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Postscript A Good Night’s Sleep

although he became close to Cardinal Tagle. He told Cardinal Tagle, ‘You’re one good
Catholic.’ He helped the church through the Cardinal.” Flippantly, he told Vicky, as
he had told others, to throw his ashes out the plane window when he died.

There may have been a time when it seemed like Wash would just go on and on,
or at least he felt he would. “What kept him young was the thought that there was
always something to do, living one’s life with purpose. His work was never done,
not only his work for the country but even in terms of keeping relationships up,
keeping them going.”

“What he left us with,” Vicky adds, “was integrity. Even my grandchildren knew
the word at a very young age.” One of them was named after Wash because he said
nobody was named after him. But he lingers on in other ways.

Vicky recalls that Wash was proud of the Washington SyCip Park in Legazpi Village
that Ayala Land and SGV, among others, had developed, and the Washington SyCip
Garden of Native Trees that the Zuellig family endowed in his name at the University
of the Philippines in Diliman. He said that that he “wanted to live beyond one
hundred until those trees became really tall so he could climb them.”

Wash fell four years short of his target but those trees are still growing to the fullness
he anticipated, like his hopes for the country he so deeply loved. In Tagaytay, where
his and Anna’s ashes are now inurned, Wash lies surrounded by trees to the edge of
the horizon.

“I miss having him in Tagaytay. It was really family time with him.” Vicky misses her
chats with Wash in the morning while he had his coffee, which was when they would
talk and she had Wash to herself. She’d ask him why he was up so early despite being
out late the previous night and he’d simply say, “My eyes opened, so I got up.”

Wash must have had a good night’s sleep. Vicky recalls him saying that “To get the
best sleep at night, you should go to bed with a clean conscience.”

And that he had—a long, deep, and satisfying sleep.

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