It’s 11 days before All Saints Day.

With travel restrictions getting to be a thing of the past, I am pretty sure that most of us will take advantage of the long weekend and already prepped-up our travel schedules and required documents for going abroad or even just taking the road trip to the provinces.

As we pay respect to our dearly departed, let me veer away from the usual dishing out of market stories. Allow me to pay respect as well but through a different kind of way, by sharing the love story of the late National Artist for Literature F. Sionil-Jose and his ever-supportive wife, Auntie Tita, who passed away after a day and nine months from Uncle Frankie’s demise.

For a hopelessly romantic, yes, Virginia, despite my being a Rottweiler journalist, admittedly I fell in love with love again learning about the couple's love story. I liken it to a thunderbolt hitting them both!

Uncle Frankie experienced an electrifying feeling with butterflies in his stomach when he first laid his eyes on Teresita Jovellanos at a birthday party of a common friend.

My uncle was 24, when he first met Tessie or Auntie Tita to us, who was then 19.

Auntie Tita, whose family belongs to the upper class, was oblivious to the fact that Uncle Frankie was already a campus figure being Editor of UST’s campus paper – the Varsitarian.

Her parents were naturally averse to her romantic relationship but the gap in their economic status was not a hindrance for Auntie Tita without any second thoughts eloped with Uncle Frankie.

From then on, they became inseparable. When his angels fetched Uncle Frankie on January 6 this year, Auntie Tita was inconsolable with overwhelming grief. There was one afternoon I spent only listening to her love story. Reminded me of the signature song “Wind Beneath My Wings” in the movie Up Close and Personal with Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Truly, Auntie Tita was the wind beneath the wings of Uncle Frankie because on seeing him, she is not far behind or more often, they arrive at an event together, holding hands.

I recall Uncle Frankie’s touching tribute to his wife which he wrote last year, a “heartwarming” narrative about their relationship, which cousin Tonet in his FaceBook feed, described as “a love that is sacred and lives on through us.”

"Sometimes I wake up at night, her arm across my chest, her soft warm fresh breath on my face. Her hair has turned white, her forehead lined with a few creases. Her hands, though she had done a lot of hard work, are still so soft but wrinkled now. I kiss them remembering how they had bled when she washed my khaki trousers long ago.

Sometimes, we take the long way home from the shop, pass the shabby neighborhoods where we used to live before we moved to this house in Quezon City. It seemed small when our seven children still lived with us, but it seems so big now that it is empty except when the children visit with their families.

On the 12th of March, we will celebrate the 73rd anniversary of our elopement. After 20 years since we eloped, I was finally able to present to her an engagement ring with a tiny stone, and a platinum wedding band which she has never taken off. As I said before, we all hurt those we love, and then we lose them. Heaven knows our quarrels and the many times I hurt her. Even now, I still cannot find the words to express my gratitude to Teresita, my happiness and God's most precious gift to me."

Auntie Tita’s grief in losing Uncle Frankie turned to depression and shortly she followed him in the biggest bookshop cum editorial desk up in the heavens. Theirs was an enduring love story beyond compare. Indeed, “meron forever,” theirs was forever love.

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