ROY TABIOS

for my family, especially the young ones who never met your uncle 

Roy Tabios (Sept. 24, 1958-March 1, 1980)

I've rarely written about my brother Roy. I rarely wrote because it hurts and, in my writings (so far), he inevitably evokes loss.  Roy died prematurely at age 21 in a car accident. His death is among the biggest losses my family experienced in the diaspora because there was no reason for it – an accident. His death aborted a whole life of possibilities yet to even start to unfold. I feel the loss of his possibility keenly, in part because he was so intelligent and yet so reticent: a likely late bloomer who never got enough time.

Our other brothers, with whom he spent more time as we grew up, likely will have different points of view as regards Roy. But for me, I felt reticence, even as I know that it would have been temporary. With more time, I know we could have created together a wonderful relationship. In fact, we  connected as two individuals seeing each other for the first time during what, unknown to us, would be his last year of life. This was when he gave me two enamel boxes as a present for Christmas. I was so excited over this rare gift that, years later, I wrote two poems* about the incident. Months after I received his gift, he passed. Whenever I look at these boxes, I try to feel the joy I know we would have shared together had we had more time.

I’m therefore glad to have unearthed from long-term storage an artwork he made as a young boy which I’m titling—since I don’t know if he’d ever titled it—“Self-Portrait.” It might have been a school homework but my mother had kept it. I’d framed it for her and it hung in Mom’s bedroom before she died. Its craft construction paper has faded over the years, even as it retains its spirit; in it, Roy had inserted a photo of himself as a child. 

While the picture is of a toddler, I know that my brother was older when he made this work  (evidenced, too, by the profile being that of an older person). But it’s an apt piece. Studies show how so much of what forms us occurs in the first two years of our life (writer Jonathan Carroll once said, “Our youth is where the only gods we ever created live”). "Opening" up the self, therefore, inevitably surfaces the child. That child can be hidden—as when the four flaps are flattened over the photograph—but that child exists and can reveal itself.

Art. It’s not just about the specificity of the object—it’s about how the object can become a threshold into a new experience. Given my brother’s death at a young age, I don’t have and will never have a huge amount of memories with him—whatever I have will never suffice. But, Art—it gives me a new way to interact with him. I’m grateful for this new experience, a new memory: Roy Tabios, Artist.

 (Roy, at an end-of-the-schoolyear ceremony at Baguio University where 

he usually ended each school year by receiving top honors in his classes)

Roy also lived before many of us became Google-able in the internet. Before this essay, an internet search for Roy only would surface a list of dead people with the last name "Tabios," some of whom were strangers to our family. With this article, with his art, it's my hope that Roy Tabios also becomes alive in virtual reality.

Hello Manong Roy. You have two nephews and one niece ...

[Click on All Images to Enlarge]

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Footnote *:

Here are the two poems I wrote after my brother Roy, first published in my book The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes: