By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
One good event I missed recently due to the confluence of many factors was the wake of Atty. Alex Bangsoy’s mother last week. Her mother was a big success, for what can be a better measure on the state of motherhood than how one’s child or children have turned out.
I am sure her wake was a happy affair, a reunion of sorts of the extended family if not the whole town as she departed at a ripe old age and she was leaving a well accomplished child with a very good family. Thus, I should have been there. I could have delivered an inspiring sentence or two interspersed with some jokes here and there. I could have even practiced delivering my own brand of baya-o. I would have enjoyed it especially meeting “long lost” friends and relatives and talking about the good old days, and gossiping about other people.
She could have snappily caught “death” so she could cross the great divide. As one old man in the barangay where I came from said, “when death comes, you should quickly snap it as you would a fly.” The word he used was “sikmatem” which I guess has no one-word equivalent in English.
Only a well accomplished person can have such a welcoming and positive attitude about death. Somebody who was at peace with that eventuality. Somebody who had realized that “heaven” had been waiting for her for millions of years.
Whatever her situation was, she must have departed quite contented, if not happy. As I said, who could be a more accomplished mother? She gave her only son the best education this country could offer through the Ateneo. Who went on to further acquire the best education the world can offer at the Harvard University. He was able to put up a nationally recognized real estate company, Goshen Land.
Very soon, her grandchildren would be treading the same path. Knowing that your loved ones you are leaving behind are going to be OK must be the best thought one could wish for when one is going.
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The recent episode of the Delima affair was quite entertaining. Obviously what the witnesses said were scripted. But let us dwell on the facts.
She admitted on TV she fell for Ronnie Dayan, her bodyguard and driver, who became her lover. How can a person in so high a place fall for such a person? Sure he had the build, even the looks. But she should not have the same frailties as we ordinary people have. She should have a better moral fortitude. Otherwise, being a woman in our society with a double standard—with a wide gap in between— she should resign. Being a politician, she should have known that.
As we watched on TV the cross examination of Dayan over lunch, all the comments from our all male group were about sex.
I guess however that it was not about sex. She is about to become a senior citizen or that she is not young anymore. Her libido must be almost nil. Well, some hormone injectables might help but still she is not young anymore.
So my take is that it must have been more psychological than physical, or that she got drunk with power.
There must have been a psychological need for a validation of her beauty or her capacity to attract good looking younger men. But the youthful beauty was already gone long ago, no matter how much she denies it in a veiled manner.
Or that she got drunk with power to the effect she thought she could get anything she wanted like money, political power and, most of all, younger men. Was her separation from her husband a factor here? Might be.
So if there are dirty old men who try to cover up their inability to get it up anymore by running after young girls, there must also be an equivalent phrase like dirty old women.
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