Hey, kiddo.

It’s been a rough last few days. I’ve tried talking to your godparents, your grandma, even your mom. I just can’t seem to find the right words or be at the right state of heart to tell what I’m going through. This is the first time in my life that I’m not in tune with my feelings—every time I explore these painful emotions, I just go numb and I float somewhere else. So, I’ve decided to write to you, my little rascal, knowing that what I want to say now will be bedtime stories by the time you read this rather than the stabbing memories they currently serve.

It’s 2020, and your great grandfather just died.

You were supposed to be born this year, the same year your mother and I had the perfect wedding by the beach. We wanted both our parents to have their first grandchild as early as possible, so that you would have the same golden memories I had with my grandparents. But most importantly, I wanted you to meet your great grandfather—the man who made me who I am today. 

Kid, he was my hero. 

You weren’t born this year because the scriptwriters of our lives decided that this year needed to be a melting pot of chaos: because your mom and I had to vacate our home days after we got married due to the eruption of Taal Volcano that left our house covered in ashes; because your mother and I had to save one of your grand uncles from a stroke that left him alone and on the floor for two days; because a good portion of the entire country was placed on lockdown; because we couldn’t leave our home for months thanks to this pandemic known as COVID-19. And now, because your great grandfather died and to be honest, I’m drowning.

But maybe this will help. Maybe writing to you will help.

I was born without a dad—or that’s what I was told. Your great grandfather, nicknamed Wowo, became everything I needed. He called me his little chairman, and I had small desk in his office with a glass name plate that said so. He had a business trip all around Europe when I was around five, and he took all of his kids and me. He made me touch snow for the first time; I’d run up a hill in Andorra, make a snowball, and run down to throw it at our rental car, and do it again. He showed me the Eiffel Tower, but importantly the store front decorations on Champs-Élysées in Paris. He brought me to Euro Disney, where he allowed a five-year old me to negotiate with his business partners to stay a few more days so I could hang out with Pluto and Goofy. He used to announce in our hotel room that there was another car being towed outside our hotel room in France, and they would all watch with me as the car would be taken away. He made Sister Marguerite of Belgium carry me, someone expected to be well on her way to sainthood. He gave me a film camera to take pictures on the trip.

I have nothing but beautiful stories about Wowo. For almost a decade, we would go to Hong Kong every year for the family business, Angel’s Breath. Every year, we’d go to this place that I called “The Cooker”, a teppanyaki style Mongolian restaurant. He would let me cook his bowl and make sure I made the bowls of all his kids. While my uncles hated me for it, Wowo never complained. He brought us all to The Peak, and we stayed there for hours because I wanted to stay in the playground. My mom never felt the lack of a father because Wowo made sure I had him and all my uncles to fill that void.

I never felt like I was missing a dad.

As I started growing older, it became more and more obvious to me that Wowo was something else. Everyone presented the best versions of themselves in the company of my grandfather. He didn’t demand respect, but who he was deserved it. I couldn’t understand why. During dinner at home, he would share stories that I couldn’t understand but nonetheless, they were entertaining. One night, we all watched The Sound of Music together, and he casually said that the director was his friend. Confused, my mom told me that he was friends with the ones who made the movie. Of course, I understood it as, “He’s a friend of Maria?”

“You only need two things in life: math and language,” he said. I wasn’t a great student—I didn’t know the parts of a cell but I did know how to draw it. I was fair with numbers, but couldn’t do the multiplication table of nine without using my fingers. It would take me a day to finish reading a page in a book. It took two years at least to finish a book; some are still ongoing I believe. He recognized my difficulties, and took me on a path to discover my personal language. Every week, he’d sit me in his study, and make me graph the effects of lights on objects. He would show me the different consequences of different kinds of glass with a light going through it—soft, harsh, crystalized. He taught me how, in his movies, he would create ghostly figures of people without special effects. He showed me the magic of glass layers, and its virtues of dedicating lights to certain objects. He told me that he used to use mashed potatoes for his ice cream commercials. When Wowo was running Nepomuceno Productions, American film makers and producers would come to the Philippines and rent equipment from him—people such as Francis Ford Coppola, who became his good friend. One particular studio day, a crew of Americans walked in carrying reflectors weighing the size of refrigerators. Simultaneously, Wowo had a few guys carrying stacks of reflectors he had made out of the foil of cigarette packs.

