IN one of my past column articles, I said memoir writing is good medicine especially for people of my age. So to reawaken my mind’s memory I am doing what I preach.
There is a stage performer in our family. Or he used to be, anyway. In recent years, he has decided to stay at the back stage and we’re all waiting for his reappearance.
He is my older brother whom we call Cong Noel, third in a brood of eight siblings. He is now looked up to as our oldest living sibling, as my Atsing Lita and Cong Boy are both gone.
I was just a small kid in primary grade when Cong Noel started going up on stage, competing in a high school declamation contest. He would practice his piece day after day, with our Tatang or Ima, and me sometimes, as his rehearsal audience.
I remember one line in particular because he kept repeating it, pronouncing the syllables of each word, figuring out where to put the emphasis on the phrases: “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.” It sounded pretty impressive to me, although I didn’t know what it meant. Later in college, I learned it was from William Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar.”
Cong Noel is a natural extrovert. What you see is what you get: no guile, no affectation, open faced. What made him unique was his flair for the dramatic, having the personality of someone who can get and hold the attention of other people.
Like any other performing talent, he also has a stage name: Dex or Dexter for short. I don’t remember when or how he came up with it but the name stuck to him ever since.
In the “umpukan” in our street many years ago, neighbors and gang mates would gravitate to Dex, his performer self, who often hogged the limelight. That’s because he wouldn’t just tell a story, he would act it out. He would regale, fascinate, and delight his ad hoc audience with his delivery, as they sat open-mouthed hanging on to every word. Then Dex would draw it to a satisfying close and punctuate his performance with his trademark infectious guffaws.
In college, not surprisingly, he came to lead the drama guild of his school. They staged several plays and in many afternoons, I would go home from school and find them rehearsing those plays and generally having fun.
But his performing ways were not confined to the theater. He was also a skilled street basketball performer. He could dribble and shoot the ball with fluidity and grace. He didn’t have the height but he employed the facial contortions of a seasoned actor to deceive his guard and fake his moves. He would also use a range of vocal skills to vex the opposing team all game long.
He also had a way with the guitar. Next thing I knew, he had formed a band or combo as we called it then. He was the bassist in a group of 5. They branded themselves as “D’ Clerics,” a reference to the one year he spent in a Benedictine monastery.
The band would perform mostly during neighborhood events such as birthday parties, baptismal parties, and Saturday night dance gigs in our street.
I could hear them practice their numbers in the home of one of the bandmates. I still remember a few of the instrumental pieces in their shallow repertoire. Because it was the pre-Beatles era, they played mostly covers of hits by the American instrumental rock band Ventures.
Suddenly one summer, Cong Noel left home to join the US Navy. I was with the group that saw him off at Sangley Point in Cavite. Since then, we lost touch with each other.
Later, we learned he developed a romantic relationship with an American named Sue whom he married a few years afterward. Their marriage produced three sons, Jonathan, Vince and Edwin who grew up to be fine young men, siring kids of their own who I still have to meet, all living in Georgia, USA.
While still in the navy, from time to time, Cong Noel would surprise us, appearing unexpectedly at the door, such as when his ship would dock at Subic Bay on its way to Okinawa or a naval base somewhere in Asia.
In later years, a death in our family would occasion Cong Noel’s visit to the Philippines. How I cherish those moments when we would be together with him again. His mere presence never failed to make our conversations sparkle.
But then something changed after Sue, his wife of many years, passed away after a long bout with a progression of health ailments. Cong Noel had become reclusive. He lost the appetite for traveling abroad. I know he also has serious health issues but I don’t think that’s the reason. What we hear from his sons is that he prefers to stay at home, alone. He goes out occasionally to their homes barbecue afternoons to down a beer or two, his favorite alcoholic beverage.
He has no social media existence so to speak. We can’t even post messages to him via messenger, viber, or e-mail because he has no accounts. He has gone back to being the Benedictine monk he once aspired to be in his youth, alone in his own private cloister.
In the long silence, I’ve come to realize that in the two thirds of our respective lives, Cong Noel and I have not occupied the same space and time. I specially miss having an intimate talk with an older brother, more so now that my other older brother, Cong Boy, is no longer here to keep me under his wing.
There’s so much in his life that I long to know. How was his life as a US Navyman? How did he meet Sue and how did they adjust to each other, he being Filipino and she, a mixed race American (Sue had native American blood)? How did they raise their three boys? So many questions waiting to be answered.
This is why I would love to have Dex the performer come out and take the stage once again. What a glorious moment it would be if he would unlock his box of memories, even the unwelcome parts of his life, and share them with me. It will be good medicine for the two of us.
Be that as it may, even in his isolation, far away in a foreign land, may Cong Noel feel the warmth of my filial company in spirit, recalling the words of one writer, a descendant of immigrants: “What happens to my brother in some sense happens to me. Nothing can erase that, no matter how far apart we live or how well we hide.”
On another level, I imagine that Cong Noel has befriended the darkness of alone-ness. As someone has pointed out, these moments of being alone with ourselves “hold the possibility of being catalysts for spiritual transformation.”