(when I started this piece) Today is July 1, 10:00 a.m. here in Canada. Our youngest sibling, Allan passed away due to serious health issues on July 1 at 4:46 p.m. Manila time (4:46 am Toronto time). He was 57 years old, too young to die. We usually describe such deaths as "untimely." We were four years apart, so he was our youngest brother—our bunso, as we say in Tagalog.
Bunso (the Youngest)
The bunso, in many cultures, is the one who is doted upon, spoiled, and thus often grows up happy-go-lucky, dependent on everyone else, and not especially responsible. That's the stereotype of the youngest child in the family. I guess that stereotype was, more or less, true of our dear Allan. Yes, he was a happy-go-lucky type, but in a very pleasant sense. He was simply a nice guy you could not hate. When you met him, you could immediately relate to him. He was easygoing, easy to talk with, quick with a joke, and, most importantly, he loved life!
That's the phrase that comes to mind immediately when I think of him: he really loved life. He enjoyed living. This I say having known him from the time of his birth. I left home and Allan though. I wasn't in the Philippines anymore when he became a full-fledged lawyer. I do hope that he maintained that easy approach to life even with the many responsibilities of his profession. But during the times I came back to the Philippines and we saw each other—whether after a long absence or only a short one—I always had the same impression. He was still that easygoing, happy-go-lucky person who genuinely loved and enjoyed life.
That is what I liked most about him. He was simply very easy to relate to.
Allan and I were the youngest two siblings in our family. I was born in 1965 and Allan in 1969, so we were four years apart. I remember that when I was ordained a priest in 1995, during a thank you speech, my father remarked that I was supposed to be the youngest child, but then, four years later, another one came along. That drew laughter from the congregation, since the speech was given in church. Happy accident (!😊) because I didn’t have to be alone growing up. I now had a sidekick. There we were—Allan and I—the younger pair in the family. Our oldest brother and our older sister, whom we called Nonoy and Inday, formed the older pair. They spent their childhood together. We—Allan and I—spent ours together.
This is something I remember with great fondness: during the first nine years of Allan's life, I was probably the person who knew him best—perhaps even more than our mother, because Allan and I were constantly together. We shared a room. We played together all the time. We went on adventures together. We went on vacations together. When he started school, we attended Don Bosco Makati together for several years.
At that stage of life, four years is a huge difference. I was the kuya (big brother). He was my sidekick.
Allan’s Birth—My First Memory – Younger Years
As I reflect on Allan now, I'd like to recall a number of random vignettes and childhood memories, because I think I’m in the best position to tell the story of those first nine years of his life.
The very first thing that comes to mind is that Allan's birth is actually the earliest memory in my life.
I was four years old. Daddy took us to the hospital. I suppose my siblings were there as well. We stood outside the nursery, looking through the glass inside. Then, Daddy pointed to one of the babies and said, "That's your younger brother." I remember that moment very clearly. This is the first memory of my life: Allan’s birth! I hardly remember anything from before I was five years old. I can look at photographs of myself when I was two or three years old, or even as a baby, but I don't have those images in my memory. Allan’s birth though I remember very well.
From that time onward, Allan became a permanent fixture in my life. I remember him as a big, healthy, chubby baby. As soon as he was old enough to walk around by himself, we were constantly together. We played together. We rode our bicycles around our subdivision. We shared the same circle of friends, especially Marvin (Macalintal) and his cousins, who lived only a few steps away from our house. Marvin's father happened to be Allan's baptismal godfather, so Marvin and Allan were kinakapatid, or godbrothers, in Filipino culture. We spent a great deal of time in their house, especially after Marvin's cousins moved in with them. All of us attended Don Bosco Makati (school) together, and we became very close friends. Those were wonderful times.
Going with Our Mom to Her Hometown
One memory that especially stands out is that we went on trips with our mother to her home province of Iloilo, on Panay Island in the central Philippines.
At that time, Mommy preferred traveling by ship So, for Allan and me, it was always a special adventure. One year, we even narrowly missed getting on an ill-fated ship which sank. We happened to have an event that made mommy decide to take an earlier ship!
On these trips, we would board the ship at the Manila pier and sail to Iloilo. I remember standing on deck and looking out over the sea. I distinctly remember seeing dolphins cresting the waves! I don't know whether Allan remembered those moments. I certainly do. I’m sure he was beside me though. He was something like a shadow at this time.
