in memory.

my lolo died yesterday. i didn't know him that well, because there were so many of us (grandchildren and great grandchildren in the family - over 60).

i couldn't really say that we had a relationship, but i do remember that he was the one who gave me my first sip of beer (age 5). i remember him to have taken my first studio photographs, as an ugly baby (i really really looked like E.T.), and some of my favorite childhood photos at ages 3, 4, 5. It was a Nulud grandchild tradition to have our black and white photos taken, composed, and developed on wood canvases by Tatang (kapampangan for father). I was one of the last ones to have had the pleasure of sitting for him.


composites on wood canvas taken by my grandfather of me at age 3

i remember that he was the first professional photographer that i had known in my life. he had an eye for great composition, and a knack for being at the right place and at the right time, capturing great moments in people's lives and immortalizing them through beautiful photographs. he was one of the reasons i had picked up my interest in old-school photography. when i took my first photo of him with the SLR i inherited from my dad, i remember how pleased he was to see that at least one of his many grandchildren picked up some interest in his craft. and how eager he was to pass on to me his knowledge in photography. and many of his older cameras - wonderful antiques.

grandfathers didn't play a big role in my life. my other grandfather died when i was 5, though i remember him to have been a very affectionate and patient man.

photography was the only real tie, apart from blood, of course, that i had with Tatang, and i was grateful to have had that, because i felt that it had set me apart from his many grandchildren. when he first got sick (and all present family members shuttled to my aunt's house to visit him), i was one of the few he had identified by name during one of his lucid moments. he had known it was me because i was taking pictures of him and of those who had visited him. when we had found out he had died last night, upon getting there my lola's first words to me were that before he passed away he had reminded her to give me the last of his remaining old antique camera lenses. it was then that i felt my first sense of loss at the man that i had not really known.

i knew him or of him to be a simple man who had raised, fed, and educated his 12 children through his craft at photography. they were a poor family, but a happy one, and although he was not close to many of his children in the way that some fathers are, i think he had passed on to them the drive and the determination to raise themselves above their stations. not all of my mom's brothers and sisters graduated from high school, but you would not know that from looking at how each of them are now. they are each successes in their own right.

last night, i got a chance to see most of his twelve children be children to their departed father. i saw my aunts and uncles cry like little children at the foot of his bed. i saw how devastated my grandmother was, yet how calm she was still - trying to be a mother the entire time still. i saw how there was a little bit of Tatang in each of them.

i saw how there was a little bit of Tatang in me. i think i will miss him. but i find comfort in what a friend had texted when i told her of the sad news - "God bless his soul. He is youthful and vibrant again. Ü"

indeed he is.



Tomas David Nulud
1925-2007