WHILE revisiting Baboo Mondoñedo’s book, “Stepping Stones,” I was struck by her sense of urgency as she lived out her days wearing the different hats she was comfortable with: “mother and grandmother, a writer, a bridge, a creator, a midwife, a comic, a child, an artist and an activist. At any turn, I may be asked to do what is called for at the moment.”

She earlier asked, “Why is it that I feel a sense of urgency? Why do I feel like time is coming and going too quickly?”

What follows is a closing sentence that can make one’s skin crawl at her foresight of what is to come: “I will know what it is I need to do when the time comes.”

Days after her death on Nov. 26 that has sent people reeling from shock, Baboo has become bigger than life, still a bridge and a midwife, now an intercessor, too, for requests and petitions to the Almighty Source.

Her friend, Sr. Perla Macapinlac, ICM, said at rites before the body’s cremation that now that Baboo has crossed over, those she left behind can still be assured, if they have faith, that she will always be at their side.

Somehow, “Stepping Stones,” published by the University of Santo Tomas when Baboo was in her mid-60s, is starting to read like a guide to aging gracefully. She called the sixth decade in a person’s life the “comfort zone… like sipping aged wine, smooth, bodied and spirited.”

‘Fulfillment curve’

She packed a lot in one life. Her incarnations included modeling for European royalty alongside Maita Gomez; marching and organizing with the parliamentarians of the street; joining fact-finding teams to investigate human rights violations in northern Philippines; founding Café by the Ruins (with friends), the Cordillera News Agency and, later, Baguio Aquarelle Society, and reviving the Baguio Writers Group.

She had every right to claim that at 67 (age at death), she had reached her “fulfillment curve.” The last few years of her life were spent on sojourns in the country and abroad with friends and family (some of her travel essays appeared in Inquirer Lifestyle), or living out the role of Baboo the grandmother, which she considered the pinnacle of her “career.”

Almost at a moment’s notice, she would drive down to Manila to witness granddaughter Ines’ first communion or older grandson Manolo’s tennis match.

Just as quickly, she’d turn the car around afterwards to drive back to Baguio to answer “the call of the mountains,” particularly her wooden cottage in a bamboo and pine forest in Pinsao. There she’d paint, write, dine by her lonesome or with company, or sip the occasional brandy, whisky or scotch. No one could hold a drink better than she, and she’d scold bad drunks who had the nerve to drive.

At the wake for Baguio Writers Group founding member Napoleon Javier this summer, Merci Javier Dulawan, Baboo and I shared a long bench with the new widow Linda. I’m glad I told Baboo what my favorite piece in her book was. Sometimes among our regrets when someone dies is if we don’t tell her something we should have while she was still around.

I told her I liked her recollection of her marriage, the breakup, decades of living apart, raising only child Tootsy, and how she returned to take care of husband Eduardo Echauz when he suffered a stroke.

They became friends anew, went out for dimsum or pasta, visited places that were friendly to the disabled. When he died, she realized that “there is truth to the marriage vow of ‘till death do us part.’”

Only death separates us from you, Baboo. And, as your buddy Rudi Tabora quoted you as saying recently, “You only die once. So live well.” Indeed we will, until we meet again some sunny day and in full color.