Page 54 - WashingtonSyCip_Bio_Excerpt_LastChapter_2nd_Edition

Postscript A Good Night’s Sleep

Stunned as he was by that sudden turn of events, and through his bereavement,
George can now look back on that sad episode with the kind of wicked but affectionate
humor his dad would have appreciated.

“If you had to go, this was the way to go. You had your champagne in business class
where it was very quiet, and I don’t think he suffered. And if he had known that it was
a beautiful stewardess giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, he’d probably have
said, ‘Yeah, what a way to go. This is great!’… Prior to that, he was telling people, you
know, if I die, I’d like to die in the air. And then just throw my ashes out… He passed
away doing what he loved to do, which was bridging Asia and the United States.”

Wash didn’t get his wish for his ashes to be dispersed. His remains were cremated
in Vancouver and his ashes were returned to the Philippines, where a multitude of
mourners waited to bid him farewell.

Like his siblings and Wash’s associates, George had observed his father’s slow decline
with concern, but also with the understanding that he had already lived a long and
extraordinary life, with only rare visits to the hospital, and so it was not unreasonable
for him to indulge in petty vices—indeed, in the pettiest of them. George discloses that
“He could’ve been around for a while longer, but he had a weakness for ice cream.”
George’s sister Vicky agrees: “Oh my God, if he could eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch,
and dinner, that’s what he would do. He loved it since he was a little boy.”

Wash once overdosed on his favorite rum-raisin ice cream at the Links Club and had to
be hospitalized. The doctors told him that he had pneumonia and was hyperglycemic
so his body could not process the sugar and the cream. He kept on eating, anyway.

“He enjoyed whiskey and wine, but the doctor said, if you drink wine, drink cheap
wine because it has lower sugar levels. He loved red wine and California wine, but
it was more whiskey than wine in his last years. He liked the Irish whiskeys aged in
sherry casks.”

This capacity to enjoy life was probably more visible and pronounced in Wash’s last
decades, when he could focus on his core interests—basic education, microfinance,
and business leadership—and otherwise relax, or even hang loose, as he did when
he consented to fashion-model contemporary and colorful barongs, with his talent

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