Dr. Ernesto P. Adorio, Professor, University of the Philippines, NOHS CLASS OF 1972.
AN EULOGY
By Judge Ray Alan T. Drilon
I cannot help but do a lot of reflection, after the unexpected departure from this earthly life, of Professor Ernesto Adorio, a classmate in the elementary and high school, childhood friend and playmate, with whom almost a year ago, I shared happy moments together talking about life, planning about retirement, thinking of projects and looking forward to the next school reunion which he never missed to attend. Ernesto was most happy when he saw his classmates. He made it as a personal pilgrimage to go home to be with his dear classmates and friends. He was a generous contributor to the alumni home coming activities. He loved to be with the class of NOHS 1972, of which he was a proud member. He loved to take photos of the event, would be jubilant to pose and to be photographed, smiling and beaming like a child.
Ernesto was not the stereotype image of a University Professor. I would always remember him wearing casuals, cargo jacket, base ball cap, with bulky camera dangling from his neck. He looked more like a local tourist on a budget, or rugged reporter. He didn’t look like a stiff academic, of which he was, and a brilliant one.
We always talked about about many things, family, classmates, politics, life. We reminisce the days of our youth, of the transition we went through in our lives. Ernesto would talk sadly of schoolmates who had gone ahead, musing about the unpredictability of events in one’s life. With his mathematical mind it was as if he wanted to draw up an equation to divine the uncertainties.
This man is a deep and prodigious thinker yet, he kept whatever serious thoughts he had, hidden, beneath the surface of an easy going, happy personality. There is the artistic side to him, and compelling scientific curiousity driving him to take and collect pictures of people, places, nature, plants, flowers and birds. He introduced me to the hobby of photography. He collected and documented photos of indigenous plants, flowers, and insects. He created a Social Networking Group on Facebook known as the Philippine Handbook of Plants and Flowers, a valuable reference to Botanists and students, documenting their finds.
I think his passion for nature was what kept him in balance. I suppose his teaching higher mathematics was exacting to the heart, too clinical, even impersonal, because it demands no less than perfection or accuracy.
There was also the spiritual side of Ernesto perhaps not known to many of his friends. As a man of science he did not wrestle with unbelief. He believed in God. One time he wrote me asking for an explanation of a difficult passage of our Lord’s Sayings.
Our last time together was last year when we took coffee with classmate Rosula. It returned to me now, how our conversation drifted to questions of classmates and friends whom we had not seen for so long, who were ailing and who had gone ahead, followed by carefree jesting how much longer we would last in our aging bodies as we enter the threshold of seniority. Ernesto would be the first to advise that we should take care of our health.
We broke up, that afternoon with smiles in our faces, bidding goodbye, promising to meet again. It was to be our last.
This year February the 29th, I was busy hearing my cases and my phone kept on ringing. I ignored it. After winding up the business that morning I opened the phone and saw it was Professor Hermie Siroy, of the USLS, a classmate, who had been calling. I returned his call. He gave the news. Ernesto had left us. In his sleep.
I could hardly describe the intensity of this terrible news, terrible in the sense that it was utterly unexpected, jarring the nerves.
Scottish author and Christian Minister George Macdonald aptly describes this feeling:
“Sometimes a thunderbolt will shoot from a clear sky, and sometimes into the midst of a peaceful family-without warning of gathered storm above or slightest tremble of earthquake beneath-will fall a terrible fact and from that moment everything is changed. The air is thick with clouds and cannot weep itself clear.”
Death is a dreadful enemy, and we mortals are terrified of it. I looked up to the heavens and thank God for the life of Ernesto, Doc Ernie to his colleagues in the academic community, who had touched our lives. I had this nagging feeling that humans are connected to each other in a mystical way that one could feel the pain of the disconnection when another passes away.
But God is merciful. He has given us hope, because death, will not have the final say.
As I wrestle with the question why, the cloud of shock, and the darkness of sorrow progressively dissipated by the illumination of God’s word. No question that the initial shock was like a sting, that leaves you reeling. The good news, however, is that death is only a shadow.
One thing which always gives me comfort as I reflect upon life and death on this earth, are the powerful words of St. Paul in his Letters to the Corinthian Christians.
He said:
“Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”(1Corinthians 15:51-57)
Weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning.
Prof good night, see you in the morning.
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