Eulogy for My Uncle Berns

To all members of the Odon and Junio clans in Bayambang: May I inform you that our beloved Uncle Berns (Venancio Junio Odon) has gone ahead of us at 88 years old. I think he is the last Odon of his generation. We will miss him badly because he was such a kind, loving, God-fearing, generous, talented (he was a good singer dancer, guitar player), and naturally funny guy. Join us in praying for his eternal repose.

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Eulogy for My Uncle Berns

I guess we who grew up having a normal family life -- that is, having a mother and a father by our side -- never really outgrow the thought of being our parents' children. We live through the marching years, decades, clinging to this illusion that our parents will always be by our side, forever living, mentoring us through life's ups and downs, occupied with our concerns, from our diet to our posture and anything that comes from our mouth. They may irritate us sometimes, or often, but we never entertain the thought that someday soon they could be gone.

This illusion is broken, and rudely so, when they get suddenly ill, or worse.

Yet even at the throes of death, our natural reaction is to deny, hoping against hope down to the last millisecond that a miracle would occur and our beloved parent would rise up once again, back to health, if only for a small window of opportunity to live again and delay the inevitable.

I have many memories of my Uncle Berning (a.k.a. Venancio Junio Odon), so I don’t know where to start. I will just mention a few, in the spirit of celebrating his 88 years of life.

Everything came back together once again when I learned about his quick passing due to pneumonia at age 88. Some memories are quite bad and not worth recalling, but most memories are good ones and worth retaining and writing about.

When he was still living in the Philippines, my family lived two houses away from Uncle’s house, so we were neighbors for a very long time. That’s from 1978 up to the time they moved to the US in the '90s. Life was so simple back then. Our houses did not have concrete fences, unlike today. So my uncle would barge into our house any time of the day or night, and he usually asked for leftover rice or anything he wanted from the kitchen.

That was how things used to be in our family. We could freely ask for any fruit or vegetable growing in our yard, and we often exchanged our dishes of the day, so we could taste each other household’s cooking. Of course, we never matched my Aunt Susay's (Zosima) cooking, which was always perfect.

Sometimes, my Uncle would ask for a lighter and then he would sneak in a cigarette, which he said was prohibited in their house.

Apart from being good-looking (he had movie-star mestizo features and was quite fussy with grooming and fastidious with his get-ups), my Uncle had many other traits that endeared himself to us and to everyone. Whenever he was around, you can be sure it would be a riot because he was a natural comedian, because he was such a jolly person. He had a perfect pitch and proper timing when he was joking.

Growing up, I knew he was a loving father as well, and this character of his extended to us, his nephews and nieces. Even though he was not rich, he was a giving person, generous with the little that he had, perhaps even generous to a fault. He was that kind of person, that is why everyone loved him.

He was also very talented. He was good at singing and dancing. I can’t forget how, one night during a power outage, he sang a lively Spanish song while playing the ukelele. I have never heard that song again.

Another thing I can’t forget about him is when he joined the Marriage Encounter program in the church, because he was suddenly a changed man. He became an even better person after he gave up his favorite vices, and instead spent time serving God through various church activities together with his wife.

I think my Uncle is the last Odon of his generation, so that means he is our last connection to that generation. Sadly they are all gone now, and they brought with them memories of the past that they were not able to share or document.

But we will never forget Uncle’s legacy of love and caring, of self-sacrifice, faith in God and devotion to family – you can see the proof in his four children, his high sense of humor, his contagious joy for life and gratitude for being alive.

I am sure he and his good qualities will live on in all of us whom his life has touched, especially his children, my four cousins Lynn, Rey, Dennis, and Lea, and his grandchildren.

I am thankful that God gave us an Uncle like him. My family will definitely miss him.