I didn’t know back then how all his lessons in lighting would benefit me when I’d grow up, but the way I saw the world evolved. Sunrises were no longer just sunrises—they were seconds in between seconds, fractional changes in the fall of light into a dusty desk from the screen window. It was the gradual change between the white glow of morning dew to the shadows it created on the grass. I wouldn’t jump into the swimming pool, I’d just lie down and watch the reflections of the ripples on the ceiling. I didn’t draw as much anymore, but I walked around the house holding a piece of paper and putting it against windows to see its effects on objects. Watching movies never became the same—I couldn’t stomach a movie that didn’t know how to light properly. It eventually became a problem.

When I was in grade school your Wowo brought your grandfather into the picture. I suddenly had a stepdad I’d learn to call my dad and another bonus: a baby sister.

When I became a high schooler, your great grandfather gave me my first camera. It was a small Sony Cybershot. Looking back, I see now how he was manipulating me into becoming a visual person. 

I love that he did.

I came home from school one day, and I showed him a photo I had taken—a flat lay of a green leaf in a pile of dead leaves. As far as I remember, that was the first photo I had ever composed. I can’t forget the look on his face, like a lightbulb gloriously found its way out of the dark. He had a sudden hunger to teach, and I had no choice but to be his student. I started a camera club in school to practice, I would hurry back to show him what I did. I came home one day and he had this big package on his desk: a Sony Powershot. He told me I could use it every once in a while, but only when he deemed me worthy. 

My uncle Luisito got married on 2004, and Wowo made me film the whole thing. On the despedida de soltera, Wowo handed me a video camera and said, “This is the record button. Shoot the dinner.” I stood up, bent my knees, and shot. Over dessert, we played back what I had recorded, and Tito Sito asked me if I could film their special day. I remember standing beside your Wowo in the front row, with the camera wrapped around my right hand. I remember him telling me that it was okay for me to go up to the altar, and to not mind what the other photographers were doing. It was back then that I saw the value in immortalizing a moment. I was fourteen. 

I followed him with every intention of impressing him, inside and outside of the camera. But he was more than a teacher, he was my first dad. And he was every bit of the dad that I didn’t know I needed when I was little.

We used to play Metal Slug on the playstation together. He would drive us to Tagaytay Highlands so that we could go bowling, saying how we had to live up to what Tito Paeng had built. We played tennis together, him and I against your grandma and grandpa (it was me who ran and he who killed). He bought us a Wii, and we opened up the living room for bowling and tennis. We used to watch movies and he would whisper to me which shots he loved. We both had a crush on Emmy Rossum in The Phantom of the Opera and The Day After Tomorrow. He let me play Angry Birds on his computer and eventually, he finished the game. We used to play billiards and lose to my mom. 

When college came, I turned towards culinary arts. I know he was sad about it. He didn’t ask me much about school, we didn’t have many stories to exchange anymore. But I felt out of place in school—I didn’t have the same passion for food as those around me. One day I joined a photo contest against multimedia and photography students and I won. I called Wowo that day and told him what had happened, and he laughed and said, “Of course you did.” I remember going home and telling my mom, dad, and Wowo that I wanted to shift courses. I told him it was a choice between digital filmmaking and photography, and he said the one thing that stuck to me for the rest of my life.

“How can you make a movie if you cannot make a story with a single image?”

I took photography. I aimed to be the best in school and when I had hit it, I wanted them to know who my grandfather was. I invited him to every exhibit the school provided me to have, one including the Met Museum. He showed up in all of them. I printed a photo of a tree I had taken in Palawan, and it was my first photographic gift I had ever given him. He hung it right beside his computer. 

