Page 68 - WashingtonSyCip_Bio_Excerpt_LastChapter_2nd_Edition

Postscript A Good Night’s Sleep

everything he needs is in his office. He’d go to the office even on a Saturday because he
said that he had a lot to read and too much to do. Sometimes, he’d fall asleep reading.
The only time he wasn’t in the office was twice or thrice when he was hospitalized.”

One of those times Wash had to go to the hospital was around 2012, when he was
attending a board meeting in Columbia University and didn’t feel well. Foregoing
a taxi, he walked to the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where he refused to be
confined and said that he already had a plane ticket to go home. The doctors warned
him that he could die if he insisted on flying. “My dad said, I am not going to die
on that flight. I’m strong enough to go home.” He ended up signing a waiver before
being discharged. The doctors advised him to have somebody go with him on the
plane, so he bought a friend a ticket and announced to her that she was flying—with
him, to Manila.

That was how his driver, caregiver, valet, and bodyguard Junjun Cabilles came into
Wash’s life, or the last four years of it. A stowaway from Cebu—where he was a
track star before he broke his leg—the teenage Junjun found work as a gardener in
Tagaytay, then drove for Vicky. When Wash needed a companion, Junjun stepped in,
and proved adept enough to earn the old man’s trust. “Dad was a very proud man,”
says Vicky, “but he let Junjun tie his shoelaces.” Wash had resisted using a wheelchair,
but he eventually agreed if he had to walk long distances, such as in airports.

Junjun soon became Wash’s aide and constant traveling companion—he had the luck
of having a passport from an abortive ambition to work abroad. He was smart and,
most importantly, he entertained Wash. Once, when Wash was hospitalized, he had
to get a male nurse. Wash instructed Junjun to observe what the nurse was doing,
then he fired the male nurse and had Junjun do all the nursing duties.

Vicky had dinner with Wash the night before his flight for New York. Sensing
something not quite right, she asked him to cancel his trip, but he refused, with his
mind fixed on the detailed schedule ahead of him. Just a little over 24 hours later,
Vicky woke up and checked her email at 3:30 in the morning and saw a message from
George telling her that “Dad passed away on the flight.”

“I was just thankful for every coming year, but I didn’t think he was going to pass
away then,” Vicky muses. “Dad didn’t like to talk about death. He was not religious,

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