It took 48-year-old Rowel Abellaneda nearly 12 hours to leave Vietnam where he works as a technician to go home to Cebu City after learning that his son had drowned during a heavy downpour Thursday afternoon.
The body of 16-year-old Rowel Abellaneda Jr. was recovered at the mouth of Guadalupe river the day after he was swept away by flood water.
Abellaneda went for a swim after classes were suspended at Gothong National High School due to heavy rains in the afternoon.
The elder Abellaneda was both dismayed and angered at what happened to his son.
“Kung naa pa lang ko ato, ako gyod mangunay og tabang sa akong anak. Bahalag buhi o patay basta kay kung naa palang ko ma-recover og matabangan nako siya dayon. Ngano ikaw pa man,” Abellaneda murmured while caressing the glass window of his son’s coffin.
(If I was just here, I would have rescued and helped my son. Alive or dead, what matters is that I could have recovered him earlier and help him immediately. Why did it have to be you?)
Rescue
There were reports that Rowell went back to the sea to rescue two of his five classmates who also went swimming in the area.
“Para nako hero siya pero naa gyod unta toy pamaagi nga masalbar siya pero wala. Dili unta to mahitabo,naa pa unta akong anak karon, (For me he is a hero but there must have been a way to save him. It could have not happened, my son could have been still here),” he said.
He said he always chats with his son through Facebook to remind him to be good boy and to avoid hanging out often with his friends.
“I have even posted to his wall why him of all people,” he said in Cebuano.
Josie Abellaneda, the victim’s mother, said her son asked what school he would enroll in to become a civil engineer.
Rowell’s remains will be laid to rest this Wednesday at Calamba Cemetery.
The Cebu City government will allocate P10,000 in burial assistance to the victim’s family.
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