Farewell, Tita Linda Cantiveros

.
Rosalinda Natividad-Cantiveros, or Tita Linda to many of her younger friends and acquaintances, the publisher and chief editor of Filipino Journal, for which I am a columnist, the previous president of Philippine-Canadian Centre of Manitoba, as well as a longtime pillar of the Filipino community in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, always active in many Filipino and multicultural activities, admired by a great number of people--Filipinos or non-Filipinos--sadly, has passed away last March 4, 2008, because of cancer. She was declared cancer-free for five years, but the dreaded disease came back late last year.

I was glad that I phoned her sometime in February, about 2 weeks before she passed away, to ask how she'd been, because I learned from Tito Rod, her husband, that Tita Linda was hospitalized in December. She was still okay during our conversation, in which we talked about her plans for the newspaper, that she'd be needing again my help in the editorial. Although, her voice already betrayed her weakness and tiredness.

Tita Linda even apologized for failing to set up a get-together for the Filipino Journal staff last December, promising that we--FJ family--would just have the gathering come Spring.

Sadly, her last leaf fell in the last days of Winter, without having the chance to greet and kiss the new blossoms of Spring.

I met Tita Linda in 2005, during a welcome party for new Immigrants regularly held at PCCM. My Tita Lucy told me that she was the publisher of Filipino Journal, the leading Filipino newspaper in Manitoba. I approached her and asked her if I could have some of my articles published in the newspaper. She told me to submit samples of my writing, which I duly did. After less than a month, she phoned to inform me that she liked my writing style.

And the rest was history, so to speak. I finally became a regular staff of the newspaper, maintaining two columns which I myself conceptualized--"Sa Madaling Salita" and the Engkanto series.

I, Charitess Naval, PCCM's Executive Director Jean Guiang, and the late Rosalinda Natividad-Cantiveros, during the viewing of my late maternal grandfather, Conrado Lanuza Vera Sr., in July 2006, at Knysh Funeral Homes.

All I can say is, Tita Linda had been very supportive of my ideas. She remains to be one of the few persons in Canada whom I personally look up to.

Tita Linda, you will live forever, in the memory of every person whose life you'd touch one time or another.

I will remain an instrumental part of Filipino Journal.