Father’s Day without Greg

There won’t be any picnics for the Sanchez family on Father’s Day today.

Instead, the children of the late vice governor Gregorio Sanchez Jr. will spend that  day in prayers in front of his tomb at the Mactan Memorial Garden.

Grecylda “Gigi” Sanchez-Zaballero said today will be the first time she, her mother Leonarda Sanchez and the rest of the family are spending Father’s Day without him.

“He wasn’t expressive as a father but  he was  protective.  I was the eldest and he didn’t want anything to happen to me,” she said in an interview at the LactoPafi office.

Greg, a civil engineer, who made a fortune as a contractor and founded a company that sells probiotics health tonics, grew up in a big family in Tuburan town, northern Cebu,  where he had to struggle to earn a living.

He  didn’t want his children to experience the same hardship, said Gigi.

Her  light mood turned somber when she talked about her memories of her father.

Her most memorable Father’s Day celebration was during her college days, when the family was complete in their fishpond in barangay Kaliwasan, Lapu-Lapu City.

Gigi said her father loved picnics and would bring her, her siblings Gerlyda “Gerly”  and Greco, and their mother.

The children would set aside part of their allowance  to buy a gift.

Gigi recalled giving her father two kilos of evergreen avocados, his favorite fruit.  The picnics went on until he ran for public office.

When the vice governor was stricken with lung cancer late last year, his adult children spent time with him at their home in Maria Luisa Subdivision in Cebu City.

At that point, she said she knew she would have to say goodbye.

At 2 a.m. last April 29, Sanchez succumbed to complications of the disease.

“I cannot forget that day when he called me and Gerly and tapped our foreheads. He was smiling but  tears rolled down his cheeks. He wanted to say something but he could not talk,” Gigi said.

She told her father that if she could suffer some of his pain, she would have done so.

For now, Gigi said the Father’s Day gift that she could offer  is to seek  justice for her father in the ongoing administrative case for usurpation and abuse of authority that he filed against Cebu Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia.

In her Facebook account last June 14, Greg’s youngest daughter Gerly, who is based in Australia,  said she kept praying after his death to see and feel her father’s presence.

She said it finally happened the night before.

“I saw Dad in his barong but I couldn’t see his face. I couldn’t see your face, Dad, but I felt your presence like I never felt before. Indeed, you fulfilled your promise of visiting me here in Victoria. Thank you for making me feel your presence. I love you, Dad,” she wrote.