Singing with Junjun

"We'll remember you with our songs."

A line that I sentimentally wrote against a violet ribbon before he arrived home from the funeral parlor.Junjun was the 5th of the 8 siblings.As the youngest,I had great memories of him.At 5, he taught me Rainbow Connection,Basta't Magkasama Tayo,Champoy Songs, and a number of OPM from Basil Valdez,Leo Valdez.Apo Hiking Society,Nonoy Zuniega,Martin Nievera and Marco Sison.I had known both male and female versions of David Gates, Jim Croce, Dan Hill,Roberta Flack,Olivia Newton,The Carpenters,and bits of Classic.

We were born to parents where music was their endearing tool in raising us as musically inclined members of the family.Our songs kept us intact.All of us can strum the guitar,can sing quite well but we can't play the instrument professionally the way Junjun did it.There were offers of good opportunity to him from a radio station and with music bands that he went through but fate was not so favored of it.His talent remained evident in the Amateur singing contests in the neighborhood where he accompanied local singers,in a variety of song arrangements.I looked up to him with such honor that I have had such a manoy.

He was not only a bassist,he was also the Spud Webb in the basketball court way back then. He married the manager of his team,whose  eldest child was at his age.Consequently, they had no child.He was not just popular of being an instrumentalist,player,but also a broker. He sold fry and bangus samplings in the nearby fishpond owners for a living.But the children of his wife,unceasingly mocked him of his being "underdog",who was after only of the benefits their mother could soon treasure from a high position in a government agency.

He revolted.They clashed.He went out from their abode with heavy heart to an adopted child,the grandchild of his wife, who was named after him.He eloped to an indecent love affair with an indecent woman,whom he met at one of  his talent gigs,who left his better half and young children with the hope to have a better life away from the miseries she once had.

Our mother was very reluctant of their situation,she cried in deep sentiment for the child,a girl, they both had in infidelity.His legal wife,went to confide soberly to our mother that upon her blessing she  entrusted back my manoy to our mother's keeping.That time, we could no longer track my brother's whereabouts, that he was not present on our father's burial which lamented much our mother's heart.

With heart full of disappointments,his legal wife went back to her hometown to continue life despite of the fate our family name had miserably brought to her.This enabled my brother to go back to our place facing new challenges that his decision drifted him to.The second child,a boy was bestowed to them.

They trodded a puzzling journey. Stable income turned economically drained.Poor health slowly rooted in his joints,that knocked him down many times.Slumbered from a weakening body,  he rose up but  he could no longer see his wife beside his two innocent children.She had gone with another man who could somehow ease the unhappiness she once had with the second man.

Their first child was in grade three,the second was three years old. Junjun molded them with the tunes of his guitar.They went to church together,praised God in the singing ministry where he held the lead guitar and his daughter led the choir. The children grew up strong despite of the gloomy days they tried surviving without their mother.A year ago, his daughter grabbed the grand champion trophy from the inter-school singing contest throughout the province.

He was bedridden for months.He asked forgiveness three times upon holding his pastor's hand.He stopped holding when he was being answered.He closed his eyes in an afternoon,an eve to the graduation day of his daughter from Senior High School; two weeks before the graduation day of his son. Everything was in place,he made arrangements with my other brother before he became mute of ailment.

 On his first wake,we sang his favorites: songs for the Lord,songs for his children,songs for his band mates and friends,songs for us,his siblings.Before we did it, we apologized for any mistake with the plucking of  chords for in the family he could only be the one who could do it almost perfectly well for all of us. My heart sings out for our theme song,"Someday we'll find it; the rainbow connection,the lovers, the dreamers,and me."Farewell dear brother.