Student athlete told mom he would have many guests at home on Christmas Day

SAN MIGUEL, Bulacan—Jonas Joshua Garcia, the 16-year-old student athlete who died days after competing in a boxing match in the recently held Central Luzon Regional Athletic Association (CLRAA) meet in Zambales province, will be buried after Christmas to allow his family more time to spend with him.

His mother, Cynthia, an overseas Filipino worker in Japan, said she booked a flight back home immediately after learning of her son’s fate on Dec. 9. She had earlier scheduled her homecoming for Dec. 25.

“I arranged to go home on Christmas Day to spend it with Jonas and my other children after being absent for many years. That’s why, despite his death, I will continue to spend it with him. Our family will still be together on Christmas Day,” she said.

Cynthia, 46, said she would prepare her son’s favorite curry rice, spaghetti and seafood dishes, and place these on top of his coffin as the family gathers and celebrates Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

“I love him so much. I will grant his Christmas wishes even though he’s gone, so he will be happy wherever he may be,” she told the Inquirer at Jonas’ wake here on Wednesday.

The family, she said, will bury Jonas on Dec. 28. He would have turned 17 on Jan. 4, 2014.

Before he died, Jonas asked his mother to buy him a pair of Converse sneakers. But Cynthia said she had yet to decide whether to buy the shoes for her dead son.

She said she had dissuaded Jonas from boxing after she learned that he won a provincial contest that qualified him to join the CLRAA meet, a regional sports meet sanctioned by the Department of Education.

“When I learned that he was into boxing, I put my foot down and asked him to stop because he had weak lungs and a heart condition when he was a baby. He was slim and had a thin frame. But he went on to compete despite my pleas,” she said.

Cynthia said her son had a premonition of his death, as he told her in one of their last conversations that he could not join the family in fetching her at the airport on

Dec. 25 because he was expecting to entertain many visitors in their house on Christmas Day.

Jonas was the eldest of her four children. He has a twin brother, Ralph Raven, who was supposed to be the one to compete in the CLRAA meet.

“I’m puzzled by what he told me because it was unusual that he or our family would entertain guests on Christmas Day,” Cynthia said.

The Bulacan Rescue Team fetched Jonas, a senior student of San Miguel National High School, in a Zambales hospital and was immediately taken to the Bulacan Medical Center. He was later transferred to the University of Santo Tomas Hospital in Manila where he died on Sunday.

Bulacan Gov. Wilhelmino Sy-Alvarado said Jonas’ case should serve as a lesson to officials overseeing the CLRAA meet.

He said the student athletes’ coaches and members of the schools’ training staff should subject all players to rigid health examinations before they compete and should monitor their health condition.