Felix Flauta

Before he left to visit his family in the Philippines, Felix Flauta Sr. would ask his seven year old grandson Evan for permission. "How many days am I allowed to go?" he would ask. "Six days Lolo (Filipino for grandfather)," Evan would say on one day, or "Ten days," he might concede on another. Felix had helped take care of Evan since the boy was 18 months old. His grandson was reluctant to see him go. His plane left Chicago on June 10. He wasn't supposed to see his grandson again until September 12. Felix died in his sister Mamerta's house in his home municipality of Midsayap less than a month later on July 12, 2013. He was 73. Felix went to the Philippines for a number of reasons. His youngest son, Felimaur, was studying to be a minister at the Iglesia ni Cristo's New Era University in Quezon City. He and his wife, Janice, were expecting a child in August. Esperanza, Felix's younger sister, had recently died, and so he was going to visit his two remaining sisters Francisca and Mamerta. He had not visited his home country in some years. He had not lived there for many more. Mariano and Dominga Flauta gave birth to Felix, their youngest son and seventh child, on July 29, 1939. They were the descendants of Catholic settlers who came to the Muslim island of Mindanao. His family farmed acres of land and raised crops such as the coconut meat known as copra. Felix (known to the family as Liling) and his siblings learned to farm, cook, and build on this property, providing for their own family and the families of others. However, that is not all they were expected to do. Education was important, and Felix and his siblings had to divide their time between working on the family property and continuing their studies. Felix would live closer to his school during the week and come home to farm on the weekends. On the days when he lived closer to school with his siblings, Felix became responsible for preparing meals for the others. The Flauta children would eventually become engineers and educators, working to improve the land and minds. It wasn't easy. Before Felix could complete his studies, the family needed someone who could run the farm. Dominga, his widowed mother, needed his help to both manage the farm and provide for his two older brothers, Modesto and Remegio, who were in college before him. For two years, Felix would run the farm, borrowing against the uncertain future of the next harvest whenever the family needed money. Later on he would say that sometimes a sacrifice was required of you, and you would give that sacrifice, but that didn't have to mean that your life was over. He never seemed to think of his time on the farm as lost years. They were his sacrifice, his duty. People knew that Felix could be philosophical, see life and examine it. He didn't make grand speeches about what he believed. He said what he needed to say, or he made insightful observations that were both humorous and eye opening. He might hand you a shovel or a broom and tell you to learn how to use it if you weren't going to go to school or if you were going to start a family. Or he might make these observations about himself, such as when he talked about how good he was at quitting smoking; he had done it many times. After his sacrifice for his brothers, he went to the Mapua Institute of Technology and completed his Bachelor of Science Degrees in Civil Engineering in 1966 and Sanitary Engineering in 1967. Again his work was going to be used in the service of others, to improve the lives of others through the land. One such improvement was to examine the structural damage done to a building after an earthquake. The building was at the Philippine Normal College (now University) where his future wife, Ligaya Rosero, worked. He courted her, but he also had to win her family over. When he visited, her father, Ursolino Rosero, a local policeman, would make a show of cleaning his gun where Felix could see it. Felix's solution was to bring his own gun and clean it where Ursolino could see it. As part of their truce between a future father-in-law and son-in-law, Felix agreed to wait until Ligaya finished college before he would marry her. He also won over her siblings. One of Ligaya's younger sisters, Isabelita, would accompany them to the movies. Felix would buy her a chicken dinner. She would eat the meal and fall asleep during the show. Felix came to the United States after marrying Ligaya, but he had to leave her behind until he could find work. This was also a sacrifice he had to make, something he had to do. Eventually Ligaya would join him as he worked briefly in a plastics factory before becoming a civil engineer for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. At the district, he oversaw contracts and projects related to the sanitary treatment and drainage of water. He might drive past a completed project, point to a visible structure coming out of the ground, a large vent or pipe, or a patch of trees he planted at the site and point it out to the family. Though soft spoken, Felix was very proud of his work. Part of his duty in Chicago was not only to the family he was building there. Though they weren't present in large numbers, members of their faith, the Iglesia ni Cristo, were starting to have prayer meetings in 1971, and Felix and Ligaya joined them. He would eventually become a head deacon of Chicago's local congregation, responsible for the congregants and their chapel, and he would even travel to different chapels in the Midwest to assist their congregations with renovating their chapels. He was working as he always worked, constantly. As