A Letter to his Parents

Jose Rizal bids his family farewell — "It is better to die than to live suffering" — How he wishes to be
buried.

The letter bears no date. (1)

To my family,

I ask you for forgiveness for the pain I cause you, but some day I shall have to die and it is better that I
die now in the plentitude of my conscience.

Dear parents and brothers: give thanks to God that I may preserve my tranquility before my death. I die
resigned, hoping that with my death you will be left in peace. Ah! It is better to die than to live suffering.
Console yourselves.

I enjoin you to forgive one another the little meanness of life and try to live united in peace and good
harmony. Treat your old parents as you would like to be treated by your children later. Love them very
much in my memory.

Bury me in the ground. Place a stone and a cross over it. My name, the date of my birth and of my
death. Nothing more. If later you wish to surround my grave with a fence, you can do it. No
anniversaries. I prefer Paang Bundok. (2)

Have pity on poor Josephine.

(1) This letter was among the Rizal documents presented to the Republic of the Philippines by Spain
through her ministers of foreign affairs, Martin Artajo on 26 February 1953. It has no date, but it must
have been written at Fort Santiago shortly before he was led to his execution on Bagumbayan, Manila.
These documents are published in one volume, Documentos Rizalinos, Manila 1953, by the Philippine
government.
(2) Paang Bundok literally means foot of the mountain. It is the place in the north of Manila where are
the North Cemetery, a municipal cemetery, and the Chinese Cemetery. Rizal was buried, not in a humble
place in Paang Bundok, as he wished but in the Cemetery of Paco. On 30 December 1912, the
Commission on the Rizal Monument, created by virtue of Law No. 243, transferred his remains to the
base of the monuments erected on the Luneta, very near to the place where he was shot.

Content of Jose Rizal’s Letter to His Parents

According to Lisa Guerrero Nakpil, Rizal’s letter to his parents reveal the context of time, place, and
circumstance of events that would follow after 1883.

The letter was written at a difficult time during Rizal’s life in which he was experiencing a period of
adjustment. In 1882, he left the love of his life in the Philippines and abruptly sailed to Europe without
saying goodbye to his lover and his family. It was also the year when he started medical school in Spain.
“The letter gives added dimension to the country’s foremost hero. Like any Filipino expatriate, Rizal
would succumb to the enchantments of his foreign surroundings but also to its political liberalism,” said
Nakpil.

Rizal was very detailed in his letters, in which he told his parents in great detail the places he saw, and
the food he ate.

“Rizal’s letter reveals he took his meals on the very next street, at Calle del Lobo (Street of the Wolf),
which had a couple of restaurants frequented by Filipinos, including Hotel Ingles which still exists to this
day,” said Nakpil.

“The letter situates him at No. 15 Calle del Baño (Street of the Bath) where Rizal slyly claims he is there
only to sleep and study,” Nakpil said, referring to the letter of Rizal to his parents. In the letter to his
parents, Rizal also detailed his notorious brindis or toasts.

“Jose Rizal would make the legendary brindis or toasts, but would include so many political barbs and
insults to the Spanish colonial authorities that his brother would fear for his life and plead for him not to
return to the Philippines,” said Nakpil.

“This would mark Rizal’s metamorphosis as an activist that would reach its zenith in his novels, the Noli
and the Fili, and his eventual martyrdom.”

Letters of Rizal to Paciano Details the “Amusements” in Madrid

In the same year he wrote the letter to his parents, Rizal also wrote his brother Paciano about the
“amusements” in Madrid.

“Women abound even more (here in Madrid) and it is, indeed, shocking that in many places they
intercept men and they are not the ugly ones either... With respect to morality there are some who are
models of virtue and innocence and others who have nothing womanly about them, except their dress
or at most their sex. Rightly it has been said that the women in the South of Europe have fire in their
veins. However, here prostitution is a little more concealed than at Barcelona, though not less
unrestrained."

The letter does not imply that Rizal partook in such amusements. However, it was Rizal’s friend and
namesake, Jose Alejandrino, who outs Rizal’s gallivanting in his book, La Senda del Sacrificio (1945):

“One day he invited me to amuse ourselves, telling me we could pass the time in the house of two
sisters whom he knew. We went there and I came to like the amusement very much, because a few days
later I asked him when we could return for more fun, but then he grew serious, saying that he
considered such entertainment was necessary once a month, but more than once was already a vice,
and he was not willing to encourage vices.”

Letters of Rizal to Consuelo

Contrary to what Rizal’s letter to his parents state, Rizal did more than “sleep and study” during his stay
in Madrid. Nakpil also tells the story of Consuelo, one of Rizal’s flings.

“The house at Calle del Baño was owned by one Don Pablo Ortiga y Rey, the former mayor of Manila,”
said Nakpil. “Don Pablo had two daughters, the ‘prettier one’ being the 18-year-old Consuelo. She would
keep a rather detailed, albeit indiscreet diary, on her gentleman admirers, which included Jose Rizal,
then 23 years of age.”

In one of Consuelo’s diaries, she writes about Rizal:

“Rizal says he never goes out except to go to medical school and come here at night. Rizal too is in love,
he hasn’t proposed outright but almost, almost… I am divided between Rizal and Lete, the former
attracts me because of his conversation and because he seems such a serious young man… Rizal told me
he was leaving for Paris to forget, to heal himself of a disease acquired a year ago…”

Based on Consuelo’s very revealing journal entry, it was possible that the “disease” Rizal told her about
was a heartbreak or yearning for Leonor Rivera, whom many historians believe was Rizal’s most
significant love and heartbreak.

Interestingly, in one of the letters of Rizal to Consuelo, he wrote a poem titled “A la Señorita C. O. y R:”

Why resurrect unhappy memories

now when the heart awaits from love a sign,

or call the night when day begins to smile,

not knowing if another day will shine?

Apart from such poetry, Rizal also gave Consuelo a variety of gifts, according to Nakpil. Among them
were gift of fabric and slippers from Manila, the first bloom from his houseplant, and music sheets from
Paris.