WATERPROOF SPIRIT

I COME across once in a while pictures that snag my attention and really give me that good belly-laugh. Just like jokes, funny pictures can lift everyone's spirit, and are sure to divert the attention of some Facebook addicts, quite like me before, for a few seconds at least. And for that we should be grateful.

Everytime I scroll down my FB page, funny pictures would pop up like zombies of a popular video game, along with so many invites, unwelcomed tagging of images, and feel-good-for-me kind of posts. The Net is a highway of these sorts being thrown at you. But I tend to seek out more of these funny stuffs, almost becoming like a lifelong quest for me to find things that really make me laugh. I copied some of these funny pictures, from the witty to the outrageously funny, for my personal file (No, I don’t usually share or repost other FB user’s wall post). And I really found more every time I use the Net, and indeed they were just as good.

It’s not strange that most of these pictures are made by Filipinos, a known race in the planet that can easily have a good quick laugh despite the hardship of life. They can be about stupid government officials, about Manny Pacquiao, her mother Dionisia with her candid ways, sarcasm on daily life, and popular movies; and even those images that barely fit into the topic of the day, they still somehow find life on the Net, dipped in humor.

And just recently, during the intense and prolonged monsoon rain (now dubbed as “a storm with no name,” or simply habagat or southwest monsoon) that ravaged Metro Manila and nearby provinces, and while the closing of the 2012 Olympics in faraway London was about to end, this picture came out and began circulating around the Internet like virus.

Translation: You’re only a flood; I’m a Filipino.

Apparently, this serves as a proof of the Filipino’s unique ability to cope with just about anything. Three cheers for his sunny personality!

The Filipinos could withstand anything nature throws at them. A flood may be as high as their rooftops, almost a yearly or monthly occurrence in their place, anyway, or no matter how dire the situation is, the every resourceful and flexible Filipinos would just easily raise themselves above water. The Filipino, indeed, has acquired the “waterproof spirit”, a quality that impressed even Canadian singer Nelly Furtado in her recent visit to the country.

Now we can really understand why millions of us, even during a disaster, could still enjoy communicating with relatives and friends, sending jokes, particularly captured images of what is pretty fun, and ventilating their views on whatever strikes their fancy. And those photos that they circulate are also a big validation of the kind of Internet user the Filipinos are.

We Filipinos are known for our easy going attitude and good sense of humor which reflect strongly through the pictures that they Photoshop to suit their fun personality. And if there is one thing that can be a source of Olympic gold for the country, then it’s got to be their artistic bent of Photoshopping pictures, and their Usain Bolt-speed of sharing their LOL-worthy masterpieces and tagging and liking and tweeting them in worldwide web. Filipinos, a very social people despite their poverty, were born to entertain.

Before these waterproof-spirit-themed photos, Facebook and other social network pages are also abuzz with images depicting what makes the Philippines “more fun” using the tagline of the Department of Tourism latest campaign pitch “It’s More Fun in the Philippines.” This “Fun” theme did not escape some of Filipino netizens—so what do you expect?—as they take the idea to a new level, like using it to make fun of their situations during the intense rain and flooding in the country.

What makes these images stand out for me is the razor-sharp truth, as well as its perfectly timed theme (tayming na tayming, as we love to say in Filipino). They really drive the message home. Well, there is life to comedy in this country, after all, even after the death of Dolphy. Just look at these samples I gathered from the Net. Now if a picture is worth a thousand words then these photos are worth a thousand laughs.

There are some of our countrymen, however, who don’t agree or are really disappointed by this tag “Filipino waterproof spirit.” To them it is clear evidence that we are not a serious people. It manifests a weird culture in our midst: That we rather make fun and create jokes of our misfortunes than to think of a solution. It’s like saying “Since we do it very well, then we love doing it.” They bemoan the fact that we seldom hear an outrage or none at all about our pitiful condition, when in truth, much of what contributes to the devastation of the metropolis are the result of years of neglect and lack of foresight by our leaders, from Malacañang all the way to the barangay council halls. 

But for now, everyone would just love to find reasons to laugh. As they say, when the world gets really crazy, the Filipinos always find the need to watch comedy. Come hell or high water, nothing can take that smile or laugh (that malutong na tawa we always love to hear) away from them. They make light of it, shrugging off every disaster as another chapter in our sordid life.

I don’t think there’s problem seeing the smiling faces of Filipinos as they helped each other out. The government anyway has already expressed its concern to us, as it has done almost every year, and we hope our leader could see our vulnerability to natural calamities as reason to create a comprehensive drainage masterplan, and not just mere laughing matter.

Well, until next year then!

Images used in this post are all shared photos. Acknowledgement is due to their owners, creators, or original sources. 

A YEAR AFTER THE LOSS

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed  

TODAY is the first anniversary of my wife’s death. My wife of 14 years passed from this life exactly a year ago at PGH-Manila due to breast cancer.

