‘My relationship with Relan Magbanua was spiritual’

By Alex P. Vidal

 

“By having a reverence for life, we enter into a spiritual relation with the world By practicing reverence for life we become good, deep, and alive.”—Albert Schweitzer

 

IF not for this Good Samaritan who now lives in New York City, friends and relatives of the late Ilonggo chess master Relan Magbanua would have known little information about the latter’s death; or no information at all.

But Fred “Boy” Mago, 68, a missionary from the Times Square Church, a non-denominational church located at 237 West 51st Street in the Theater District of Manhattan, New York City, took pains in locating Magbanua’s whereabouts in July this year when Magbanua’s uncle, Remy, took Mago to task in verifying reports that the chess master from Bacolod City may have died during the height of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Elmhurst, Queens in March, April, and May.

“I checked the Elmhurst Clinic Hospital (in Elmhurst) and the Lincoln Medical Center (In Bronx) and nobody could give me accurate information,” narrated Mago, who admitted he became attached to the 63-year-old Magbanua not only as a friend and fellow Bacolod resident but spiritually before his death.

Mago, who went to Guimbal High School in Guimbal, Iloilo before studying at the La Consolacion College in Bacolod City as a teenager, didn’t give up his search for Magbanua’s body.

 

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He used the Internet, among other means of communications, to contact prominent funeral parlors in Queens where dead COVID-19 victims were believed to have been kept before being cremated, including Hart Island, where most of the unclaimed dead bodies were buried to no avail.

Later, Mago learned that Magbanua’s body had been brought to a funeral parlor in New Jersey, but there was no immediate confirmation whether it was still intact or was already cremated.

Most of Magbanua’s friends and family members in the Philippines have been informed about his death allegedly of complications caused by COVID-19 on April 17, 2020.

Mago and Magbanua last met on January 16, 2020 where Mago was able to take a video of Magbanua greeting his friends and relatives in Bacolod City.

In that video, Magbanua waved hello to his friends and family saying he was fine and “still surviving” and promised to be back in Bacolod soon.

“We will all see each other again soon. I love you all,” Magbanua declared.

It was Mago who introduced Magbanua back to spiritual life as a Christian living in New York City.

 

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“We’ve known each other a long time ago being both Ilonggos from Bacolod, but it was sometime in 2001 when we met once again after I came back from Africa (on a missionary trip),” recalled Mago, a father of three daughters.

“I invited him to our church and introduced him to our ministry where he met a lot of spiritual leaders. Relan struggled to understand the meaning of his life and would relate his personal problems to the words of God in the Holy Bible.”

Magbanua would come to Mago both during hard times and when he was well-off.

“He was a generous man when he had money, and would ask help from his friends every time he was in need of help financially and otherwise,” sighed Mago, who became a born again Christian in 1999 after linking with Rev. David Wilkerson.

“God knows the motive of our hearts,” emphasized Mago. “Relan knew his life was empty and restless if there was a void inside his heart.”

Mago’s missionary works had brought him to Scotland, Africa, Israel, and Jamaica, and the Philippines.

“It was God who introduced me to the Christian ministry; my life, my own experience, became the main basis of my missionary life,” said Mago, who is married to Magdeleine.

The Mago couple migrated to the United States in 1986 together with their daughters Jing, Diday, and Juve, who died in March 2019. They have four grandchildren.

Magbanua, who had been in the U.S. since the early ’90s, was planning to go home “for good” if the case he filed against a surgeon for medical malpractice would be decided, Filipino chess coach Rainier Labay said.

Magbanua reportedly dislocated his arm during a basketball game two years ago and the surgeon had allegedly performed an incorrect surgery.

“You are dead, done and gone. The dead can no longer sing the praise to God. There is no more repentance. You were given a chance. Thank God you did. Rest in peace, my friend,” read Mago’s final message to Magbanua posted on Mago’s Facebook account.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)