The food on board was good, and I especially remember Allan being at an age when he could eat enormous amounts. I could too, of course, but Mommy was always amazed by how much Allan could eat during those trips.
Once we reached Iloilo, we would accompany Mommy back to her hometown of Guimbal. We often stayed there for--what seemed like--months now during the summer, spending time with our relatives.
Allan and I were city boys. So, when we arrived in this rural barrio in central Philippines, we must have been quite a sight.
Allan was still quite young, but I was already old enough to remember things clearly. I was naturally sociable. I wandered around the barrio, entered people's homes when invited, and even found myself joining them for meals or merienda (snacks). I remember even helping the fishermen pull in their nets full of fish.
Allan was usually beside me. He was still too young to do many of those things himself, but he tagged along everywhere. He witnessed many of those little adventures.
Later in life, he himself told me that he remembered some of those episodes—including a few rather embarrassing ones that I won't recount here.
Those summers in Iloilo remain among my most treasured memories of our childhood together.
The Accident-Prone Child
Another memory that stands out is one from our home in Parañaque.
One day, Allan and I were playing bullfight—toro-torero. I was the torero (matador), waving a cloth in front of him, and Allan was pretending to be the bull. Unfortunately, behind the cloth was the sharp edge of a piece of furniture. When Allan charged, I lifted the cloth and he ran headlong into it, hitting his head quite hard.
But there was an even worse incident.
Another time we were playing soccer inside the house. My mother had these ceramic elephants that we used as goalposts. Allan was the goalkeeper, and I was the scorer. We were using a balloon as our soccer ball. When I kicked the balloon, Allan dove to make the save and crashed into one of the ceramic elephants. A sharp piece of it—I think it was one of the elephant's tusks—broke off and became lodged in the side of his neck.
I looked at him and immediately thought, "This is really bad."
I ran downstairs and said to my mother. After all these years I still remember the very words I said, "Mommy, natusok si Allan (Allan got pierced)." She followed me upstairs, and there was Allan with the ceramic tusk sticking out of the side of his neck. Naturally, she panicked. She immediately called one of the trusted employees from our family company—Norbing, who remains a good friend in California. For some reason, I also went with them to the hospital. I was terribly anxious because I felt responsible. I thought I had done something really awful. Thank goodness, Allan survived that!
That became something of a pattern during our childhood. Allan and I were always playing together. I was the older brother, but Allan, as a child, was—I would say—rather clumsy. He frequently got into accidents, and because I was the older sibling, I usually ended up being blamed and Mommy would scold me, of course.
But despite all that, we had a lot of fun growing up together.
“You’re My Brother”
Another memory comes from our days at Don Bosco Makati, our elementary school.
One afternoon we were waiting to be picked up from school. There were only a few kids left because our driver happened to be running late. As we were walking together, I casually put my arm around Allan's shoulders, the way an older brother naturally would. Remember, at that age, four years is a significant age difference.
I don't know why I did it that day. Perhaps I didn't often show affection in that particular way. But for some reason I felt moved to do it.
Allan looked up at me with a puzzled expression (he was still small then) and asked, "Why are you doing this?"
I simply replied, "Because you're my brother."
For some reason, that little exchange has stayed with me all these years.
Thinking about him now, that memory immediately comes back to me. It fills me with joy and tears.
All of that changed when Allan was nine years old and I was thirteen.
That was when I effectively left home to enter the Don Bosco minor seminary as a boarding student. From that point onward, I never again lived at home for any extended period. I would only return during vacations.
Eight years later, I left the Philippines entirely and moved to Japan.
Looking back, I realize that I was the one who kept leaving home. I left Allan, my family, my country, and eventually built a life halfway around the world.
Yet despite the distance, Allan and I never lost the closeness we had developed as the younger pair in the family. We always maintained a deep affection for one another throughout our lives so much so that, on her deathbed, when mom wanted to broach a difficult subject to Allan, it was me she requested to call Allan over.
Filipino-Japanese Identity
time, I was living in Japan. He called me because he knew how deeply invested I was in our Japanese identity. We are Filipino-Japanese by ethnicity, but I was the sibling who went to Japan, learned our father's language and culture, and intentionally embraced that part of our heritage.
