Cherie, as most of you know her, was known to us her family by the nickname our Dad gave her: Puput. And as we do in the Philippines, younger siblings like me call her Ate (for older sister) Puput. That is how I have called her all my life, so please pardon me if that is how I will refer to her today. There are twelve of us brothers and sisters. Ate Puput was the third child, I am the eighth. All five sisters are with you today, as is our eldest brother, Pet. Apart from being a very close-knit family, you could also say that our family was more academically successful than most. And as can be expected, our parents liked to brag about how many summa cum laudes, magna cum laudes, and cum laudes there are among their children. Ate Puput was the most bemedaled of us all. In high school, not only did she graduate valedictorian, she also got the most prestigious award in the University of Santo Tomas in Manila. She got the Aquinas award, an award you only got if you already got three previous distinctions: academic excellence. leadership, and giving honor to the University by winning in national or international competitions. In the school's over 350-year history at the time, she was only the third student to have accomplished the feat, and as a high school senior at that! In an article written about her in the school paper, Ate Puput talked about her dreams of becoming a doctor, an anesthesiologist. She took up Psychology as her pre-med course, and promptly graduated summa cum laude. Really, she could have been anything she wanted to be. She was beautiful, intelligent, talented, popular - the world was her oyster. But her dreams had changed. She no longer wanted to become a doctor. She had found the love of her life in Jun Galvez, her high school sweetheart, and the path she charted for herself was the path Kuya Jun charted for both of them. As it turns out, she became everything she wanted to be. She became a loving and beloved wife to Kuya Jun, mother to their children Davy and Jiffy (or Dan and Jose), and finally after a long long wait, grandmother to Alex. So thanks so much to Michelle for getting Davy to the altar and giving birth to Alex. Well, thanks to Davy too -but you're really just the father - not much effort in that, right? :-) Through these past months of her illness, it was Alex that could make her forget the pain and suffering she was going through. We called him Super Alex, or her Vitamin A. The twice-daily Skype sessions with Alex were the highlights of her days, and she relished every visit that the Davy's made to Rose Court and the visits Kuya Jun and she made to Dublin near San Francisco. Her last week before becoming completely bedridden, she kept asking when Alex would arrive, and she was so scared that she would not last until he came. But God is kind and merciful, and she did get to see and hug and kiss Alex again. On behalf of the Bautista family, we thank Kuya Jun for loving and taking care of our sister for over 45 years. We thank Davy and Jiffy for giving her so much joy. We thank Michelle for being such a supportive wife to Davy and the best daughter-in-law to our Ate Puput; it must have been so difficult to have this happen in the first two years of your marriage. And of course we thank Alex for making Ate Puput's final wish, to become a grandma, come true, even for just a few months. In closing, I would like to read excerpts from a letter that Ate Puput wrote to our mother in November 1995, after they lost their family dog Sam. She started the letter this way: Dear Mommy, Sam is gone... And our hearts ache. Truly, Sam was more than a dog; to us, she was a part of the family. As Davy said when he came home from work last night and there was no Sam with her tail wagging to greet him at the door, "The house feels empty; it feels like we're not complete." She then recounted the events leading to Sam being put away, and this is how she ended her letter: "We drove home and as we came in through the kitchen door, we saw Sam's bowls. It started us off again. We hugged each other and cried some more. And then Jun got ready to go to work. Davy went around collecting Sam's toys from all over the house. I washed her bowls, her towels and her beddings. And then Davy went to work. I stayed home and that was a mistake, I should have gone to work. I kept looking for Sam and couldn't believe that she was not in her favorite place in the kitchen, or under the dining table, or by the sofa, or by Davy's bed, or the sunny spot in our bedroom. And I kept seeing Davy in that vet's room hugging Sam and weeping. When Jiff came home and saw me really sad, he said, "Mom, we did what we had to do. Think of Sam in dog heaven running and playing fetch with Diego and Habibie and Fifi. I think she's happy now." It was a source of great comfort to me that Jiff believes in the stuff, because by myself I couldn't imagine a "heaven" for dogs. The reality for me was that Sam was gone, and I couldn't conceive of her chasing a ball with her old friends in dog heaven and being happy again. But if Jiff believes that, then I can believe it too. So that's how I try to think of Sam now. It helps, but my heart is still heavy." It is a source of great comfort to us that we do not have to imagine a heaven for Ate Puput. We know she is there now, playing table tennis or Trivial Pursuit with our Dad, being happy again. She is finally free from this cancer that ravaged her body and at the end even her brilliant mind. Our Lord has taken her, and she is in a much better place. As for us? Our hearts are heavy, our family will never be complete again, we will miss Ate Puput so much that it will hurt, but in time we will all learn to smile again. That is what Ate Puput would want. So farewell and Godspeed, our dear, sweet, generous, thoughtful sister. We love you and thank God for giving you to our family.