Pappy
My daughter and I watched one of the final shows of Jesus Christ Superstar at The Theatre at Solaire last month. I was one of the many Gen Xers who reminisced while savoring the high notes of Jesus and Judas, played respectively by Luke Street and Ricardo Alfonso, and my daughter was one of the few millennials in the audience who gleefully discovered the 55-year-old musical.
I was in elementary school when I first listened to this Andrew Lloyd Webber rock musical. Thanks to my sister, who exposed me at a tender age to the wonderful world of rock music, including this incredible album, I was able to appreciate the passion of Christ from an entirely different viewpoint. A couple of years later, this fascination rose to a new level when my father and I watched the film adaptation.
That’s the way Pappy was—he would take me to movies that were probably inappropriate for my age, not because he wanted an excuse to see them but because he considered it an effective way to open my mind.
For a number of reasons, I was not able to spend much time with Pappy, but the few moments we did share are unforgettable for their practicality as well as their emotional connections. Watching movies, reading novels, writing stories, appreciating music, shooting photographs, driving—all these remained with me, in theory and in practice, some of which I have passed on to my kids.
Pappy also tried to impart religiosity upon us. My siblings and I were raised and educated the Catholic way, with Sunday Mass at Sta. Cruz Church being the highlight of our week (all right, for me, it was the post-service visit to nearby Ha Yuan restaurant for my favorite siopao and mami). This went on until we all entered the University of the Philippines, where critical thinking paired up with individuality to free us from the vicissitudes of religion, similar to how John Keating (played by Robin Williams) unshackled his prep school students’ minds in Dead Poets Society.
Although he knew that our going to UP instead of a university run by religious orders might undo all those years of Catholic indoctrination, Pappy did not interfere. In fact, he was proud of what we had achieved. Since he passed away in his 60s, I imagine that in the Catholic afterlife, Pappy must still have played a part in our lives, or at the very least, saw how we turned out.
After our mother’s demise—we recently commemorated her 40th day—I have been contemplating more and more about mortality, particularly mine, in the context of my legacy, and by legacy, I am not referring to material wealth but life lessons. I hope that I would be remembered for how I have lived my own life, how I treated people, the things I have said and done; in other words, I would want to be missed.
If I dare to again explore my forgotten faith and return to Our Father’s home like the Prodigal Son, I just might find my way again. I don’t know if my Camino de Santiago pilgrimage two years ago was a sign of things to come, but if it was, it was a pretty good place to start.
And perhaps that is why watching Jesus Christ Superstar at this point in my life hits differently, more deeply. When I first heard it as a child, I was captivated by the music. As a teenager, I was fascinated by its narrative. Today, I find myself reflecting on it as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane.
In Act Two, Jesus cries out: “I’d want to know, I’d want to know, My God / Want to see, I’d want to see, My God.” It is a line filled with uncertainty but also with hope—the hope that there is something beyond our limited understanding.
I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic, but I do question far more than I would believe. As I grow older, and as more of the people I know depart ahead of me—there have been a few of them this year alone—I find myself wanting to know, wanting to see what really lies ahead after taking the Grim Reaper’s cup of tea in Guardian: The Lonely and Great God.
If there is, indeed, something after this life, then someday I will see my father again. I would want to remember him and him to recognize me. Like all the other fathers I have known—good fathers, flawed fathers, absent fathers, heroic fathers—he ought to be there somewhere in that great celestial reunion. He should be there.
And then, what will we talk about? I honestly do not know. Perhaps we will argue about some classic movie. Perhaps I will thank him for all the things I only learned to appreciate after becoming a parent myself. Perhaps we will discuss whether Jesus Christ Superstar was better on stage or on film.
Or perhaps, as always, we will simply watch a movie together. That would be enough.
