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An homage to Pinoy reggae group Cocojam lead vocalist Rolly Maligad.

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ABS-CBN News

The month of May has been difficult, maybe even surreal. When we are alive, we feel that we are closer to immortality than death. The possibility of passing away from this world is seemingly strange even if it is the most definite and certain fact in our lives. But recently, death has been harvesting souls everywhere. I have come to realize from all the grief around me, that the most powerful thing about life is to live knowing that someday we will all die.I have never truly known grief until now. When acquaintances die, distant friends and relatives of people you know, death has a different mask. It hurts you second-handedly, you mourn but the full blow is not there, it is just the surface of a whole world of emotions. When you lose someone truly close to you, you become part of a club, of a group of people continuously living life carrying grief in their hearts. You can only truly understand them when you have experienced this kind of loss yourself. When my father passed away on May 14, I was devastated. I am a Papa’s girl, my father was a “houseband.” That’s what we would call him. He would cook, do the laundry, go to the market, iron my uniform, bring me to school; we would spend most of our days together hanging out while we wait for Mama to come home from the office. When he passed away I thought to myself, how lucky I am to grow up with not much money because we couldn’t afford a place with two rooms and so I had to sleep in the same bed or the same room as they did. Also because of this, I have spent most of my life with my Papa. I talk like him, I laugh like him and I even groove like him. He occupied such a big space in my life and when I saw him in pain and when he drew his last breath, the space he took folded into a black hole. I never knew such pain and sadness could exist. That’s when I realized that grief is a portal to a different plane of life. It felt like the whole world was peeling off a different plane of existence, the one with my loving father in it. Now it was forcing me to live a life without the physical presence of this human being that I spent most of my life with. How does one bare this weight? Each journey through grief is incomparable, each person processes the experience in different ways. How does one cope? Each has a different way. And so I asked myself, How will I cope? My father, is Rolly Maligad, He was a musician and songwriter in the band called Cocojam. He was the Bob Marley of the Philippines, his band is the first reggae band in the country. Despite him being known for that, I wanted everyone to know how much he was loved and how much he loved with all his heart. He lived life to the fullest because he loved to the fullest. And so I shared through my Instagram stories, the contents of my heart and our journey, as we celebrated his life and traveled with his ashes to all his favorite places and people. It is in grief that we realize the fullness of our love.

A daughter's tribute to the Pinoy Reggae King

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A daughter's tribute to the Pinoy Reggae King

ABS-CBN News,

Shallah Montero

Published Jun 16, 2024 04:25 PM PHT

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Updated Jun 16, 2024 04:45 PM PHT

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OPM

Pinoy

music

reggae

Cocojam

Rolly Maligad

Shallah Montero

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