upmixed

So this weekend somebody very special and dear to me passed away. My lolo (grandfather) was 86 years old when he passed on Saturday and was truly a great man. This is a man who grew up in a small town in the northern part of the Philippines, didn't have a pair of shoes to call his own until he was 11, never finished high school because he had to work to help support his family. In his late teens he worked at a bank but figured that it wasn't for him, but he had always had a passion for agriculture so he read every book he could get his hands on. By his mid 20's he had finally saved up enough $$$ to buy a small plot of land and grew fruit and opened a small fruit stand. That small plot of land grew to thousands of acres across two continents.

But that is not what made him a great man. What made him a great man are all the people's lives he touched and made better in one way or another. He built multiple churches, schools, mosques, health care facilities for many poor towns in the Philippines. He would pay the people that worked for him 20% higher than the going rate. He once picked up a $300,000 medical bill for a worker that got hit by a car crossing the street. He would hold Christmas parties for all the poor kids that lived near by. He showed me that its not how much money you make that makes you a man, but what you do with it and how you can make other peoples lives better that truly defines you. He taught me that no matter how difficult life may seem or how hard it may be to achieve your goals, you can't just quite because its hard, it's far better to have tried and failed then to not try. He was a quite man that showed his love for others by his actions, not words.

So I plan on getting my first ink in dedication to him. The family motto on my dads side is "Dulcius ex Asperis" ("Sweeter after difficulties") and I want to incorporate my lolo's initials F.S.D. somewhere in there as well to remind me of him and some of the life lessons he passed on to me.

I feel guilty for all the times I thought it was a drag to hang out with him or I'd say no when he'd ask me to take him some place. There were times he'd want me to take him to Best Buy or something so he could buy a DVD and I'd totally think to myself that I'd way rather be doing something else. Now, I would give anything just to have him sitting next to me in the car for that short drive. I hope he knows how much he meant to me.

He had been in a lot of pain the last few months, suffering from complications of emphazema. He's had a couple strokes, was being fed O2 pretty much 24/7, had a stomach tube inserted to feed him, and finally developed Lou Gehrigs disease where his diaphragm was no longer able to move. He told my aunt that he was going to wait for my mom to arrive from the US before he let go, and sure enough 12 hours after saying hello to my mom, he said his final good bye to the world. I miss you lolo.