It is impossible to think of Ed Jason de Guzman without thinking of what he loved: music, making things, making people laugh, taking photos, his girls on whom he lavished time and attention, and the Lord, who he held above all things.
His interests were wide and varied, pursued with gusto, from the guitar he picked up in his teens to the electric bass that soon followed, countless inventions and innovations for school and home, numerous meals prepared with love for family and friends, the professional camera wielded later in life—along with a love of tinkering and figuring it out, in all these things his way of making things work and making them beautiful always shone through. He never stopped learning.
His enthusiasm for new places was rivaled only by a desire to revisit ones already dear to his heart, and it thrilled him to connect and re-connect with experiences, friends, and family across years and distances. As a boy growing up in BF Homes, he constantly explored its streets on a bike, cheerfully came and went about neighbors’ houses, and kept his own door open to all. This he replicated on vacations in Cavite, with cousins and without the bike; it became how he kept his own home and, in a broader sense, how he lived—always welcome and welcoming.
From earning his engineering degree to becoming head of the family with his parents’ passing 12 years apart, Jay took all his responsibilities seriously—no job was too big or too small. And yet, he never took himself seriously, bringing lightness and joy to every situation, with a natural deadpan look that made it hard to tell if he was kidding or not. (He often was.)
The works of his hands brought him into the fold, into De La Salle University Pops Orchestra, into Singles for Christ, into Imagine Nation, into business partnerships for coffee and photography and other interests besides. At all times, Jay did the things he loved, and he did them not to glorify himself but as an ardent testimony to the grace of his mighty and loving God.
He married the great love of his life on July 4, 2009, and welcomed the other on August 2, 2010. He lived simply and gave his time and talents lavishly—to relatives of every generation, cousins, in-laws; business partners, neighborhood, org, and school barkadas; extended family; and, of course, the sisters, wife, and daughter circling his days as planets around a sun.
Jason, Jay, Jase, Bro, Tito, Ninong, Kuya, Dear, Papa came into the world very early at 7:05 in the morning on August 25, 1973. When the Lord called him home on April 8, 2021, the example he left is one of living gently, living generously and with great respect, always choosing the decent thing, the kinder thing.
He shares an unbroken bond of love with his wife Loi, daughter Amelia, sisters Tessa and Ghia; the same bond reunites him with his father Ed and mother Precy in heaven.
Kindness and gentleness in our own lives—especially when difficult—is the only true honoring, and to any praise or commendation, while making him smile, one imagines with great certainty a response that would simply divert the credit to the great truth he lived and gave freely to anyone, anyone at all: that we are all so very blessed, and so—God bless you more.
Tessa de Guzman Prieto
April 28, 2021
