Death
Death
Updated 11:04pm (Mla time) Dec 05, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the December 6, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
LAST Wednesday, we woke up violently to the news that the parish priest of Infanta had drowned in the floods. The parish priest of Infanta is my brother-in-law, my wife's brother, Francisco, whom everyone calls Father Boy. The last time we were in Infanta was in April when he was installed as that town's parish priest. It was a summer's day, the sun fretted and gave the beach-where we repaired to afterwards-a shimmering glow. The sense of warmth was enlivened in no small way by folk taking liberal swigs of fiery lambanog in the makeshift huts underneath the coconut trees.
The news about Father Boy was wrong, but the real news was no less tragic. A priest did die in the flood. He was Fr. Charlito Colendres, the chancellor of the Prelature of Infanta for the last two years. Father Cha's heroism was recounted and extolled in the Inquirer last week. He had tied one end of a rope to a tree and had thrown the other end to people caught in a flash flood when he himself was swept away by the rampaging water. The survivors would later remark that Father Cha died on the very day we celebrate National Heroes Day. But it was no great comfort to his folks, who waited at Mt. Carmel for days for his body to be airlifted to Manila. No chopper could land in Infanta at that time. The place teemed with knee-high mud and debris.
I know how a mudslide in Real looks like. We were there once in the early 1980s, and a storm had swirled there. When it cleared next day, a group of us headed home by bus. At the time, a trip to and from Real took anywhere from nine to 15 hours, depending on the weather and the state of the bus, which was invariably decrepit. The road after Siniloan going to Real was rough and narrow, winding around the mountains. An hour after we left Real, we found our way blocked by a landslide. The rains had loosened a part of the cliff beside the road. Rocks and branches lay half buried in the mud. Nothing could pass through, certainly not a bus.
The bus could do nothing but turn back, the driver telling those who wished to go ahead there was only one way they could do so. That was to walk several kilometers up to a clearing in the mountain where another bus waited. We did. My daughter Miranda was still a kid then and I carried her up on my shoulders while we trudged on slippery mud for what seemed like eternity. When the rain fell in a torrent, we took shelter among the huts that dotted the road intermittently. You could see the mud and rock and branches being washed down the road into the ravines. When we finally got to the clearing, I felt like I had gone through war.
I remembered that ordeal when I saw the footage on TV about what had happened to Real, Infanta and Dingalan. And multiplied it a thousand times. What we went through was nothing compared to this. This was tragedy of indescribable proportions. For days on end, I would hear keening on TV, from those who had lost home, hearth and loved ones. Bodies were strewn everywhere, most of them children. One news crew fished out Christmas lights from the thick mud in Dingalan, driving home the full extent of the tragedy. Christmas is a season expressly reserved for children-indeed when all of Christendom sees the world through the eyes of a child again. The bodies of the children were mangled and torn, like plastic dolls. They had been pummeled by rock, earth and rolling logs. The logs lay everywhere too, incontrovertible evidence of a heinous crime.
My daughter, Miranda, who reported on Polilio, was awed by the devastation. Bodies had washed up to shore in that island, probably coming all the way from Real, delivered there by the tides. There were precious few animals left in Polilio, which lay off Quezon, right on the Pacific Ocean. Left outside beyond the pale of shelter, the carabaos, goats and pigs had perished in the lash of wind and rain.
I felt a personal sense of loss. I had known these places for some time, I had been going there since the 1970s and seen them grow, or deteriorate, over the years. The storm drove home again how utterly vulnerable that part of the world is to natural and human calamities. Lying at the eastern seaboard of this archipelago, it is the fist line of defense against the not very pacific upheavals of the Pacific. Lying in the throes of poverty, moreover, it has very little defense against these ravages. The completion of the highway going there has not lessened the misery, it has increased it through more frenzied logging. That is the human calamity that afflicts Dingalan, Infanta and Real today. The tragedy that visited those places last week wasn't wrought by the hand of God, it was wrought by the hand of greed.
But I will put off my anger for tomorrow. Today, I mean only to grieve for the people of Quezon and be one with them. How can a season of life so swiftly turn into a season of death? I mean only to extol the heroism of Father Cha and all the religious and lay workers who have tied themselves to a tree and thrown the other end of a rope to people drowning in the rampaging water. It is a testament to their fortitude and the mercy of the God they serve that none of them has been swept away, other than in the physical sense of it. That is all my source of hope in this season of death, that death shall have no dominion, as Dylan Thomas puts it.
By his own death, Father Cha has done just that. He has given us hope life will shoot out through the rubble.
* * *
I've gotten a lot of text messages from people who want to contribute goods and services but do not quite know whom to give them to. One very good place is Mt. Carmel Shrine on Broadway, New Manila. Their Tel. No. is 7245938, local 114. Or you can call or text Sister Zenia, 0919-6366127. I'm helping there, too.