The fateful scene in that August night is still fresh on my mind. Eight hours after I left my wife in her bed in the hospital, I received a text message from Joan, her niece, pleading me to go back to my wife’s bedside at the soonest possible time. I went to work that day because I knew she’s fine when I left her.

I knew right away that the day I feared so long has finally come.

Please, Lord, not now, I kept on praying while I hurtled out of the office up to the nearest bus stop. When I called up Joan again, her words were drowned by her sobs. I had to calm her down. She insisted that I should hurry up, assuring me though that her aunt is still breathing, as the doctors are trying all their best to keep her alive.

It was Friday, a day Jesus the Nazarene devotees flock to Quiapo church. There was a monstrous traffic along Quezon Boulevard, which is a major road midway to my route from my office in Quezon City to PGH in Ermita. I was stuck. In 5 or 10 minutes interval, I called Joan for update, trying hard to keep myself from crying.  

From my bus window I hold on my eyes to the opened doors of the church, where I had a glimpse of a number of devotees praying inside. There are so many of them packing the church every Friday, beseeching the Lord, telling Him of their myriad of intentions. They were so calm now, so confident.

I’m here, Lord, please listen to me…!

At this approach of death, there are two conflicting thoughts that had occupied my mind with equal power: one is to consider the possibility of losing her and learn to accept the truth with equanimity; and the other, to consider the impossibility of forestalling a natural course of event so I rather disregard what is painful and depressing till it finally comes. It was with the second thought that I reasonably held on to my hope, however slim that is, that my wife will survive this one, even this night. I wanted to talk to her first, to tell her many things, and to say how sorry was I for not taking care of her with the best I’ve got.

Please, Lord, not now…

I arrived in her room at 9:15 p.m. She lay motionless in her bed, unconscious but breathing. The life support machine was on standby, ready to be used again if my wife had another gasping attempt for dear life. But the doctors gave me the sad truth: should the electrocardiogram monitor slow down to flat again, it would be their last chance to revive her. To revive her for another try, they said, that would be her third for the night, would be fatal to her internal organs, that is, if they continue pumping beyond the standard time, it’s good as dead.

My wife's family and some friends started crowding around at her bedside (our three children were left in our home in Bulacan and a relative was already on its way to fetch them). All their downcast, glassy eyes mirrored fear of forthcoming death in the family.

My wife’s hand was still warm yet stiff when I held it. I tried to wake her up; I kept on talking to her, telling her I was with her right now and how I love her so much. Then I felt a slight movement or a jerk from her, and I saw an almost imperceptible thin line of a tear flowing slowly from a corner of her eyes. That was the last movement, the last tear I saw from her, the last sign of her life. After a couple of minutes, the green line in her heart monitor slowed down going to flatline, then everyone was frantic of calling the doctors again.

And that was their last attempt to revive her.

What is painful, what is unbearable, and what is depressing befell my life that instant, like wayward rocks from a cliff. And it is still a mystery that I was buried by the avalanche, so helpless and unprepared, and still I was alive.

But my world would never be the same again. I learned how people really feel when they say life is not worth living.

So what I have done during the past twelve emotionally difficult months of my life? How do I go on after losing someone whom I loved so deeply?

I’m doing fine, or trying hard to be OK, as what my friends have wanted me to be. To be prayerful and to be strong. To place loss into a perspective that is tolerable, like saying that “It’s God’s will” or “God doesn’t want her to suffer any longer.”   

Honestly, I’m having a tough time working for the whole twelve months, and I almost didn’t finish law school. I’ve noticed I made a lot of effort when I interact with other people. It’s no longer that easy, I always wear a mask, though tears don’t come easily to me. As if there is a barrier now between myself and my world before the tragedy. I want to let go and be free in the same old world. But I can’t.  

Solitude helps me concentrate to do what I love to do. I write and read a lot. I have to divert my mind from this gnawing guilt, sorrow and even anger. Even during my review for this coming bar exams, my effort to unburden things out of my chest made me read more fictions than my own law textbooks and review materials just to calm myself.

I have decided to revive this blog a week after her death and now I have been posting something about how I cope to help me and others who may be going through the same situation as I have. It’s that sort of a release, or some emotional catharsis. I am very open in telling and retelling what happened to me; like what I did with the first few paragraphs, writing about my wife’s last hours on that August night.

Healing, I was told, starts by telling others about the loss of a beloved partner. As if it’s a requirement for the bereaved to subscribe to this ancient Turkish proverb that tells us that the one who “conceals his grief finds no remedy for it.”

But when I am at home, I always try to keep myself busy. I have my kids to keep me going every day.

It is not that I’m lonely. I just seem to have an extreme sadness that will not go away. I cannot end my grief, it’s true, and I only have this choice: to accept it or to resist it. I would rather now learn to accept whatever it was I needed to accept. Only time will help me make it through.

Yet it will be a heart wrenching journey and I have a long way to go. But the loss might never be fully over.