Mario, we still have much to talk about

Mario at Carmel by the Sea I must confess I am unable to find the words to express my grief. Since yesterday, my family and I have kept abreast of developments after we received word that our friend Mario M. Baluyot suffered a massive heart attack. During our meals, Rolly and I talked of him as though he were with us at the table, praising him for his generosity, his wanderlust (the two top things my daughters Kimi and Ida remember about him), with the unuttered wish that maybe, just maybe, God would still give his big heart a fighting chance. Today another friend based abroad, Wilson Guysayko Bailon, broke the news that Mario is gone. With tears unshed and with a shot of adrenaline that kept me lucid in the early hours of the morning, I emailed Mario's son BJ to convey our condolences in what I hoped to be not too trite and cliche-ish words. Mario was Kimi's baptismal godfather. Before those ties, he and Rolly were already tight buddies in the journalistic circle although they worked for different newspapers, Mario at Manila Bulletin, Rolly at Daily Express. They were Upsilon fraternity brods and that sort of bond is hard to sneeze at. Later, Mario moved to Agence France Presse where he formed a union of two with Monica S. Feria, if memory serves, and which was ground for his termination. When Mario moved to California, we kept in touch by snail mail and later, by email. He sent me and the children books by parcel which kept our hours full in a Baguio house that then had no television. When Rolly and I traveled to the US in 2008, Mario volunteered to be our "taxi driver" all over Los Angeles and all the way to San Francisco via the ultra-scenic Pacific Coast Highway. We ran out of gas mid-way, but Mario was unfazed. A Mexican handyman gave us free gas and we pulled away with a wave and a "Gracias!" At each stop he and Rolly would fight over who'd pay the restaurant tab. Usually, Mario won. He also brought us to the Hearst Castle, to Oprah Winfrey's favorite restaurant in Santa Barbara, to Canterbury Records in Pasadena where we spent an afternoon picking through classical and jazz CDs, to Norton Simon Museum for my encounters with Auguste Rodin, to Carmel by the Sea where I was able to snap a picture of him among the flowers. Most of all, he brought us home to our best selves--the selves we enjoyed when the company was good, when the food was savory to our tongues, when the music soothed, when the conversation was deep and uninterrupted and provided glimpses to our souls. Truly, as your frat's hymn goes, when we meet each other in the sun, there will be much to tell.

Mario and Rolly at the centennial of their fraternity