Allan, on the other hand, had taken the opposite path. Before he got married, he strongly identified as Filipino. He genuinely cherished his Filipino identity. In that sense, we occupied opposite ends of the spectrum. Of course, that never affected our affection for each other as brothers. We simply expressed our shared heritage differently.
When Allan reached the age at which he had to choose his citizenship, he called me before making his final decision. We had all been born Japanese citizens, but upon reaching adulthood we had to decide whether to retain Japanese citizenship or become Filipino citizens. All of my siblings chose Filipino citizenship because they were living in the Philippines. I had already moved to Japan before reaching that age, so I remained a Japanese citizen there.
Before choosing Filipino citizenship though, Allan called me first. I was deeply touched. It was almost as though he was asking for my blessing before making his decision.
I told him, "Of course I understand."
I never interpreted his choice as rejecting his Japanese heritage. It simply reflected the life he had chosen to live.
What amused me, however, was what happened later. After he got married and began raising his daughter, I noticed that he gradually developed a renewed affection for Japanese culture. He, his wife, and their daughter whom they named with a Japanese name, started traveling to Japan quite frequently. I watched this with quiet amusement. The suppossedly most thoroughly Filipino member of our family eventually rediscovered an appreciation for Japan.
Perhaps that shouldn't surprise us. As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water. After all, Japanese blood also runs through our veins and, not only that, according to my late granduncle, our ancestors might even have been samurai!
Difficulties with Our Parents
Another bond that Allan and I shared was that, at different points in our lives, both of us experienced difficulties in our relationships with our parents because of choices we made for ourselves that were at odds with them. In my case this happened when I left the priesthood because I felt I could no longer continue in that path.
I can say that, in that sense, Allan and I understood one another in a unique way. We shared the experience of navigating stormy family relationships while remaining true to the paths we felt called to follow. I believe that common experience deepened our relationship even further.
Rapidly Failing Health
In January of 2026, Allan was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus area. Difficult as that diagnosis and the treatment that it required were, he also suffered a debilitating leg fracture in March which required surgery. This injury and the process of treating it and rehabilitating him had an immense weakening impact on him. I felt that he got a “double punch” as it were which really left him down and out.
One time, while he was confined in the hospital, we spoke via a video call. That turned out to be our last face-to-face conversation. After that, we communicated only through text messages. There is one moment from that conversation though that stands out to me.
At one point, Allan said to me in (Tagalog):"Toto, may sinasabi ‘tong mga nangyayari na ito." Literally translated, he was saying, "These things that are happening are saying something (to me)." I immediately replied,"Siyempre may sinasabi iyan" (Of course they’re saying something to you). I deliberately stopped there.
Allan’s statement, I thought, was something like an effort to answer what is known in philosophy as an “existential question.” These are deep questions about life and existence that we self-reflecting humans pose and attempt to answer. They are very characteristic of humans because we exist as self-reflecting beings. In short, existential questions come with the existence of a self-reflecting being. One thing to note thought is that, when someone says that life's events are “speaking to them,” that they carry some deeper meaning, only that person can ultimately discover what that meaning is. That was what I wanted to communicate with my deliberately open-ended reaction. However, I don't know whether Allan ever arrived at an answer for himself given that events that culminated in his untimely death happened so fast after that.
Honestly speaking, I truly didn't expect him to pass away this quickly. Perhaps I was in denial, just hoping against hope that he would pull through. That is one of the things that saddens me most in retrospect. Before I could accept the fact that his condition was fatal, he was already gone.
Until about a week before his final hospitalization, I still genuinely believed he was going to recover. In fact, I had been considering making another trip to the Philippines in August of 2026, just to spend time with him and check on how he was doing. My feeling then was that he would pull through.
Looking back now, perhaps I was simply too optimistic.
Everything changed when he was admitted to the hospital for the final time. That time, my intuition was different. I felt that his body was simply being overwhelmed. It was becoming clear that one vital function after another seemed to be failing. I sensed that this was no longer just another setback. This now was different.. It felt like the thing I was trying to avoid thinking about most—that Allan might be in his last moments.
That was when I decided to fly from Canada to the Philippines. In the end, I was too late.
Living halfway around the world makes moments like this especially painful.
That is one of the great difficulties of living so far from one's family.
