two sons are in junior and senior high. Arnold always told me that everything he did was for kids --- and for his future.  He did not only live up to responsibilities. He embraced them with commitment.

It is this commitment that he manifests especially when we are in lock-in shootings out of town. When my trusted utility head who I fondly call Yaya Mila retired because of the pandemic, Arnold took the cudgels and made sure that all my needs are addressed.  He would be ahead to get my food, make sure that I have water on the set --- and on the final day of our shooting, barely an hour before the tragedy, he was holding an umbrella over me because of the scorching heat of the sun as we worked on the seashore of Dipoculao.

Arnold did more than that. He took care of everybody.  He spoke to everybody. He had a smile for everybody.

During our shoot last week, he made sure that my anaks on the set had their food, had their water and needs.  He did not only take care of me: he looked over my nephew Getty who was with me on the set, he was already friends with my assistant director Franz --- and my students and now co-workers, Gab and Arrenze.  He was buddies with my staff like BingBong or Abe and especially my most trusted people like Edwin, Gat and Charyl. He was friends with everybody but anybody because that smile on Arnold's face was never erased. He always had something good to say to everybody and about everything.

That was why I felt so lucky to have him with me for twelve years.  Just recently we were talking about how long we were together --- about his first experience on my movie set, about how he would stash away my shooting needs (my folding chairs and table, my utensils, my coffee mugs, my brown rice, my coffee grains, my extension cord, my hot pot) and they would always be there when I needed them.  We were talking about how excited he was because his eldest child will be graduating from college this coming June in Pampanga.

Arnold's plans were always for his sons and daughters.

Each night before I have my dinner, I would step outside my house --- just to get out of the confines of the work room --- and savor the air.  Arnold would be in the garage talking to someone all the time or watching YouTube videos on his phone. Arnold would always approach me and we had our ten minute chit-chat about anything and everything.  Did the van need new tires for the long trip to Aurora? Did we need to change oil? Is it time to sell the SUV because it is already six years old?  Arnold would advise me about all this.

Then I would go back to the house and have dinner.  Arnold would stay there in the garage for a while and continue whatever it is that he is doing.

Last Sunday, when we finished the final sequence of the movie we were shooting, I announced, "It's a wrap!"

This set frenzy to the entire staff and crew.  It is more of the same: selfies, picture taking with the actors, insanity on the set as we prepared for a wrap party later in the evening.  

The waves were crazy brought about by the fact that Dipaculao is known for these giant waves from the Pacific and there was a low pressure area (soon to be a typhoon) in the southern islands.  Even during our first day of shooting, there was a company call where we announced that no one is allowed to swim in the beach because of the dangerous undertow brought by the frenzied currents. Everyone was warned: NO SWIMMING IN THE DURATION OF THE SHOOT.

But after the wrap, people decided to test the waters by the shore. Nobody was allowed to venture any farther than the shoreline. Let the waves hit you there. When you go on waist level, you are in danger. When you go chest-deep, you are in real trouble.

I went back to my room to change and joined the others on the shoreline. I could not even go shin deep because the waves were so strong.

That was when I found that there was an undertow and it pulled four people into the farther from the shore even if they were not even in waist deep water. 

The more expert swimmers grabbed the shorter and less experienced staffer and pulled him to safety.  Arnold took pride in being a strong swimmer as he always told everyone that he was born and grew up in Guimaras, so he knew how to maneuver the waters. He was there with the others who were sucked into the chest deep part of the waters.

When we were doing a head count, we panicked.  Where was Arnold? 

Three people said they saw him emerge from the sea looking pale and exhausted.  I asked where did they see him since the three were right beside me but I was facing the other way. They ascertained that he was out of the water because they saw him. Yes, he was emerging from the water. He looked pale and tired, they said.

We rushed to the resort. I was calling his name hoping he would come out of one of the rooms to jolt me out of the panic that I was feeling at the moment. Nobody could find him.  Then someone said that all his belongings were still on the plastic chair on the beach where most of the staffers left their belongings before rushing to the sea.

I realized that Arnold was still out there in the sea. I stood and watched those angry waves bashing the shores.  By the time darkness settled in and the shoreline was full of emergency teams looking for my assistant, I did not know what to feel. Or what was running in my mind.

I stood there looking at the angry waves knowing that they have taken our Arnold from us.

                                                     * * * * * * * * * *

You will never know the value, the importance of any individual in your life --- until they are gone. That is when it hits you.  Anyone can be family not out of blood ties alone but by the bonds created through time. Greatness in a man need not be measured by sparkling accomplishments that require thunderous applause and recognition.

It is the little acts of humanity and kindness that are better remembered than calibrated and celebrated accomplishments.

Arnold de la Cruz was a simple man who always had a smile on his face, wanted to be of service to people and knew how to talk to anyone and everyone. He had big dreams not for himself but for his children: he wanted a life far better for his kids as he prepared for what he deemed as old age.  Those long conversations in my van when we travel were such precious sharing not of a boss and an employee but of two people learning from each other about the journey called life.

I am still trying to process and understand why in a matter of a few minutes, the waters ended the life of a good man. I am still trying to comprehend what lesson is being taught here ... and I am beginning to realize that what Arnold accomplished in his seemingly simple and unpublicized life was far greater than what others claim as theirs.  Everyone but anyone who he met, who he touched are now weeping with pain asserting the fact that he was a kind, gentle and good soul who cared and loved people.  How many humans can actually have that for their bragging rights in this day and age?

They finally retrieved the body of Arnold early this morning.  I was further devastated. I still wanted that crazy miracle to happen --- that Arnold sprouts out of nowhere and says it was all a misunderstanding and that he was alive and well.  The discovery of his body eight kilometers from where he drowned, six hundred meters from the shoreline attested that for two nights he was drifting with the insane current underneath those waters.  I cannot imagine that without crying.  This is not the way a good man should end his short life.

But who am I to question what fate has designed for him ... and for all of us?

What is important now is to ask why he was brought into our lives ... and what his days set as an example to the years that lie ahead. Indeed, maybe the heavens above take the good first ... because they need to be spared of more earthly confusion, temptation and suffering.  Maybe the fact that we are all devastated by a driver's death is the fulfillment of a mission which was the very reason why he was sent on earth. His job was done ... and how Arnold is driving back home to the Father.

Life will go on as it must. But there are certain losses that are irreplaceable. That is Arnold. I can only be thankful that I had him for twelve years --- and that all the people who I love have also been given a part of that grace that he unselfishly shared with everyone.

Goodbye, Nold.  Ingat ka. Mahal na mahal ka ni Sir Direk.