A very cruel year

A very cruel year


Updated 01:10am (Mla time) Dec 23, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the December 23, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


IT'S enough to take the word "merry" from Christmas, the spectacle of death ravaging the country. Even the Christmas songs seem a little tired this year. I heard some of them issuing from the church near where I live, and the good cheer they were trying to convey seemed thoroughly out of place. As were the lights that blinked from the windows of houses.

I guess there's no stopping Christmas in this country. And I guess we owe it to the kids to keep our spirits up despite the horrendous vexations we've had to face this year. But I wish we'd also teach them not to be oblivious of the pain around them and express Christmas spirit less in plunging into revelry and more in commiserating with others.

This year has been an especially cruel year. On a personal note, this year has seen the deaths of five members of my wife's family. Chief of them her father, my father-in-law, with whom I had shared many a drink and story. He died in Los Angeles last July. I had always thought he would live forever. He died at 91, an unripe old age where he was coming from. I saw him three years ago in the United States and he still remembered the lyrics of old songs to the word, and sang them enthusiastically with the aid of libation. After a battle with prostate cancer for almost a couple of decades, he finally said, heck, might as well go.

At about the time he was being buried, I ended up in St. Luke's Medical Center for an improbable affliction -- gallstones. I had never had the symptoms of gallstones before. I had never doubled up and gasped breathlessly from the pain of it. I had had cases of indigestion and gas, but that was it. But from out of the blue, it struck. I wrote about it at the time, or shortly after I had the operation. Which was pretty sudden: the thing began to bother me dawn of Sunday. By Monday I felt like I had landed in the torture chambers of the Inquisition. By the time they operated on me next day, the damn thing was about to burst. In the nick of time, as they say. My enemies would agree this has been a most cruel year.

At about the same time this happened, my brother's wife, Milen, was operated on for a mass in her head. Fortunately, it proved benign and lodged between her brain and cranium, which made the operation a little less complicated. No head operation, as the doctor said, is ever uncomplicated. The operation proved a complete success, which is a strong argument for the existence of God.

Before these my wife lost an aunt on her father side and a cousin. The aunt died from disease, the cousin from a car accident, as he was driving his family home in Dumaguete on Easter Sunday. And not long after that, my wife lost a couple of other aunts, one also a sister of her father and the other a more distant one.

Friends have died, some have gotten seriously sick. All of the artists who died this year, which I wrote about some weeks ago, I knew personally. The only two I didn't know that well were George Canseco and Zeneida Amador, though I had met them at one time or another. But I did know Lito Tiongson, Ding Nolledo and Nick Joaquin well enough.

I had thought five was already too much when suddenly Fernando Poe Jr. slumped on the table one fine night while at a party and went on to meet his Maker. It was enough to convince a friend of mine that there was something to be said for my theory that artists died in pairs. Six to date. For reasons God only knows, artists seem the most endangered species in this country-politicians are the safest. At least from the threat of disease, not from the threat of bullets. From the threat of bullets, provincial journalists qualify for the dubious honor. This year saw a whole tribe of them slaughtered across the country.

Even before Fernando Poe Jr. could be carried to his final resting place, another tragedy struck. This time it was Jose de Venecia's daughter, KC, who perished in a blaze that hit his house. KC was trapped in the bathroom while the fire raged around her. Joe and Gina were inconsolable, and I can only offer my deepest condolences to them. There are no words to express how a parent must feel at this absolute loss.

Some weeks ago, I brought a musician friend to the University of Santo Tomas to the same doctor that operated on my sister-in-law. He needed a second opinion on his 10-year-old daughter who was diagnosed with cancer of the brain stem. The doctor, Ed Tan, a man whose brilliance is matched only by his magnanimity, reached his conclusion almost as soon as he saw the X-rays. It was brainstem glioma, he said, and unfortunately it was inoperable. It was not that uncommon, he said. It was a cancer cell that resided in some babies and for some reason tended to manifest itself at that age and in the brain stem. The doctor gently admonished my friend, as my friend broke into sobs, to just try to make the best with what time he has left with his kid. My heart broke.

Then, only a few weeks ago, three storms pounded the Prelature of Infanta, causing mountains to crumble and fall down on men, women and children. Especially children, their bones crushed by the logs that hurtled along with the loosed earth and floodwater. A priest died there, after rescuing a “barangay” [village] from impending doom. These deaths do not just elicit lament, they incite anger. The kids in particular would not be dead if the logs hadn't fallen down on them, and those logs would not have fallen down on them if the Department of Environment and Natural Resources had not given people the license to cut them. This tragedy was not wrought by the hand of God, it was wrought by the hand of greed.

On top of everything, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo became President this year. I did not say won as President. There's a difference.

This has been one very cruel year.