Tribute to a dear friend

Tony Arcellana was a former Jesuit scholastic and a mentor of young minds at the Ateneo de Manila. After he left the Jesuit order and equipped with a management degree from De La Salle University, he joined several multinational business corporations and later became a top executive of a USAID-funded nongovernment organization. He was so good in mathematics that he could multiply 7-digit numbers by five simultaneously without the help of a calculator and come up with the correct answers.

Tony passed away more than two months ago. I’m still in the grip of sadness for the passing of this wonderful person who did not have a wicked bone in his body. Only some time ago, Tony was alive and full of laughter. He was also waxing eloquent in denouncing the ills of our society and in voicing his aspirations for a better Philippines. All of a sudden, he is gone, silent forever, no longer sharing jokes with me, quoting Latin verses, and wondering aloud how his favorite grade school student could end up in an impeachment trial.

Who will now look back with me at our happy days in the Jesuit-run San Jose Seminary and marvel at the genius of some of our priest-professors, and at the same time lament how a few of them became candidates for the mental asylums and mere caricatures of their former selves?

No longer will there be a Tony Arcellana who could quote word for word the Latin lines of the famous speech of the Roman senator and orator Cicero as he denounced the malefactions of his mortal enemy, Catiline.

Two weeks before Tony wrote “30,” while we were reflecting on the inevitability of death, our own death, he recited the famous line in the Church liturgy for the dead: “Vita mutatur, non tollitur (Life is transformed, not taken away).” He immediately followed it up with one of the last lines of Rizal’s “Mi Ultimo Adios,” almost joyfully and, perhaps, with a premonition of his own mortality: “Voy donde no hay esclavos, verdugos ni opresores, Donde la fe no mata, donde el que reina es Dios (I’ll go where there are no slaves, hangmen nor oppressors, Where faith doesn’t kill, where the one who reigns is God).”

Laughter

When a land line was installed in Tony’s residence many months ago, one of the first things he did was to phone me and, like a small boy who had received a lollipop, tell me the happy news. And that was the beginning of our almost daily “telebabad.” We exchanged ideas on almost every topic in this valley of tears—from philosophy, theology, the potentials of the Internet, the social issues gripping the country, and the impeachment trial of then Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Three days before he died, he asked me when the impeachment trial was to resume. (The trial was concluded on May 29 with a guilty verdict on Corona.—ED.) I gave him a tentative answer and, he said he was getting impatient waiting for the telenovela. It was after I asked him why he was so interested in the impeachment that he disclosed that Corona had been his student at the Ateneo Grade School.

I ribbed him: “Pare (Buddy), what did you teach him?”

And he laughed like a boy caught by his mother with his fingers in the cookie jar.

It’s been said that we should have the capacity to laugh even at our own mistakes; to laugh with people, not at people; to laugh out loud; and, if possible, to die laughing. In a way, Tony died laughing. He had many funny bones.

My wife used to say that when Tony laughed, one would think that that’s the end of laughter in the world. He was the easiest person to make laugh, and his laughter was robust, happy, and never mocking. He laughed at everything: his own mistakes, a funny situation that he saw in the streets, the honest miscues of his subordinates. Most especially, he loved clean jokes. There was a time when, having grown so familiar with our jokes, we decided to assign each joke a number to avoid repeating it again and again. Eventually, we were laughing at the mere mention of a number.

He liked Church- or priest-related jokes, betraying his former seminary training and close affinity with Church people.

Abiding faith

Tony and his loving and caring wife, Amy, shepherded their brood of five quite exceptionally. Like many Filipino parents, they struggled through difficult times to bring up their children. They did it so well that each child is now a bona fide professional.

I remember that when we talked of our struggles in bringing up our families, Tony’s optimism would always shine through and he would quote Our Lord’s words in the Garden of Gethsemane: “These, too, shall pass.”

I know Tony and his family had suffered tremendously, especially when he had a stroke that left a part of his body paralyzed. I saw how Amy and the children cared for him like bees surrounding and protecting a wounded queen. But during all that time when Tony was being buffeted by the “slings and arrows of his outrageous fortunes,” I never once heard him complain. He willingly embraced God’s plans for him.

One time, he told me to go back to the practice of meditation, saying it would help me. Whenever he waxed religious, I always felt that he was a person really close to God. He also advised me not to forget to recite the Divine Mercy prayer at 3 p.m. every day, and told me that our devotion to the Sacred Heart would assure us of a holy death.

Exuberance

Tony died a young man at 73. These lines are truly for him: “Youth is not a time of life but a state of mind. It is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotion; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.”

One of his predominant gifts was his indomitable courage in facing up to the challenges of life. He believed in his heart that we would grow old when we abandon our ideals.

For this man, what mattered in the end was not wealth, huge mansions, fat bank deposits, expensive SUVs, but character, integrity and a firm belief that beyond this life is another more glorious, more happy, and love-filled life with the Almighty God.

I know that standing before God’s throne, Tony can confidently appropriate for himself St. Paul’s beautiful words: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. What remains is the crown due to holiness which the Lord will give me on that day not only to me but also to those who love His brilliant coming.” (2 Tim. 7)

Carlos Isles, 72, is a retired social development specialist and consultant of World Bank- and Asian Development Bank-funded projects in five Asian countries. He is enjoying his golden years, conducting workshops on emotional intelligence, running fellowship meetings, and playing his high-tech harmonica with the Gintong Himig Trio, a group active in propagating kundiman music.