Updated 11:04pm (Mla time) Dec 05, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the December 6, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
LAST Wednesday, we woke up violently to the news that the parish priest of Infanta had drowned in the floods. The parish priest of Infanta is my brother-in-law, my wife's brother, Francisco, whom everyone calls Father Boy. The last time we were in Infanta was in April when he was installed as that town's parish priest. It was a summer's day, the sun fretted and gave the beach-where we repaired to afterwards-a shimmering glow. The sense of warmth was enlivened in no small way by folk taking liberal swigs of fiery lambanog in the makeshift huts underneath the coconut trees.
The news about Father Boy was wrong, but the real news was no less tragic. A priest did die in the flood. He was Fr. Charlito Colendres, the chancellor of the Prelature of Infanta for the last two years. Father Cha's heroism was recounted and extolled in the Inquirer last week. He had tied one end of a rope to a tree and had thrown the other end to people caught in a flash flood when he himself was swept away by the rampaging water. The survivors would later remark that Father Cha died on the very day we celebrate National Heroes Day. But it was no great comfort to his folks, who waited at Mt. Carmel for days for his body to be airlifted to Manila. No chopper could land in Infanta at that time. The place teemed with knee-high mud and debris.
I know how a mudslide in Real looks like. We were there once in the early 1980s, and a storm had swirled there. When it cleared next day, a group of us headed home by bus. At the time, a trip to and from Real took anywhere from nine to 15 hours, depending on the weather and the state of the bus, which was invariably decrepit. The road after Siniloan going to Real was rough and narrow, winding around the mountains. An hour after we left Real, we found our way blocked by a landslide. The rains had loosened a part of the cliff beside the road. Rocks and branches lay half buried in the mud. Nothing could pass through, certainly not a bus.
The bus could do nothing but turn back, the driver telling those who wished to go ahead there was only one way they could do so. That was to walk several kilometers up to a clearing in the mountain where another bus waited. We did. My daughter Miranda was still a kid then and I carried her up on my shoulders while we trudged on slippery mud for what seemed like eternity. When the rain fell in a torrent, we took shelter among the huts that dotted the road intermittently. You could see the mud and rock and branches being washed down the road into the ravines. When we finally got to the clearing, I felt like I had gone through war.
I remembered that ordeal when I saw the footage on TV about what had happened to Real, Infanta and Dingalan. And multiplied it a thousand times. What we went through was nothing compared to this. This was tragedy of indescribable proportions. For days on end, I would hear keening on TV, from those who had lost home, hearth and loved ones. Bodies were strewn everywhere, most of them children. One news crew fished out Christmas lights from the thick mud in Dingalan, driving home the full extent of the tragedy. Christmas is a season expressly reserved for children-indeed when all of Christendom sees the world through the eyes of a child again. The bodies of the children were mangled and torn, like plastic dolls. They had been pummeled by rock, earth and rolling logs. The logs lay everywhere too, incontrovertible evidence of a heinous crime.
My daughter, Miranda, who reported on Polilio, was awed by the devastation. Bodies had washed up to shore in that island, probably coming all the way from Real, delivered there by the tides. There were precious few animals left in Polilio, which lay off Quezon, right on the Pacific Ocean. Left outside beyond the pale of shelter, the carabaos, goats and pigs had perished in the lash of wind and rain.
I felt a personal sense of loss. I had known these places for some time, I had been going there since the 1970s and seen them grow, or deteriorate, over the years. The storm drove home again how utterly vulnerable that part of the world is to natural and human calamities. Lying at the eastern seaboard of this archipelago, it is the fist line of defense against the not very pacific upheavals of the Pacific. Lying in the throes of poverty, moreover, it has very little defense against these ravages. The completion of the highway going there has not lessened the misery, it has increased it through more frenzied logging. That is the human calamity that afflicts Dingalan, Infanta and Real today. The tragedy that visited those places last week wasn't wrought by the hand of God, it was wrought by the hand of greed.
But I will put off my anger for tomorrow. Today, I mean only to grieve for the people of Quezon and be one with them. How can a season of life so swiftly turn into a season of death? I mean only to extol the heroism of Father Cha and all the religious and lay workers who have tied themselves to a tree and thrown the other end of a rope to people drowning in the rampaging water. It is a testament to their fortitude and the mercy of the God they serve that none of them has been swept away, other than in the physical sense of it. That is all my source of hope in this season of death, that death shall have no dominion, as Dylan Thomas puts it.
By his own death, Father Cha has done just that. He has given us hope life will shoot out through the rubble.
* * *
I've gotten a lot of text messages from people who want to contribute goods and services but do not quite know whom to give them to. One very good place is Mt. Carmel Shrine on Broadway, New Manila. Their Tel. No. is 7245938, local 114. Or you can call or text Sister Zenia, 0919-6366127. I'm helping there, too.
posted by Dante at 3:20 PM
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