Through the
years, however, I’ve learned to reassure that penmanship,
for it is one that must be read with your heart, not your eyes. In the same
way that
as his eyes deteriorated, my father increasingly relied on his heart to maintain
his links with this world, to diagnose and find cures for its ills until even
that heart could no longer cope with his own demands.The strokes and squiggles on the pages are like those of our late Lola Purang, my father’s Mamang, another journal-keeper whom Daddy loved and missed so terribly. One of the most moving and comforting scenes I beheld as a child was this – the sight of Daddy and Lola conversing in the house in Baguio, conversing in tones that are hardly above a whisper, and their heads framed by a huge picture window that looked out to a lush hillside.
I did not have to grope for words to describe my father. Several “s” adjectives immediately sprang to mind – he was shy, silent, simple, serene, often solitary, and most of all, best of all, service-oriented.
In his diary, which he addressed and bequeathed to his first granddaughter and my eldest child Kimi, he wrote: “My only consolation is in not having enriched myself as a physician. But I have made friends. Some people love me (I think). I have not made enemies although I know a few who don’t like me. I have been shy since childhood, and I still am. Some people misinterpret this as arrogance or aloofness. That is far from the truth.”
Becoming a doctor was also far from his original plan. He wanted to be an agriculturist
because he was, in his words, “fond of plants and animals and loved seeing
things grow.” It was his sister Pacita who was studying to be a doctor,
but an elopement and early marriage cut short her dream. So my father stepped
into that dream and became the family’s first physician.During his many sojourns to the countryside, my father was able to combine the worlds of medicine and agriculture. He looked forward to joining medical missions to barrios in Pangasinan and Zambales.
He wrote: “I came to this barrio not only to find peace but also to treat the people here since this is my commitment to them… My patients are mostly indigents. They are farmers, and you know how farmers earn their living. They till the soil they do not own, and from this they grow their produce and sell them. Sometimes, I run out of medicines. It breaks my heart whenever I write prescriptions, knowing they can barely afford to buy medicines. That is why whenever I come here, I see to it that I have enough medicines, including vitamins. Funny, some people mistake me for a dentist, too. I hope some goodhearted dentist would serve these people.”
After his free clinic closed for the day, my father would enjoy, in his words again, “all the green things, the animals, the farms. Here in this barrio, friendly dogs greet me. It is nice to hear once again the tweeting of the birds, the quacking ducks, the honking geese and the mooing cows and carabaos.”
And with words, my father again painted a rustic picture of him and his youngest brother Celso camping out in the yard in Pangasinan. “The December nights are cool. I have to wear my jacket like in Baguio. I sleep in a tent with your Lolo Celso. We prefer the tent because it is enclosed unlike the cogon house which is open on the sides. The sky at night is full of stars and one bright moon shining. There is always a cool breeze, the kind of air you do not feel there in Pasig. You can hear the rustling of leaves of the trees, and at times the crowing of the roosters. The dogs are loyal to us. They sleep under our cots.”
Some people faulted my father for this lifestyle. They said he was gutless, he has no drive, he lacked aggressiveness, he was not a go-getter, he was generous, but to a fault. And whenever he was confronted with these accusations, he would turn his back, walk away, his manner of saying, “So what?”
I like to think that Daddy’s mode of operation was also his way of indicting the coldness, the lack of compassion and the high cost of modern medicine. He was just about the only doctor I knew who made house calls. During his last years, my father stayed away from the annual reunions of the UST Medicine class of 1953. When my mother asked him why, he said curtly, “Some of my classmates have grown too mayaman and too mayabang.”
He appeared shy to others. One neighbor even described him as having a face that showed he has few friends, only for her to take back her words later.
My father’s patients would attest that he was a warm human being, particularly when he was with the workers. This closeness with the workers was sometimes misconstrued by management for something else. It happened twice, at different periods in his life. My father was forced to resign from his fairly neutral position of company physician. Management accused him of having planted the idea that the workers should organize a union so they could fight for better working conditions.
To my father, it was not enough that you are a good person. Your goodness must be accompanied with a righteous anger that you must manifest always when injustice is done to others.
My Dad,
in short belonged to an almost bygone age of Chivalry and Romanticism. How
lucky he was to have found my mother who comes from the age of pragmatism.
If our food, clothes, house and education had depended on my father alone,
we’d
be dead by now.Several diary entries confirmed what I had long suspected—that the reason my father’s pay envelopes were remarkably thin and skimpy was this: he gave money to his patients, money not just to buy medicines but other basic items like rice, infant’s milk, etc. Whatever was left, he would use to buy a bunch of bananas, one or two loaves of bread, biscuits for his grandchildren and dogs.
In one of the last few entries of his journal, my father described a typical coming-home scene in Pasig. This was an attempt to instill certain values in Kimi: “ I bring pasalubong for you and Ida [Kimi’s younger sister], your cousins Pao and Miki when they are with us. You usually meet me at the door, saying to everyone in the house, ‘Yey! May pasalubong ang Lolo.’ Then quickly you peek into the contents of the plastic bag I’m carrying and pick the goodies you like. One thing I like about you is, you always share them with your younger sister. I love you for this, too – your unselfishness. Stay that way till you grow old.”
Dr. Enrique Lolarga Jr. stayed unselfish till he died in Janurary 12, 1992.
Never before have we been more proud to be called children of Dr. Lolarga. Once again, Daddy, from your eldest child, thank you for the example of a life so steeped in service to our people, a life lived so meaningfully to the very end.