When Lightning Strikes: Jonathan Gapilango | CPUCN Class 1993

Some people can name the exact moment their life divided into before and after. Jonathan Gapilango was twelve years old when his came.

Lightning struck. And in one terrible instant, both of his parents were gone.

There are losses a child can understand. A broken toy. A friend moving away. A scraped knee that hurts terribly until, eventually, it doesn't. And then there are losses for which childhood has no vocabulary. One day Jonathan was a son with a mother and father. The next, he was an orphan.

There were no answers large enough for what had happened. But there was his grandmother, Lola Dadang. She couldn't undo the lightning or give a twelve-year-old boy his parents back. What she could give him was something quieter: faith. Not the kind of faith that pretends everything will be fine, but the kind that gets up the next morning when everything clearly isn't.

Jonathan would see that faith tested many times. One New Year's Eve, years after his parents died, there wasn't much of a celebration waiting at home. On the table sat a bowl of rice and one hard-boiled egg to be shared among Jonathan, Lola Dadang and a cousin. That was it. No handa spilling across the table. No abundance to mark the arrival of another year.

Yet Lola Dadang bowed her head and prayed, "Salamat, O Dios, nga may ara kita bisan ano pa man." Thank you, God, that we have something. There was barely enough on their own table, and she was thanking God for what remained. She even remembered those who had less.

Before they could begin eating, someone arrived. Jonathan's cousin had traveled from Negros. He wasn't expected, and in his hands was a warm bag containing an entire fried chicken.

Suddenly, their little table looked different. Jonathan would remember that New Year's Eve for the rest of his life. Not because fried chicken is particularly profound, but because a boy who had already learned how suddenly life could take something away was learning another lesson: sometimes help arrives just as unexpectedly. Sometimes hope doesn't announce itself with thunder. Sometimes it simply knocks on the door.

Lola Dadang's faith gave Jonathan something to stand on. His family gave him people to stand beside him. Aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins became a network of sacrifice stretching from the Philippines to the United States. Some relatives abroad worked extra hours and multiple jobs while supporting families of their own, yet still sent what they could home. Another cousin helped pay for his boarding house when she began working.

There were tuition difficulties and promissory notes. And there were nursing uniforms. Not closets full of them, but a precious few. Jonathan wore the same pieces repeatedly until his fourth year, when he finally acquired three sets of duty uniforms. He describes those earlier years with an Ilonggo phrase familiar to anyone who has ever tried to make too little stretch far enough: "Uba laba, suksok mala." Take it off. Wash it. Wear it as soon as it's dry.

He washed those uniforms himself, soaking them in Perla soap while somehow fitting the chore between nursing care plans, case studies, oral presentations and studying.

Then there were the weekends in Guimaras. There was no electricity at home, so Jonathan studied his nursing books by kingki, a kerosene lamp. Anyone who has studied under one knows that its light is not romantic when you're actually depending on it. It smokes. It smells. It leaves evidence. Jonathan sometimes woke in the morning with soot caked around his nose.

Still, he studied. Lola Dadang kept reminding him to endure because education was something no one could take away from him. "Jonjon, antos-antosa lang ah..." Just endure. Get your diploma. A brighter future is waiting.

So he kept the little lamp burning.

Even graduation carried another reminder of how far the family's resources had to stretch. Jonathan had no decent clothes for his baccalaureate and graduation ceremonies, so once again someone stepped forward. It was the same cousin who years earlier had appeared on New Year's Eve carrying the fried chicken. This time, he lent Jonathan clothes.

There is something almost perfect about that. At two very different moments in Jonathan's life, the same person arrived with what was needed. First, food. Later, clothes. Neither gift would ever appear on a résumé. Both helped build the man whose résumé would eventually become several pages long.

Jonathan graduated from the Central Philippine University College of Nursing in 1993. He worked as a research nurse at CPU, became a clinical instructor, moved to the United States and gradually built a nursing career encompassing clinical practice, education, research, administration, accreditation, professional leadership and service.

