Rest in Peace, Tessie Jose #FrankieJose

I received news that Tessie Jose, wife of the writer F. Sion­il Jose, passed away.on Octo­ber. 7, 2022.

 I am heart­bro­ken, but not very sur­prised because her hus­band had passed away on Jan­u­ary 6, 2022. They were a close cou­ple, hav­ing mar­ried in 1949, and were inseparable.

      The Cebua­na writer, Lina Espina Moore, intro­duced me to Frankie and Tessie back in 1988 when I had my first short sto­ry col­lec­tion, Woman With Horns and Oth­er Sto­ries. Lina arranged with the Jos­es a book launch­ing at their icon­ic book­shop, Solidaridad.

Frankie and Tessie liked Lina and they extend­ed their gen­eros­i­ty and kind­ness to me. When I was vis­it­ing Mani­la, I often vis­it­ed them, and I launched sev­er­al books at their bookshop.

  They  took on the role of being spir­i­tu­al par­ents of Fil­ipino writ­ers, but  I always felt I was a “favorite daugh­ter.” They always greet­ed me warm­ly when I vis­it­ed, went out of their way to take me to lunch­es or merien­da at the Indi­an restau­rant next door to their book­shop, or a Chi­nese restau­rant dur­ing Chi­nese New Year, or Solair when it first opened. On two occa­sions, they even took me to some oth­er writ­ers’ book events. And Hen­dri Go and I had the priv­i­lege of dri­ving to Que­zon City with them, walk­ing around the Mall (their form of exer­cise), and hav­ing din­ner there. This made us feel like fam­i­ly mem­bers, or favorite son and daugh­ter at least.

    I think Frankie and Tessie made many oth­er writ­ers feel wel­come and favored, but I felt there was a bond between me and Tessie because her father had been a doc­tor in Cebu’s Ever­s­ley Lep­rosar­i­um so she knew Cebu and the lan­guage. She and I used to talk in Cebuano about writ­ers and books and book­selling; and Frankie and I used to also talk shop, about the chal­lenges of being writ­ers, books being remain­dered, and so on.

        I had arranged for a book launch at Sol­i­dari­dad in Feb­ru­ary and was look­ing for­ward to see­ing Tessie. That will nev­er be.

    I am shar­ing some pic­tures of me with these famous lit­er­ary cou­ple. Rest in peace, Tessie Jose. Rest now with your hus­band Frankie.

Read also Frankie and Tessie: Reflec­tions on the Pass­ing of F. Sion­il Jose (1924- 2022) — https://cbrainard.blogspot.com/2022/01/author-cecilia-manguerra-brainards.html

 

Tags: #TessieJose #FrankieJose #Sol­i­dari­dad #Fil­ipinoau­thors #Fil­ipinovooka