‘Till death do us part’

JUDE Buot with his parents Mary and Elmer

Like the couple in the movie, “Titanic,” the parents of Jude Buot, Elmer, 61 and Maria, 56, were trapped in rising waters and faced death together.

Their bodies were found embracing each other at their home in Katipunan, Purok 2 in Barangay Hinaplanon, Iligan City. They died in the massive flood spawned by Tropical Storm “Sendong” on Dec. 17 last year.

In memory of his parents, Jude and his brother, Michael, initially thought of having their parent’s vow of undying love and togetherness written on a tombstone. The epitaph is apt, Jude said. “They lived up to their vow  ‘They won’t ever separate.’”

They died after more than three decades of married life—six days before their 32nd wedding anniversary. The brothers wanted Dec. 23 to be the date of the funeral. But this wasn’t to be. Despite being embalmed, their parents’ bodies deteriorated fast. The funeral parlor told the brothers that fast decomposition was typical of drowned victims.

Thus, after a wake of just one night, the Buot couple were buried on Dec. 19 at the St. Michael’s memorial park in Palao, Iligan.

On New Year’s Day, one of the first things Jude did was to visit his parents’ grave. On his Facebook account he wrote: “Ma, Pa, happy new year! And thank you! I will miss you! ;(”

“It was very painful,” Jude said of losing his parents.

Pain, however, was assuaged by his parents’ final act of dying together.

He said, “If we look around, I am thankful that even if we lost our parents, we immediately found them. They were not missing. We were able to immediately identify them. We didn’t have to wonder about what happened to them.”

At least 80 percent of the fatalities with known addresses in Iligan were from Hinaplanon, which includes Bayug Island.

Rhodora Englis, a senior faculty member of Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology, said she was impressed not only because the Buot couple were found embracing each other, but also because the couple were found wearing their office identification cards.

Since one doesn’t go to bed wearing an ID, maybe the couple did so so they could be easily identified when found, according to Englis.

Englis said that to be proactive was typical of Elmer Buot who was a senior faculty member of MSU-IIT’s Mechanical Engineering Technology Department.  She remembered him to be an active, friendly and former manager of the MSU-IIT cooperative.

Mary Buot was a home economics teacher at the high school department of St. Michael’s College.

Jude’s elder brother, Michael, is an engineer working in Cebu. Jude is pursuing his doctoral studies with mathematics as specialization at Ateneo de Manila University.

They are a family of academic achievers but, according to Jude, his father would describe their family as simply simple

—with simple dreams and simple pleasures.

Traveling together was one of their dreams. The family had plans to see each other in Palawan right after Christmas. The trip was Jude’s gift to his parents. All the tickets, the arrangements and itinerary for a travel tour had been made. They were just marking time to be together on the 26th when disaster struck.

In time for the 40th day of his parents’ death, the epitaphs of his parents were done but they didn’t have the “till death do us part” phrase written. Instead, they contained the same color photo of his parents as a couple, smiling.

The words to remember them by are also about the same. For his father: Husband, father, teacher, friend. For his mother: Wife, mother, teacher, friend.

Most Filipinos would pray that a loved one shows herself or himself in a dream before the 40th day of his or her death (after which it is believed that the soul would leave Earth). Jude said that he too had dreamed of his parents. They told him they were happy and just fine—together in life and in death. Minerva Generalao