Not-happy Holidays

In the pre-dawn darkness of Saturday, 17 December 2011, the residents of Cagayan de Oro City, including my relatives, were disturbed in their sleep by the raging torrents borne by Typhoon Sendong. They awoke to find the water rushing towards their doorsteps, forcing them to swim outside and cling to tree branches and then, when the water became high enough, stand on their rooftops. There was no time to look back, no time to think, no time to save. 


My aunt's family lost everything -- their belongings, and the memories that they used to trigger. It was doubly tragic, because they had based their livelihood in their house -- the grocery store built by my uncle's retirement proceeds, the passenger van, the multicab used to deliver the grocery, the family car. All are gone, washed away literally in the darkness. 


It is triply tragic, that this happened one week before Christmas. The time to celebrate has been eclipsed by a time to commiserate -- the time to rejoice has been pierced by a time to cry -- the time to give gifts has been sundered by a time to make donations.


I am making this short post only to remind myself, from time to time, to offer a little prayer, that all those who lost a lot of things, may not lose their life. It is normal for human beings like us to attribute more value to the things that we lose than those that we saved. In times of such calamity, it is easier to grieve for the lost car, the lost house, than to rejoice in the saved lives of our children and spouses and cousins and aunts. It is easier to take solace in the past that, having floated away in the deluge, can never be retrieved; than to joyfully await the coming of a future that, given what has happened, can only be better than this. 


That is why my prayer is not that they may not lose their mortal, passing, earthly lives. It is that they may not lose their life -- the kind of life that put hope in a better future, that ascribed faith to a tireless and loving Providence, that thought of things bigger than those we can see and hear and touch and feel -- a life that flowed from the indomitable, unquenchable spirit of human renewal.