It is said that in every Filipino male lives a Frank Sinatra. Well, my dad was my own Frank Sinatra, and it doesn’t matter that he could not sing to save his life.
Dad was a few years younger than Sinatra, but he, too, had the airs of a pack leader. Indeed, he had his own rat pack, rats who couldn’t carry a tune, either. They were with him day and night, one or two even sleeping over often, in our living room. They did his bidding, laughed at his jokes, and called him daddy, and my mom mommy.
The evocation sharpened for me when I learned that dad and Sinatra had become first-time fathers in the same year, to daughters; Frank had Nancy Jr., Titong me.
With natural or transplanted hair, both were attractive to women. But, unlike Sinatra, who had only three children, and all by his first wife, dad had more children after me, although not with mom, with whom he only had one other, a son, born five years after me.
I would say, they had about as many loves, but among dad’s, mom was easily the prettiest, which I couldn’t say of Frank’s first Nancy Sr.
Relevant line
If dad couldn’t carry a tune he made up for it in his own musical way. He learned the words of songs and, like most people of his time, marked events of his life with them.
When he and mom were living on a shoestring budget, he recited “I can’t give you anything but love, Baby.” He loved summers in Baguio and celebrated them with “The Things We Did Last Summer.” Whenever mom’s relatives got into some kind of fix and had to be rescued, he would begin to hum “It Had To Be You,” then, coming to the relevant line, would recite it with one word changed to make it even more relevant, thus:
“…with all your folks (instead of the original faults)
I love you still,
It had to be you,
Wonderful you,
It had to be you.”
When he first ran for political office, as congressman for Manila, his opponents attacked him for his complicated love life. He replied with the title of a popular song, “Sapagkat Kami’y Tao Lamang.”
A five-termer in Congress, he described every election victory, coming as they did rather easily, as a “Walk Away,” from the Matt Monro hit.
As he got on in years, he borrowed Sinatra’s hit “My Way” for his own equally gutsy approach to life.
Good name
Still, for all that, he left a good name in Congress, where he would have spent 20 years had not Ferdinand Marcos prematurely ended his fifth term with martial law. His six years as President Cory’s diplomatic representative in Taipei proved to be his happiest in public service after Congress.
He and his brothers grew up having just about everything: good looks, good name, good education, some money, and prominence. Their life was ideal in every way. Lolo Rafael had nine sons and wished for among them a doctor, a lawyer and a priest. He only got one of his wishes: dad became a lawyer.
Before entering politics, dad wrote a daily column in The Manila Times. Called “My Daily Bread,” it literally put meals on our table. It was a sort of political satire featuring an invented character—Maneng the barber.
Uncle Ding, the youngest of the nine, observed that he and two other brothers also wrote newspaper columns—Rafael Jr. (“Thorns and Roses”), Alejandro (“Roses and Thorns”) and he, Alfredo, “Light and Shadow.” That makes me feel even more authentically family and, of course, dad’s rightful heir.
Dad would never have guessed how much he would inspire many of my columns. I myself am somewhat surprised at how much I remember him, who wasn’t always there except when I really needed him, which couldn’t be more fair. Writing this column every week has really endeared him more to me.
Autumn days
While his heart, eyes and knees started to give out, his hearing, atypical of our family, remained good until the end. He continued to enjoy music, Sinatra, particularly. In the car on our way to somewhere—lunch, doctor—he’d get misty-eyed listening to him.
“Sinatra somehow says it better,” he’d say, smiling, and reach out for my hand to kiss it. Mom, whose hand it should have been, had gone ahead. He followed three years later.
Some songs have stuck in my own mind that will always remind me of dad, like “The Years of my Youth” (music by Michel Legrand, lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and Hal Shaper).
“…I have the loves of my life
To remind me
That the whole wide world was mine
I feel at peace with all that surrounds me
And the joys of these autumn days
Still astound me…
But there are so many songs left unsung yet
I’m young yet
And my heart is the heart of a young man
Who doesn’t want to die.”
He had nothing against heaven, he assured me. His beef was with dying. But as good as he was at arguing around things, he couldn’t find a way out of that one.
Not even his pacemaker could prevent his last stroke in 2009, which left him speechless, nearly blind, although all his other bodily functions were fine. He lived for another six months until his second family decided it was kinder to let him go—he had been feeding through a tube.
He survived Sinatra by 12 years.