IT?S the ordinary everyday things that actor Roderick Paulate misses the most, now that Paz, his beloved mom, is gone.

?When I have to eat by myself, I tell our cook: Mom is really gone,? Roderick said. ?Slowly, it?s dawning on me.?

This will be his first Christmas without her; Paz died last month.

?I told the family that I don?t want to celebrate the holidays the way we used to,? he said. ?When I look at the faces of my nephews and nieces, I see my mom. It?s because my mom is the family?s Santa Claus. The year round, she?d save coins or break her big bills into P20s, to give away at Christmastime.?

Every Christmas tradition he observes, he picked up from his mom.

And because nothing seems to fill the emptiness in his heart left by his mom, only prayers help him cope, Roderick said.

Work and his campaign?both for ?Ded na si Lolo? and his bid for a seat in the Quezon City council?keep him preoccupied.

He is glad he was able to tell his mom that ?Ded na si Lolo? had been chosen by the Film Academy of the Philippines as the country?s entry in the Oscars Best Foreign Language Film category.

?She was happy to hear that, but she was already sick at the time. We didn?t get to talk about it much because I was attending to her medication.?

Shooting the film was both easy and difficult, the actor added, because he was going through similar emotions off the set.

On his first day of shoot in October last year, his eldest brother Herminio passed away.

?I was hesitant because my first scene was in front of the coffin,? he recalled. ?I thought that was morbid.?

Production could have postponed his shoot and worked around him but, like the trouper that he had always been, Roderick decided, ?The show must go on.?

Out of love
He explained, ?I was concerned about the movie. I didn?t want to delay the shoot. I knew that it?s not a big-budget project. It was made out of love.?

When it came time to do a second pictorial for the Oscar campaign, his mother had just passed.

Book-ended by the two deaths in his own family, the film?s message all the more resonated with Roderick.

As the film illustrated, in times of tragedy, Pinoys could rely on family, even neighbors.

?It?s unfortunate that when a parent dies, those who are left behind sometimes fight over expenses and inheritance,? Roderick said. ?In our film movie, we showed that the family could remain intact.?

?Ded na si Lolo? (now known as ?Grandpa is Dead?) captures the Pinoy spirit, he reiterated.

Director Soxie Topacio allowed Roderick and the rest of the cast to improvise, to make the scenes more truthful.

?Soxie is very respectful of actors, being an actor himself,? said Roderick. ?He gave us his full trust. To make scenes come alive, I would crack jokes that I didn?t do during rehearsals.?