Is there life… after death?

Will MalCa be invited to the wake for Ricky Davao or whatever necrological services may be held to honor a superb actor who opened the month of May in Pinoy showbiz with his departure for the hereafter?

MalCa who? (And with a capitalized “c” is how she writes her nickname.)

Mayeth Malca Darroca is the girlfriend of Davao for about two or three years and who most likely knew for months that the actor’s days were numbered because of the cancer that afflicted him.

The world knows about their relationship, even as Davao never made it a habit to introduce her to one and all in any event they were together. They once posted in 2023 in their joint social media account a photo of themselves together at an event. It was the only time they did it.

And she surely never pressured Davao to introduce her to anyone. Davao himself once briefly introduced her to us (me, alone, actually), but it was improper for us to chat with her as we were watching a concert of Ice Seguerra at the Music Museum. We were seated behind them, and my (booming) voice must have been familiar to Davao, so he looked back when we uttered something to the theater artist and writer Frank Rivera. Davao had always known us because we had been covering him since his late teen years as a Viva Films upstart actor.

Darroca is a freelance movie-TV production executive. She is younger than Davao, but no one knows for sure by how many years. We recently learned from online yarns that she finished Communication Arts at Far Eastern University in 2005. She uses “MalCa” as a nickname, not Mayeth, which was how a website report referred to her.

An unverified online tidbit about Darroca says she is a single mother to a son whose father was not named. Darroca has been so private and has not made it clear if Darroca is her married surname or her maiden name.

The public knows that Davao and Jackielou Blanco have been separated for years — since 2011, actually. Since none of them are addicted to posting about the twists and turns and the highs and lows of their lives together and with their three children, their separation was never a scandal. Both are unquestionably decent people.

There were no exchanges of any kind on social media. It just happened. One day, one of them revealed that they had separated and have been living in separate houses, which are just a stone’s throw away from each other, so their three children can go in and out of both houses as they please. They always had mom and dad around.

A day or two after Davao’s passing, a website columnist kept referring to Pilita Corrales’ daughter as “Ricky’s wife” — even as direct quotes from Blanco in the same column never refer to her as “Ricky’s wife” or “Ricky’s ex-wife.” She simply thanked Davao for “always loving the family.”

Blanco is the superwoman in this season of passing away. Her mother left for the hereafter on 12 April (followed by Nora Aunor’s demise on 16 April). There are no reports of Blanco breaking down. Not even after her ex-husband also made his exit. The report is that she attended to the details of the wake in the morning and then proceeded to the taping (somewhere in Metro Manila) of Totoy Bato, a new TV5 series in which the widowed ex-wife has a guesting stint.

We wish Blanco would declare that Darroca is welcome to turn up at the Heritage Memorial Chapels any time of the day or night and that she (Blanco) is requesting everyone and anyone who might chance upon Darroca at the place to let her be, to let her grieve openly.

We wish the daughters (Rachel and Barni) of the late singer Hajji Alejandro (who passed on 21 April) would have done it with singer Alynna Velasquez while their dad was lying in estate also at Heritage. Velasquez is not known to have snatched Alejandro from any woman attached to him as a spouse and with whom the daughters were close. Velasquez was with their widowed dad for 27 years. Surely, Velasquez is grieving almost as much as Hajji’s daughters.

In fairness to the daughters (whose mother was Alejandro’s first wife), Velasquez once posted in her social media that they never sent her away from Alejandro’s house in Antipolo where they lived together for years. It was Velasquez who decided to leave when she learned that Alejandro was allowed by his doctors to go home and be taken care of by his family with the assistance of a private nurse.

Velasquez wrote that she didn’t want to get in the way of the daughters. She wrote on her Instagram: “Hajji has been my partner for 27 years, I think that kilalang-kilala ko na siya (I know him well). But now, putting myself in the shoes of the children, inisip ko na kung ako din ‘yon, mas gugustuhin ko na kasama ko ang tatay ko kasi pamilya siya (I know that if I was his daughter I would want to be with my fatherbecause he is my family) I am not a wife, I am just a girlfriend.”

She seems to have never been invited by anyone to the wake. Some netizens bashed her for wishing to be at the wake. She curtly posted as a reaction: “I am also grieving.”

Did Nora Aunor’s children invite rapper John Rendez to her burial at the Libingan ng ng mga Bayani? If so, why did Rendez turn up alone at the memorial park after the burial and sobbed away his sorrows at her grave?

Rendez was the National Artist’s home companion for decades, including the years Aunor was hanging out with overt lesbian business managers (one of whom was alleged to have married Aunor in Las Vegas).

Is it wrong to expect the bereaved to be magnanimous to persons closely associated with the departed in unusual and controversial ways? Just when is the most comforting time to be magnanimous? Is it not at the moment of grieving?

The departed thrived for years being with personalities they were not married to because the laws of the country prohibit marriage between them. Or a wedding rite would be too much hassle for the partners to handle.

There are moments when magnanimity of spirit is best lived.