Somewhere along that journey, he found oncology. Perhaps there is something particularly meaningful about that. Cancer has its own kind of lightning. A person walks into a room living one version of life. Then comes a diagnosis, and suddenly there is a before and an after.

Jonathan knew something about that terrain. He knew what it was to have life change without permission and that sometimes there is no sentence capable of making fear disappear. His childhood suffering did not automatically make him a better nurse. Pain doesn't confer wisdom simply because we survive it. What Jonathan chose to do with that pain is the more important part. He allowed it to deepen his understanding of people who are frightened, uncertain and searching for something steady to hold onto.

Over the years, the boy who once studied beside a kerosene lamp became an oncology nurse leader. He helped establish and strengthen breast and lung cancer navigation programs, survivorship services, cancer risk evaluation, research initiatives, accreditation programs and systems designed to improve the experience and outcomes of people facing cancer.

He became an educator and mentor. He taught nurses, developed leaders, conducted research and served the nursing profession through organizations and leadership roles. He accumulated certifications, fellowships, awards and honors. The list is extensive, and it matters. But perhaps the more interesting question is why does he keep going?

Part of the answer can be found back in Guimaras. Decades after leaving the island as a young man with very little, Jonathan came back carrying something. In June 2025, he led a medical mission in Avila, Buenavista, Guimaras, serving more than 150 people. In January 2026, he returned as project leader for a much larger mission. Over two days, more than 1,200 patients received services including medical consultations, dental extractions, circumcisions, reading glasses and medications.

The boy who once lived in a home without electricity returned to his hometown helping bring healthcare to more than a thousand people. The child whose family once worried about tuition became the professional organizing resources for others. The young man who borrowed clothes for graduation returned with decades of knowledge, relationships and leadership behind him.

That is more than coming home. That is gratitude in motion.

And the medical missions are only part of it. Jonathan has supported feeding programs in Guimaras, helped provide blood-pressure equipment for barangay health workers, assisted with a bathroom and handwashing facility at a school serving many Indigenous students, and organized mental-health education for hundreds of young people.

Again and again, the pattern repeats: someone helped him, and he helps someone else. Someone taught him, and he teaches someone else. Someone opened a door, and he holds one open.

Today, that instinct continues through his involvement with the CPUCN Legacy Circle, including work with fellow alumni to bring DAISY recognition to CPUCN and Iloilo Mission Hospital. It is another expression of a question Jonathan's life has been answering for decades: What can I do with what has been given to me?

Maybe that is what legacy actually is. We often imagine it as something grand that bears our name: a building, an award, a title, a list of achievements impressive enough to require another page. Jonathan has plenty of achievements. But his story suggests something much simpler.

Legacy may be what happens when the help that reached you doesn't stop with you.

Lola Dadang couldn't give Jonathan wealth. She gave him faith. His relatives couldn't remove every hardship, but they divided the burden among themselves. And Jonathan remembered. He remembered what it was like to need, what it felt like when somebody showed up, and a grandmother thanking God over one egg.

Somewhere along the way, the boy sitting beside a smoky kingki became the person carrying light into other people's difficult places. That little kerosene lamp may be the image worth keeping.

Lightning is brilliant, but it lasts only an instant. A kingki is different. Its light is small. You have to tend it, protect it and keep feeding it. Sometimes a small, faithful light is exactly what gets you through the night.

Lightning marked the day Jonathan Gapilango lost his parents. It did not get to write the rest of his story.

Lola Dadang helped do that. So did a family that refused to let one of its children fall through the cracks. So did the little lamp beside his nursing books. And then Jonathan picked up the pen himself.

More than three decades later, he is still writing. In hospitals and classrooms. In the nurses he mentors. In cancer programs built to make care better. In Guimaras, where he keeps returning with something to give. And now, in the Circle, where another generation is being asked to consider what it, too, might carry forward.

Once, Jonathan needed people to keep a light burning for him. Today, he does that for others.

That is the light he carries.