AMADO E. Doronila, regarded as the Philippines’, if not one of the region’s, most succinct socio-political observers, passed away Friday in Australia. He was 95 years old.
He died “serenely,” according to his oldest child Agustin, who broke the news to a publication where Doronila wrote an evening column in the 60s until Martial Law was declared.
The cause of death was attributed to pneumonia, which started off as a Respiratory Syncytial Virus earlier in the week.
When his oxygen levels dropped significantly on Thursday, the staff from the Kangara Waters care facility in Canberra asked Doronila’s family if he could be sent to the nearby major medical center, the Calvary Hospital.
“He was a bit stubborn and insisted that he was not sick,” Agustin said even after it was discovered that pneumonia had taken hold of one of his lungs.
While Agustin’s sister Maria, a Canberra resident, kept watch over the multi- awarded journalist-editor, Agustin flew in from Melbourne, and their younger brother Andrew and his wife, who also live in the city, were together with their “Pappy” when he passed on.
Agustin informed The Times that they aim to hold his father’s funeral on Friday, July 14 in Canberra, the date being significant as it marks the fourth death anniversary of Doronila’s wife, Lourdes and France’s Bastille Day, which the avowed Francophile, born in Dumangas, Iloilo, enjoyed observing.
Agustin said that when he arrived, his father was “asleep and his breathing was getting shallower.”
He said that his father was struggling harder when he last spoke to him on Thursday. “He did not want to admit he was sick and did not want to go to the hospital.”
“We will inform you of the zoom link. A few days ago my sister had a very special conversation where he was talking so joyfully and jokingly about what our mum told him, especially when she was annoyed about other people. In my daily conversations with him, he also brought up many anecdotes about mum.
Looking back now it seemed that it was time for them to be together again more in spirit,” Agustin said.
This year, Doronila, who never gave up his Philippine passport despite his Australian residency, launched Part 2 of his memoires, DORO: Behind the Byline published by The University of the Philippines Press, at the Australian National University in Canberra.