When serious illness strikes your loved ones who are located so far away, you cannot simply board the next flight without thought. There are responsibilities, schedules, and practical realities that have to be considered.
Is Asking Why Useful?
This brings me to the main reflection that has occupied my mind in light of Allan's passing. Whenever something like this happens, our natural tendency as human beings is to ask one question: Why?
Why did Allan die so early?
Why did he die at the relatively young age of fifty-seven years old?
Why was his death so untimely?
Why did this happen?
Why? Why? Why?
As we saw earlier, these are what philosophers and scholars of religion call existential questions. Human beings are creatures that ask such questions. We ask questions that arise simply because we are conscious of our own limited and fragile existence. We reflect. We ponder. We search for meaning. Animals do not ask these questions. A dog does not ask why. Other sentient creatures simply respond to reality as it presents itself.
Human beings, however, ask the big “why.” Sometimes asking why is entirely appropriate. If something happens because of a clear cause, understanding that cause allows us to learn from it.
In those cases, asking why is useful. We learn the lesson, and we carry that lesson forward into our lives, learning and applying the lesson.
BUT HERE’S THE THING: There are some "why questions” that cannot be answered and no amount of asking them will lead to meaningful answers.
The questions surrounding Allan's death, I would say, belong to that category: Why did he die so young? Why was his death so untimely? Why him? For me, those questions are ultimately unhelpful because, at the end of the day, they have no real
answers available to us.
Let me add an important personal context. My reflections here arise from the fact that I now understand myself as someone who belongs to two religious traditions. I remain a Catholic Christian. But especially since the pandemic, I have also come to regard myself more and more as a Buddhist. Whether one prefers to say Buddhist-Christian or Christian-Buddhist is not especially important. What matters is that the teachings of both traditions profoundly shape how I respond to life and suffering today.
From Buddhism in particular, I have learned that we should not cling to questions that cannot be answered profitably. Instead of endlessly asking "Why?", we are encouraged to practice radical acceptance. We are invited to maintain peace, compassion, and equanimity even in the midst of sorrow. That is the path I want to follow now about my deceased younger brother.
I do not want to spend my energy asking why Allan died at this moment. For me, that question leads nowhere. Instead, I want to accept what has happened while doing my best to preserve inner peace, compassion, and equanimity. Wherever Allan is now, I believe that is what he would want for those of us who love him.
Another insight that has struck me recently is this:
Concentrate on what you have, not on what you don't
Applied to Allan's death, this has become a very meaningful way of looking at our grief. If we focus only on what we no longer have—that Allan is no longer physically with us—our sorrow naturally deepens. That loss is real, and we should not deny it.
But we also need to remember what we still have. We have wonderful memories of Allan. We have memories filled with laughter and joy. We were blessed with fifty-seven years of his life. Those years were a gift. Now I want to treasure these things in my heart.
I want to remember Allan’s love of life, his easygoing spirit, his happy-go-lucky nature, his affection for the people around him, his dedication to his family, his commitment to his profession. Those are beautiful qualities, and they remain with us. No one can take those memories away.
One of the spiritual teachers who has profoundly influenced me is the Vietnamese Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh. He has a famous saying: "A cloud never dies."
At first, that may sound strange. Today you see a cloud in the sky. Tomorrow it is gone. But has it really disappeared? No! The cloud has simply changed form. It may have become rain. It may have become mist. It may have become snow. It may have become ice. The cloud has not ceased to exist. It has merely continued in another form.
As Christians, we also profess that Allan continues to live with God and Christ. In that spirit, I would like to say that Allan has not disappeared. He is still with us. Not in the same way as before, certainly. But he continues to live in another way.
Moreover, he lives in our memories. He lives in the countless ways he shaped our lives. He lives in the love he gave to his family and friends. He lives in the values that he embodied.
So let us hold on to what we still have, rather than becoming consumed by what we no longer have. We still have Allan's spirit. For some of us, we carry Allan’s genes. We still have the memories that formed us.
Those are precious gifts. May we treasure them. May we continue to live with compassion, peace, and love. May Allan's own spirit encourage us to keep moving forward with those same qualities.
Allan, we love you. Rest in peace and rise in glory! Your suffering has ended. You are in a better place. Please continue to be with us. Strengthen us. Guide us. Thank you.
Your loving brother,
Toto (Julius-Kei)
