Thursday, the 1st of February 2007, started peacefully, quietly. Until my cellphone rang. It is Baby Semana, calling from Naga City. On my watch, it is half past 10 a.m.

        “What’s up?” I answer without any preliminary.

        She is excited, frantic. “Bimba, it’s Tita May. She’s in shock, in terrible pain, coughing blood. We’re here in the ER of Mother Seton Hospital. The doctors are doing all they can to revive her.”


Caption: May with her loving husband Perfing

        She drones on, trying to fill me in with some more details. But I am no longer listening. I am sending an SOS to heaven — Lord, take care of her please. I know you will take care of her. If you wish it, she will be well and strong again. Please, please, please.

        But Our Lord, in His love and wisdom, had other plans. He wanted my Sister May with Him. And it was time —

        Baby’s next message. “At 11:45 a.m., Tita May breathed her last.” She was five months shy of 70.

        My only sister, my big sister, my lovable, loving, gracious, generous sister is gone. And I am left bereft —

        To think I always believed she would always be around for me. She was the strong and healthy one. I was always very sickly, I was so sure I would be first to go. She often bragged to family and friends that she was never seriously ill in all her life, hardly ever visited doctors, didn’t need vitamins. To get rid of a cold or headache, she’d simply take biogesic and presto, she’d be as good as new again. Years before when my own five children were still small, I wrote her to entrust them to her care. My letter said: “Maybe that’s the reason God didn’t give you children - so you can take care of mine when I am gone.” I still keep that letter in my files.

        We marveled at the way she moved and got things done so fast, so efficiently, so beautifully. Whether it was to sew new curtains, summer dresses for my girls, fix a bridal bouquet or an ordinary flower arrangement, and tend to her roses and bonsai’s. Her beloved Perfing would often say: “Ay naku si May. Palaging on the go, palaging nagmamadali. Sa umaga, takbo sa Eco-Park. Puntang palengke. Ikot sa mga barangay to see how beautification projects are getting along. Parang lansadera. Di matapos-tapos ang ginagawa.” Once, on a rare Naga visit, Dr. Lope (Semana) told me: “Sobrang sipag talaga nang kapatid mong ‘yan Walang hinto. Walang pahinga. So intent on the job at hand - her landscaping jobs, her volunteer work para sa simbahan, sa city beautification . Bilib talaga ako sa kanya.”

        I look back to the past and remember —

        We were an inseparable pair - the sisters Meriem and Minerva - growing up in the rural town of Goa, Camarines Sur soon after the war years. She was quiet, lady-like, poised and always well-behaved. I was the pesky one, playing holen, tarzan-tarzanan and other rough-and-tumble boy games. She - the teacher’s pet. Me - the classroom and playground menace.

        Music came early to her life. Our mom and dad - Vicente P. Rodriguez, Sr. of Bgy Buyo and Dolores A. Sancho of nearby Tinambac town - bought her a piano soon after she was born. That may have sealed her musical future. A musical life

        “At three, she was already picking out tunes on the piano all by herself,” our dad wrote in his autobiography. “But piano lessons started only when she was eight, with the cigar-chewing, accordion-playing Johnny Badiola as her first music teacher. Later, Toni Respall, a Spanish mestiza, took over the lessons until she was enrolled at the Colegio de Santa Isabel under the tutelage of Sor Cecilia Maronilla when she entered Grade 5.”

        There she became popular for her singing and piano-playing. At the 1954 BAGS (Bicol Association of Catholic Schools) Meet, she sang “Sa Kabukiran” and bagged first prize in the solo singing event over closest rival Juanita Ocampo, the entry of Legaspi City’s St. Agnes Academy.

        After high school, she was enrolled in Holy Ghost College (now College of the Holy Spirit) for a Bachelor in Music degree, major in piano under Marcella Agoncillo and minor in voice under Jovita Fuentes. For her graduation recital, on top of the required concert piece, she composed and insisted on playing as her piece de resistance “La Roca Encantada’ with Ml orchestral accompaniment conducted by Professor Luis Valencia. “La Roca” she explained, is a celebration of the famed and enchanted Lake Buhi in Bicol, home to, arguably, the smallest fish in the world. That was in 1958.