I finished photography and I became a professional. When I started shooting magazine covers, I’d bring a copy to Wowo and tell him how I lit it up. He would tell me stories in return of how he approached similar situations back in his day. We were finishing each other’s sentences. One day, Southern Living magazine gave me the opportunity to shoot him for their cover. Your mom was the writer. I remember setting him on a seat in the middle of the road lined with pine trees right outside his house in Tagaytay, and him asking me if my reflector was in the right place. I remember everyone looking at me, and with a deep breath I said ‘yes’, worried that I answered wrongly in a quiz. I remember setting a black background behind him on one layout, and Wowo telling Ignacio, my assistant, to move closer while fixing setting up the light. What was supposed to be a quick and simple shoot became a day where Wowo screened his movie Dahil sa Isang Bulaklak to the Southern Living team. The interview couldn’t be done in peace, we all had so many questions. He brought us to a Filipino restaurant down the road from his village and bought us all dinner. Everyone was wondering about the technicality of his shots, the actors involved, stories about the Marcos family, stories about his other films, stories about the Oscars. Stories about Francis Ford Coppola, of Apocalypse Now. 

Strangers from UP and different schools came to visit Wowo while I was busy working. Everyone wanted to know his story and he was getting tired of constantly telling it. We had lunch one day, and told me how he wanted all of his films to be released again in the theaters. This was the first time I ever remember fighting him. I didn’t want him to sell the rights of his films to openly show in multiple cinemas. I didn’t think it was fair to him, but he didn’t agree. I wanted to collect everything he had and find everything he had lost, and build something from there. I felt like I betrayed him that day, not agreeing with him. He didn’t trust me as much from that point on. Maybe I overstepped, or maybe I didn’t make my intentions clear enough. Everything he had built was his; it wasn’t my place to tell him how to handle his work. I tried to bounce back, I became a board member of SOFIA, The Society of Filipino Archivists for Film, in hopes of gathering more for Wowo. I met people who led me in the right direction, and I had more information to give Wowo on his history. I found stories he never told me, material I would have never found myself.

I came over for lunch, and told Wowo what I had found. For the first time in years, Luis Nepomuceno stayed in Alabang after all meals were finished for another three hours, to talk about his life story again. I recorded everything on my phone. I heard stories he had never told me. I learned more about his father, Lolo Jose, Father of Philippine Films. I learned that he had become a photographer first, by having access to old cameras left behind by war journalists passing through. I learned that Lolo Jose would bring Wowo in almost everything, just like how I was brought around.

“When I was a kid there was a day that Lolo Jose and I were inside our car passing through traffic on a bridge. A man passed by our car asking for money, and I scoffed making fun of him. He opened the door, and told me to go out and try begging myself. I learned a valuable lesson that day,” said Wowo to me.

You see kid, my grandfather was everything to me. He meant everything to me. I dedicated my whole life to impressing him, and now that he’s gone, I’m lost. When I shot the Esquire cover with Eddie Garcia, the actor took a video message for me to show Wowo calling him ‘Sir Louie’ and telling him they should make a movie together. 

They must be making it together now. 

I wanted Wowo to carry you, I wanted him to live nearby so your mother and I could bring you to him all the time. I wanted a photograph of the two of you. I wanted you to be my last gift to him. My moving image to his years of teaching.

But as I write this I’ve come to realize something. All these stories, all these memories, all these lessons weren’t just taught to me. My grandfather lives in his children, my uncles and aunt who were raised to also become my dads. My grandfather lives in my stepdad, who happily shared the role of raising me and my sister. My grandfather lives in my mom—has always lived in my mom. 

When I was a kid, Wowo brought me to the theater to watch Les Miserables. He made me appreciate theater at an early age, even if I didn’t understand anything. When the movie featuring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway came out, I found myself crying beside my mom.

Wowo has always been the Jean Valjean of our lives. Kiddo, if you’re reading this, that means your dad filled those empty chairs at empty tables. 

I love your Wowo. I miss him. 

Originally written for ANC-X on May 9, 2020