We use cookies to ensure you get the best browsing experience. By continued use, you agree to our privacy policy and accept our use of such cookies. For further information, click FIND OUT MORE.
Produced for the web
By KAELA MALIG
Video Production
By MIAH ROMUALDO, ADRIAN BANTIGUE, and FLORALYN JOY TEODORO
December 19, 2019
For many Filipinos, Christmas smells just like this: freshly cooked lechon glistening on a long table, your lola’s powder and perfume blended into one as she leans in for a kiss, and of course, your mother’s special cooking making its way through relatives swarming about. The details may be different, but many families enjoy the warmth and comfort of loves ones, sharing a bountiful Noche Buena feast.
For Tatay Robin Concepcion, however, this hasn’t been the case for a long time.
“These past few years I didn’t have anything like Christmas. When it’s Christmas, nothing. I just go around,” the 68-year old man says.
This was not always the case. Tatay Robin was once surrounded by all 10 of his children. However, everything changed when he left a note in his home in Bayawan City, Negros saying he was going to Manila in the hopes of finding a job.
His youngest, Victoria, was just four years old at that time. He still remembers how she begged him not to leave.
For the last several years, Tatay Robin has spent Christmas away from his children. As December 25 rolls along, he will soon celebrate the occasion the same way he always has: all alone.
Tatay Robin previously worked as a construction worker, but because of his age, projects would not hire him anymore. Desperate to make a living, Tatay Robin started to take his bicycle around Antipolo, repairing shoes and umbrellas.
He would start his work day at dawn and would not be back at his home, a humble shanty, until it was dark
“Sometimes, I’d come back around seven, eight in the evening,” Tatay Robin says. “All day. If I don’t earn anything, I’d starve the entire day.”
All that hard work does not amount to much. He charges only P20 to repair each umbrella, and P100 for each pair of shoes.
There are days when he would starve because there would be no customers at all.
One time, a young girl asked him to repair her shoes for school.
“I asked him if he ate already and he said no,” recalls the girl, Camille Ramos, who is now 16 years old. She and her sister prepared food for Tatay Robin.
“And then I asked him about the story of his life,” she says. “He then told me his story.”
Touched, Camille posted the story on Facebook, which would go viral. Some help would trickle in from kindhearted netizens.
Tatay Robin married at an early age. He was only 14 when he wed his wife, who was only 13 years old at the time.
His work as a pedicab driver in Negros was not nearly enough to support his family, so he decided to leave in hopes of finding a better job in Manila, leaving his wife and all 10 of his children behind.
Four years since leaving, Tatay Robin saw his wife again in Manila after she came looking for him. It turns out that she was ill.
“Her nails were turning yellow already. Even her eyes were turning yellow, the doctor said it was Hepatitis B,” he says.
According to Tatay Robin, he took care of her all throughout. They even moved back to Negros but she ended up losing the battle.
“By 1993, she died. I couldn’t do anything,” Tatay Robin says with sorrow.
“I felt sad. I had 10 children with her and so of course I was sad about her death.”
After his wife passed away, he went back to Manila to continue his work in construction.
It has been years since he last saw his children. But even if he misses them, he could barely provide for himself in Antipolo, let alone go back to visit.
The only person he has communication with was with his youngest daughter, Victoria, through his brother, Nathaniel, who owned a mobile phone since Tatay Robin didn’t.
“His children would tell me, ‘Uncle, don’t let anything happen to our dad,’” Nathaniel says.
Victoria would tell Nathaniel that if she were able to save enough, she would go visit her father already.
The possibility seems bleak. “I don’t know when she can come since her salary is also small. She only earns P3,000 in her job as a maid,” Nathaniel says.
Nathaniel explains that only Victoria been able to reach out, since it appeared that she was the only one with a mobile phone.
Despite his grit, Tatay Robin admits the loneliness can be overwhelming.
“I can’t even be with my children. It will really make you lonely. It’s natural to be lonely because you have no one with you,” he says.
Camille, who uploaded his story on Facebook, is heartbroken by the circumstances surrounding the old man. She had lost her mother when she was only a year old, and her father had left the family right after the burial.
“For us who do not have parents, it’s hard to watch a father try so hard just to have something to eat,” she says.
“It’s like, I wish he were my father, that my father was like him. Working hard, that he wants to be with his children so much but he can’t do anything about it.”
Tatay Robin couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Victoria.
It was only a video call, but it was enough for a man parched for any contact with his children.
Tearily, he said he loved Victoria and all of his kids.
“I just want you to go back home. I want to take care of you,” Victoria tells him. “That is all I will say because I will take care of you as long as I live.”
He makes her a promise: I will be home soon. It’s a father’s Christmas wish, to one day change the Christmas tradition from one of an incomplete family to one of a complete annual celebration.
For those who wish to help out Tatay Robin, email pa.donations@gmanews.tv
SHARE THIS STORY