        That summer, she set up a studio in Naga City in the Castro Building, owned by the family of our high school gangmate Eden Castro-Macandog. About this time, she met and was wooed by Perfing Palacio, the second son and namesake of the late Judge Perfecto Palacio. They were wed in 1960, cementing a lovely singing duo who soon endered their way into the hearts of music-loving Naguenos.

        Over the years, she mentored many budding Bicolano musicians -- among them Ruben Federizon, arranger and composer of the UP Madrigal Singers; Meriam Odejar who became a soloist of the Bayanihan Dance Troupe and three NAMCYA champions --Jonathan Zaens, now a famous baritone based in Germany, Raymond Poldan, tenor and former soloist of the UP Concert Chorus and Ingrid Caprictto, whose musical career as versatile classical and pop singer brought her to Saipan where she now makes her home. She also coached Bicol choral groups and was often a judge at musical and beauty competitions. To her music students, their families and so many others whose lives she touched, she became our Tita May.

        Her musical life was not limited to teaching, by any means. On her own, Tita May was featured artist in concerts here and abroad. Her first three were held to raise funds to reconstruct the St Francis of Assisi Parish Church in Buhi, whose parish priest then was Msgr. Vicente J.C. Vargas, our childhood spiritual guide who had become a very dear family friend. Many others followed, such as those sponsored by the Bicol Music Circle, provincial concerts and performances in major US and European cities with the National Philharmonic Society under music impresario Redentor Romero, the U.P. Alumni Association of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. But most of all, she loved singing at intimate gatherings of family and friends, belting out all- time Broadway hits and popular Filipino kundimans solo or in a duet with her beloved Perfing.

        On 28-29 January 2007 - five days before she passed away - she sang two solo intermission numbers at the Bicol Clergy fundraiser in the San Carlos Seminary on Guadalupe, Makati for the repair of churches damaged by Typhoon Reming, It was to be her last performance. Archbishop Legaspi, in his homily during her funeral Mass concelebrated with 25 other priests, aptly summed up the life of Tita May when he said that she lived a life of service to the church and to people with her music, noting that her first and last concerts were precisely for the church.

        Bringing nature to people Together with her music, she became nature lover, started a small plant nursery Landscaping jobs followed. From her many trips abroad (she and Perfing made a point of visiting notable parks and gardens while on tour in the US, Canada and Europe) the vision of a Naga City Ecology Park took root. In tandem with the Isarog Garden Society Foundation (IGSF) she started laying the basic groundwork for it.. With IGSF stalwarts Johnny Las and Dr. Fe Divinagracia-Laysa, a project concept was drawn up. It took her persistent, unrelenting lobbying to convince the young Mayor Jesse Robredo to donate the 5-hectare property in Bgy San Felipe as park site.

        “Tita May lobbied for that site for some two years, arguing, cajoling, entreating. Her heart and soul was set on making the park happen. It seemed she would stop at nothing. In the end I gave in,” Mayor Jesse would reveal in hindsight.

        Her way of opening donor pockets was nothing short of ingenious. Balikbayan friends and other out-of-town guests were given a tour of the park.. Over snacks or din’er at her home, she’d pull out a sketch of a planned park feature still in need of funds. Gratifyingly, many would offer support. Thus, the Children’s Garden was a love offering of kids with Bicol roots - animal kingdom topiaries from the grandchildren of Joe & Jenny Ordonez, the Frog Prince pond from Nathan Capricho Matsumoto, a candy castle, a memento of Inday Berina for her grandson Alexander, an alphabet garden from Michael & Katherine Fajardo-McCaffrey. Honeymooners Nolen and Suzanne Rodriguez-Edmonston gifted the park with “Your Children” a tarpaulin frame, 2,000 park brochures and started the Eco-Park website. The white garden is a memorial to the beloved mom of Cyrene Beavis, nee Valeneiano, and David Calkin. To celebrate Archbishop Legaspi’s 70th birthday, 70 trees were planted in the Forest Garden. Not any less significant are the contributions in time, talent and simple sweat from so many to make the park the lush reality it is today..

        Indeed the park vividly demonstrates what public-private sector cooperation can make possible to serve the community - in this case, a gentler, kinder quality of life for urban dwellers. And it is for this, perhaps, that our Tita May, the late Meriem Rodriguez-Palacio will be remembered by the people of Naga, a city she loved and served well.