Rafael Reyes Roces died at 32, when I was only four, too young to have any recollection of him, unlike cousin Ninit.
Herself just a year older, she treasures her single mental picture of Tito Liling, there standing by lolo and lola’s four-poster bed, playing the old Roces trick on her: pretending to have sprained a finger and in agonizing pain, Tito Liling implores Ninit to pull hard on it, and when she does—well, we all know how that prank ends.
Older family members themselves scrounge for every bit of memory of him. I have none and feel impoverished, as might his youngest brother, Alfredo, Ding.
Only eight years older than I, he was himself too young to have had a chance to really know him, an eldest brother separated from him, the youngest, by 20 years. Thus driven by a similar lack, though a more desperate one, I imagine, he researched him and brought out a book, “Looking for Liling.” It is from that book that I learned of his horrible death.
By Ding’s account, Uncle Liling and fellow prisoners, misled into thinking they were being released, found themselves in a hospital, there bled for the benefit of wounded Japanese soldiers. Then, with their last strength, they were forced to dig their own mass grave and beheaded.
Biography
Liling’s skull, notes Ding, showed the evidence of a missed first blow. I wept reading, and have since thought he certainly deserved a biography, but can do no more than this, a commemorative sketch: Oct. 28 was his 100th birthday.
My husband, who himself wrote the biography of my uncles’ first cousin Chino Roces (“Chino and His Time,” Anvil, 2005), likes to say that those who don’t deserve a biography write a memoir, and agrees Liling was deserving.
As early as August, I got an alert overseas call: it was Uncle Pipo, fifth in a line of nine Roces boys. It was undisputed in the family that if lola indeed had a favorite, it was him. Among the brothers, the true rivalry seemed who had been closest to Liling, and each one has had something to cite to back his claim.
My own Dad shared Liling’s interest in writing; it was their bond. At the Ateneo, Dad ghostwrote English themes for basketball players who had neither the time nor the inclination—for a fee.
Liling, a school basketball player himself, could definitely write his own themes. In fact, he put up and edited his own literary magazine. And Dad’s claim was further reinforced by winning an essay contest sponsored by it: his entry sent under a pen name, Liling had not known its true writer until Dad came forward to claim his prize.
Another point scored: when Dad, 19, and Mom, 16, eloped, Liling and his wife, Noring, were there to take them into their home.
Tito Pipo would not be out-claimed. In his call from L.A., he told me his story, in Spanish. (I had almost forgotten how fluent all the brothers were in their father’s language, and cousin Tina, Pipo’s daughter, had to remind me of its significance: usually, it was reserved for communicating and discussing delicate, urgent and emotional matters.)
His voiced cracked reminiscing riding angkas, already a teenager, on the front bar of the bike, every day Liling pedaled to the Roces Hermanos administration office of the family-owned Ideal theater, where he worked.
A bottle of beer
On the way home, Pipo was treated to a bottle of beer—but only one bottle and no more—and that was enough to make him feel his idolized brother’s close equal.
Tito Pipo, among other things, inquired into the state of his brother’s grave after the storm, but was more concerned about Liling’s memory. Out poured sentimientos with his other brothers, particularly Tuting, Anding and my dad, all gone by then. All three had served the government at one time or another, and Pipo had hoped they had the influence for securing Liling’s place in history.
I, of course, can only offer a plausible excuse for my own Dad. A five-termer in Congress, he was probably in a position indeed to do more than the others. But Dad was his very proper father’s son: he’d have thought it best for someone other than family to, say, have a street named for his brother. In fact, there’s some obscure, short street in Sampaloc named “L. Roces,” which my mother, Lita Roces, liked to claim as hers.
Anyway, Pipo’s least hope, I presume, was for something special undertaken for Liling’s 100th. Not long after, he called brothers Marquitos, 82, and Peping, 90, the only two brothers in the country, and Sylvia, Liling’s older child and only daughter, visited his grave, built by his father for him to share with his fellow martyrs, for the usual preparations for All Souls’ Day. But not nearly what Tito Pipo had hoped for.
It must, indeed, be harder for those away, like Pipo, to deal with memories. My youngest uncle, Ding, now 80, chronicles the family history from a distance—he has himself made Sydney, Australia, his home, although he has been visiting at least once every year.
Pipo reaches out to family from even farther and mostly by phone, seeking someone with whom to recount memories cherished and missed. I was it this time, and I felt especially touched. Before hanging up, he said, “Te quiero mucho, hija.”