Her last surprise
A-LISTERS are high society’s most dazzling people. One person who does not belong to that exalted class deserves her own A to Z list as a feminist, environmentalist, spiritualist, nationalist, activist, (suspected) leftist, optimist, and Soroptimist. A list to end all lists.
I glanced at her lying in state cocooned regally in white satin, surrounded by white flowers, and it struck me that having proudly reached her 87th year, she was now wearing lipstick, in springtime red! Sonny Belmonte bent over her and teased, “Hmm, you seem to have aged a bit.” But as she had lived a longand useful life without bothering with makeup, it was time for her caregiver, secretary, and companion of 44 years to speak up.
Mila Casala began, “Around September, she asked me to buy lipstick for her. Were we surprised, but that’s what she wanted – pink, red – one tube every week, until I collected a pouchful of them.” So red lipstick it was, when our dear, full-of-surprises Charito Planas sprung the last surprise by dying peacefully in her sleep last Friday.
Who will remember Chat? Politicians of every stripe. The soldiers whom she fed three times a day as they kept her under house arrest. People in search of a job, the next meal, a missing relative. Mila recalled, “Even when her funds were running low she’d buy something from a vendor with a sob story, anything from packaged food to massage chairs.” Mayor Herbert Bautista tearfully narrated how Chat argued with him at every turn, scolding him and then asking him to help someone in need.
Indeed she could be querulous, even cantankerous, which her friends saw as an outlet for the heartbreak she suffered over the loss of Quezon Memorial Circle and Nayon Pilipino, which it was her mission to preserve and conserve. At the Circle, she wept at the sight of trees chopped down, lying lifeless on the ground, like trash. “What crime did they commit?” she bawled.
One last “ist” as in minimalist, in the way her private life was celebrated with such simple joys as eating out at Little Quiapo and traveling to Tagaytay for her “stem cell” sessions. She was also simplistic, to the point of challenging climate change by moving into Provident Village, Marikina, after typhoon Ondoy had drowned residents there. “Lightning won’t strike twice, we’ll be safe here” was her crazy argument.
Wherever you are, Chat, be eternally beautiful, with or without lipstick.