happy birthday (31st July) to an old friend, Dr
Gerald So !
Can you imagine someone who was in love with both the printed and
spoken word before he reached his teens? Someone who already had a rough idea of what he was to do with his gifts and talents, when he was not even at the threshold of life?
Imagine someone like this, a
Rennaissance man in his
pre-teens, and you have an idea of what
Gerald was. I call him that, just as he sometimes still calls me
Emmanuel, just like it was Gerald, Emmanuel, Nelson and Simon (Gerry, Noel, Sonny, and Simon) nearly 35 years ago.
The promise has given way to the fulfillment. He wedded the highest body of knowledge on earth, the science of healing, to the highest body of knowledge in the heavens, knowing God. If you know anyone else who has been a student of both theology and specialized
medical science, please tell me, because I hardly know of any other.
Without beholding him three decades later, I know he has kept himself fit and healthy comparable to a man half his age. He devotes nearly all his waking hours to the love of his life and his family. And though he has stayed Stateside more than half of his life, part of him remains in the
Philippines permanently.
I pay him the supreme compliment of remembering him when I am posed by the most challenging of dilemmas, be it a practical problem, or even an existentialist issue. When I am truly flustered by not knowing the right thing to do, I merely ask myself :
What would Gerald do? More often than not, because he would do, not always the popular thing, not always the cool thing, but always the right thing, his would be the conviction of ten righteous men.
I have not seen you since the early 1980s Gerald, but thank you for being at my side all these years.
Happy birthday, many happy returns, and God bless you always!
- happy birthday Bunso ! (ylbnoel.wordpress.com)