if civil engineering, a family, and a congregation weren't enough, Felix also bought and maintained properties and joined in on small business ventures. He even purchased farmland in Michigan with his friend and fellow congregant, Benito Sumang, so that they could bring their families there to work in the fields and apple orchard on the weekends. Felix's life was work. When Felix wasn't at his job, or his church, or his farm, he spent his "free time" repairing and renovating his family's house in Albany Park. You would hear a hammer, or a saw, or see him drawing at the kitchen table, or planting and weeding in the garden or pond. If it wasn't his house, he was at someone else's, repairing and renovating for family who had come to Chicago. All this work may have been preparation for the work Felix had to do at the end of his life. In 2001, his wife Ligaya slipped into a coma. Doctors suggested that her brain activity meant that she should be let go, that she may have been gone too long to make recovery possible, but Felix wouldn't have it. He fought to keep her with him, and when she came out of her coma, everything changed. Felix retired from his position at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. He had been working towards a promotion at the time and looking at retirement in the next six or seven years. Instead, he bought out his last years and prepared to take his wife home. Ligaya would need and receive his constant attention for the last 11 years of her life. She was no longer independent, she spoke in short sentences, and she could no longer return to work at the library. Felix modified the house to accommodate the hospital bed she would need. He bought a van with a lift. He learned how to change her and rotate her on the bed to prevent bed sores. He monitored her blood pressure and temperature everyday. He gave her her medications. He cleared her trachea. He worked everyday to rehabilitate her through physical therapy. In the early years following Ligaya's recovery from her coma, she was well enough for Felix to take her with him places. He brought her to houses he was working on, seating her somewhere comfortable and constantly checking on her while he was tiling a bathroom floor or removing an old carpet. During lunch, he would feed her himself. With the help of caregivers, he would manage to bring his wife to places like Canada and the Philippines. He gave her as much comfort and care as he knew how to do, as he learned how to do. This life was his "retirement," and during that retirement Felix also extended his help to those in his family who needed it. He gave advice when asked for, aid in emergencies, and he would even try to help send family members to school in order to improve their lives and the lives of others. And during all this, he became a grandfather. He would babysit his grandchildren while taking care of their Lola (grandmother). He would make Chrisellyn, Evan and Maureen Jaye food, or stay with them while their parents were working, or even pick them up for and from their appointments. And everyday during the warmer months, an ice cream truck would pull up in front of his house around the time when he would bring his grandchildren home from their bus stop. He took care of his grandchildren, he took care of his wife, he took care of his family. He worked, he sacrificed, he never complained. Sometimes, he might tell jokes about it. The April morning Ligaya passed away, Felix struggled to resuscitate her. He called for an ambulance. They couldn't bring her back. By the time he made it to the hospital, she was dead and Felix became a widower. He wouldn't have to take her temperature anymore. He wouldn't have to monitor her blood sugar, or lift her from the bed to put her into the wheelchair. But he would have done so. He would have worked to keep her another day, just as he had worked to keep her for all the others. After Ligaya's death, Felix planned a visit to see his family in the Philippines, a visit that he moved up after his sister Esperanza's death. His visit was busy. He was in the Philippines for less than a month and he had already given barbie dolls to every granddaughter from his nieces and nephews present (including the 18 year old Abigail), he had donated a fence to the local school, and he was designing and supervising renovations to his sister Francisca's house. "I have a project," he told his son on the phone, "Very busy here," he texted to another. He was clearly very proud of his ability to work, to help. There may have been signs that Felix was not well, but he worked hard not to show them. He wore a compression pad to help with aching joints, weary from a lifetime of work. His neck lost some of its mobility, and there were concerns about his blood pressure. But he never let on to anybody that something could be wrong. If someone asked him to do something, or if he volunteered, he did it. He needed to be healthy. He needed to help. The night of his death, Felix had finished watching television with Mamerta. After the show, he was happy and lively, reminiscing with his sister over fond memories. The last couple days he had been happily messaging family members about the latest good news, a future grandchild from his son Felix and his wife Tara. He seemed content when he went to take his evening shower. He died soon after. Felix goes to his rest showing that a sacrifice can be bourne without complaint, that love and work can mean the same thing, that a father will always be missed. Prepared with love by Felix Flauta Jr. with special thanks to Uncle Ernesto Flauta and Revelina "Bing" Gonzalez