Tweetums Gonzalez wrote honestly until the very end

More than a decade ago, while investigating rumors about Jose Rizal’s family life, I went to see Barbara “Tweetums” Gonzalez, an outspoken and well-read direct descendant of Rizal’s older sister Maria. Tweetums did not disappoint. 

Instead of simply extolling the virtues of Rizal and his family, as descendants of heroes are wont to do, Tweetums shared juicy insider stories passed down through relatives about incest within the Rizal clan. She also confirmed the scuttlebutt that Rizal’s venerated mother Teodora Alonso was illegitimate, a love child who was scorned by her wealthy father’s first family. It was a source of tension between families that was felt even generations later. 

Towards the end of our conversation, I asked Tweetums, why reveal these truths now, what good would it do? 

Flashing her dimpled smile, she replied, “What’s wrong? Just tell the truth. The truth is always best. It will show Filipinos that anybody can be a hero. It doesn’t have to be somebody with a beautiful family where everything works so well, where everybody gets married and stays happily married. No. Anybody can be a hero; you don’t have to come from a perfect family. Who can say that they come from a perfect family?” 

When my documentary on the secrets of the Rizal family aired, that soundbite was the most quotable quote, shared in social media posts. This line in particular — “Anybody can be a hero; you don’t have to come from a perfect family” — resonated with many viewers and made me recall as well my own imperfect extended family with its acrimony, separations and (overseas) divorce. It made me feel normal, if not exactly heroic. 

That was vintage Tweetums (a nickname given by her father who died when she was a baby; she later signed her emails to me, “Twee”). She was always frank in a gracious way, and inspired many with her often painful honesty in her prolific writings about her own colorful life journey. She wrote openly about a long affair with a married man and, later in a best-selling book, about raising her four children as a single parent. She freely admitted that she had not always made the right choices, yet rose above those personal trials to become among the most accomplished professional women of her time.

She was one of the first Filipino women to lead a major advertising firm, and wrote a  longtime column in the Philippine Star, “From My Heart.” Lately that column was heavy with grief, since she had just lost her husband Loy several months ago. She had also been despondent over her double mastectomy, a result of her battle with breast cancer, making her agonize over her identity as a woman.

Her last column just last month, “To feel again,” began by reminiscing about her first dance party when she was 12 and wore lipstick for the first time, a happy memory. But her piece ended in despair again:

“I lost my breasts to Stage 3 cancer. That operation taught me what the word ‘barren’ really means. When I take off my blouse I see flat skin marked with scars that I have to put ointment on twice a day. I have absolutely no idea what to live for. I pray to God and my husband to please take me away from all this but it doesn’t look like they intend to. It will pass, I know. I will adjust. I also realize that this is the first time in my almost 80 years that I have felt so deeply disheartened. That’s the word for me now — ‘disheartened.’ My heart has forgotten to feel.” 

Twee died last week at the age of 79. She was writing honestly until the very end, not sugarcoating what she was feeling. Despite her life’s debilitating tragedies, and her sense that the end was near, she found the will to continue writing, an inspiring show of strength to her readers. 

She sometimes wrote about becoming a writing teacher late in life, mentoring fellow elderly in how to write their memoirs. “Just tell the truth. The truth is always best,” I can still hear her say. 

I first met Twee in her prime, when I was a rookie reporter at the revived Manila Chronicle newspaper of the 1980s, then an analog newsroom where the clacking of large manual typewriters could make landline telephone interviews barely audible and cigarette smoke hovered over work spaces. Ruling this domain was the legendary old-school newspaper editor Amando Doronila.

One inflection point during my time at the newspaper was the arrival of a new general manager, an elegant and self-assured older woman known as Tweetums. She had just wrapped up a stint as a leader in the advertising industry and had somehow been convinced to take charge of a legacy media outfit as it entered the computer age. She was later joined at the Chronicle by her jovial mother, a skilled copy editor whom everyone called “Mamu.” They made for an uncommon and animated mother-daughter tandem in the same workplace, and later played themselves in a commercial that made them famous. 

The Manila Chronicle newsroom then was peopled with such women – talented, confident, outspoken, empowered, liberated. I was reminded of that when a former Chronicle colleague, Margie Logarta, got a bunch of fellow Chronicle alumni together first in a big group chat, then at a memorable garden reunion at the home of writer Gemma Luz Corotan-Kolb last March. One of the group’s sparkplugs, Apa Ongpin, invited Tweetums to come but she was already too ill. 

News of Tweetums’ death crossed my Facebook feed the same day as various opinions of friends on the divorce bill, which has blown open a social fault line, another symptom of the contradictions in our society since the time of Rizal.

Twee’s hero ancestor and his fellow founding fathers were cerebral products of the Enlightenment, which introduced such radical concepts as the separation of church and state, women’s rights, and social tolerance. They were the ones who first imagined a modern Philippine nation. Yet more than a century later, the Philippines is mired in a debate over divorce that was over long ago in many other countries. 

Rizal himself, he with statues in plazas all over the country, had an open live-in relationship with a much younger woman while in exile in Dapitan. He once replied in a letter to those questioning that choice, “We are always happy and jesting. The public can say that it is a scandal. Without doubt it is: it is scandalous to live better than many married people.”

Defying social convention, Rizal pursued his happiness and lived his life honestly. He would have been proud of his descendant, Tweetums Gonzalez.