We live our lives not just for ourselves, but for other people.
Elizabeth B. Quevedo, 62, understood this the way most of us only do—in hindsight, through grief, loss, and the particular clarity that comes when the life you built with someone is suddenly only yours to carry forward.
She was an HR manager, her husband a longtime executive at his company. They had two children: a son, and a daughter with Mowat-Wilson Syndrome, a condition so uncommon that it took the help of an American friend and a trip to the United States just to get her a diagnosis. They lived modestly but well. They had each other, their faith, and their work. Challenging as it was to support a daughter with special needs, they built a family that had no shortage of both love and purpose.
Insurance, at the time, felt unnecessary.
"We don't feel the need," Ms. Quevedo recalls. Her husband's company already covered everything including coverage for life, health, or accidents. There was nothing obviously missing. So, when a friend, Maribel, who was starting out as an insurance agent with Pru Life UK, came to them with a proposal, they said yes for one reason only: to support her.
"That was the primary reason: to help our friend."
In June 2012, Ms. Quevedo resigned from the job she loved. Her daughter had suffered a serious seizure, and together with an unpleasant incident that happened at her workplace, something in her simply couldn't continue dividing herself between office and home.
Two years later, in August 2014, her husband was diagnosed with stage three nasopharyngeal cancer.
“Cancer will strip you of your money, time, energy and opportunities, especially if you are determined to exhaust all ways and means to conquer it,” she says as she recalled that difficult period.
It was four years of fighting: chemotherapy, alternative treatments, clinical trials, the slow and exhausting effort of hope.
He was fiercely determined, not just for himself, Ms. Quevedo says, but because he was the provider and having a daughter who needed lifelong care. He wanted to live for them.
"He really fought fiercely," she says quietly. "But God has his eternal purpose that we cannot question."
"Being with my husband in all the doctor’s appointments, chemotherapy, radiation, integrative treatment, and hospitalization, gave me the joy and sacrifice of fulfilling that promise. ‘Till death do us part, in sickness and in health," she says.
A certain dignity in loss
When the time came to file a claim with Pru Life UK, Ms. Quevedo was bracing herself. She had heard what these processes could feel like —the documentation, the back-and-forth, the indignity of having to beg for something you were owed—and dreaded the whole thing.
Instead, Maribel, their insurance agent, met her every step of the way. With the requirements organized, anticipating every question before it was asked, she personally delivered a check for 50% of the benefit within three days of submitting the documents. Most importantly, it arrived while her husband could still know it had arrived.
"He had that comfort," Ms. Quevedo says, "that he still had a contribution."
For a man who had spent his life as a provider, who had fought cancer in part because he couldn't bear the thought of leaving his family without, the check was more than money. It was dignity, proof that even in his diminished state, even in those final months, he had something left to give.
The policy was his. The benefit was his. He was still, in the only way left to him, taking care of the people he loved.
There is something she didn't know until later, and still tells with disbelief: during the most financially draining period of her husband's illness, when premiums had gone unpaid and the policy was at risk of lapsing, Maribel quietly approached Ms. Quevedo’s best friend and to help pay for the premiums to keep the support going.
"Why would she do that?" Ms. Quevedo asks. And then she answers her own question: "She’s a par excellence insurance agent with heart, perseverance and competence, she is mission-driven and not just doing it as a career but a calling. She must be carrying the DNA of Pru Life UK."
Her husband passed away in March 2018. Ms. Quevedo recalls, "I was given the opportunity to be with him, expressing my undying love up to his final moments,” she says.
Because of the benefit provided by Pru Life UK, Ms. Quevedo was allowed breathing space to get everything in order. She was afforded the time to grieve at her own pace and be able to travel abroad.
Pru Life UK was instrumental to them returning to some semblance of normalcy. Ms. Quevedo now spends her time as a volunteer Values Education Teacher in public schools, a Chaplain under the National Auxiliary Chaplaincy Philippines, one of the facilitators of John Maxwell’s Beyond Success Program; and an active leader of a house church in Olongapo City.
She is also a founding director of the Transformational Development of People Affected with Disabilities, Inc., a non-government organization which aims to help persons with disabilities experience whole and well lives.
Ms. Quevedo recounts her experiences whenever she talks about insurance now to anyone who will listen. "It's a necessity," she says. "You have to live not just for a moment, but for your future. And not just for yourself, but for your loved ones."
"Even if you don't want to do it for yourself — do it for everyone around you who cares about you; so that when they remember you, there is gratitude. ‘Thank you, Dad. Thank you, Mom.’ That's what you want to leave behind."
Ms. Quevedo and her husband started getting insurance to help a friend. In the end, it was the most important thing they ever did for each other.
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As published on BusinessWorld
