Love Made Visible: Celebrating the Love of Meljohn Reyes Tatel
June 24, 2024
Last year, I got to visit my high school English teacher Sir MJ and his beautiful Mamita. I rode a bike to their house.
Sir MJ and I spoke for a few hours about our high school lives in Ateneo de Naga University High School. I got to personally thank him for the impact he had on me growing up. He was our moderator for Blue & Gold, our school paper. He meticulously edited our work and made the layout and illustrations. He was our school photographer and designer of our high school brochures and ads. I think he even took the photo of us with Jesuit Fr. Rooney, our school spiritual adviser, when we were freshmen, and he photoshopped us into our high school flyers. He was the moderator for our yearbook Triumph. So really, Sir MJ was there all throughout my high school life.
Sir MJ had excellent cursive chalkboard handwriting which many of us tried to copy. You can still see his influence in my handwriting today. He was an artist and a painter. I even tried to bid for one of his wonderful paintings of bancas on the shore, for his fundraiser, but I was outbid. He played opera in his office, and even tried to sing Pavarotti with his booming tenor voice. I was spellbound by his charisma, his talent, and his silly classroom antics. His bellows of laughter and occasional anger would echo in the halls. I had lots of fun in his class.
We recalled the time when we had to make a movie retelling the life of Julius Caesar for his class. We talked about the lives we've lived and how our classmates were doing. I ogled at all the action figures he had, and all the Japanese-inspired art he made over the years. I marveled at his paintings of Ina, his paintings of Fr. Rooney, his paintings of Ignatius, his family photos. I asked about his pet snake and pet monkey. He told me stories about his nephews, nieces, uncles, aunties, and most of all his beloved mom. Sir MJ lived a deeply interesting and creative life.
At some point, he shared with me his reflections about dealing with sickness and his declining health. He said he could now relate to how Ignatius must have felt when he was hit by a cannonball and forced into bed to recover; how his lofty, worldly ambitions were put on hold and he got to ask the questions that truly matter in life.
Where does God want me to go?
He said the sickness also brought him closer to Jesus: Was this also what it was like when he was suffering?
His sickness rattled his faith, yes, but it also deepened it. He continued to pray the rosary and tried to find joy in the small, every day things in life.
Sir MJ touched my life deeply. But the greatest impact he has on me is that he lived a life of persistent faith that found God amidst the deepest pain, and transformed it into his calling, his mission, his vocation: to teach, to create art, and to touch lives.
Sir MJ, yours was a life well lived, well reflected, well shared, well loved.
Dios mabalos, Sir MJ. I will miss you dearly.