In memoriam, Almond Dec. 16, 1994-June 2, 2007, on the anniversary of her birth

One of my brightest lights is gone.
My world is darker now.

Ashes to ashes

Even the greatest of memorials fade in significance. For the ordinary folk such as myself, memorials turn to dust. We make memorials of all sorts in our desire to preserve a memory, to have our loved ones remembered, not just by ourselves but more especially perhaps by others. In the end, however, once those who had known the departed becomes themselves departed, the memorials turn to dust.

Last month, as million trooped to the nation’s cemeteries for the All-Saints Day holidays, I visited the grave of my old boss, my former editor-in-chief. Amid the throngs of people at the cemetery, the mausoleum where his remains lie was quiet, nestled in a peaceful place with other similarly quiet mausoleums. There were a few flowers, but there was no one there. The mausoleum itself was beautiful and appropriately serene, but there was no one there. Many of his generation are long gone. His works and writings live on, but soon enough they will be just words to a name. Years from now, there will be no one to remember the kind of person that he was.

My father’s ashes lie in an urn placed upon an altar in my mother’s bedroom. My father was both a doctor and a lawyer, and he achieved much while he was alive. He was well-liked and well-respected, a giant among Filipino pathologists. He has no grave to speak of, no memorial which people outside the family can visit—just his ashes in an urn, on an altar in my mother’s bedroom. It’s a quiet and private memorial, but a memorial just the same, with photographs around to remind us of him. His name will surely live on, but when we who had known him and loved him are gone, his ashes will become truly dust. Our memorials to him will fade.

My own beloved babies, enshrined in memory in this blog, were buried in the ground. No casket for them, so they literally returned to the earth whence they came. I make all the memorials to them, for them, but none of those memorials can ever capture the everyday joy I felt when they were alive, the comfort they gave me during the dark times, the love they offered unconditionally, the very beauty they possessed. I can perhaps save part of the ground they’re buried in should, for some reason or another, at some time or another, that ground may become inaccessible to me. But when my gone, even that hallowed dirt will become simply dirt.

Ashes to ashes. Dust thou art, to dust thou shall return.

“He’s not really dead, you know. Not as long as we remember him.”

Insightful words from Dr. McCoy to Capt. Kirk in “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” after they had given Spock a burial in space.

Indeed, as long as we remember them.

But for our departed to live on in memory, we who had loved them would have to live forever. To remember them, yes, to tell others about them, to keep their images from fading, to preserve their memory in family lore. But we, too, shall become ashes. We, too, shall become dust. And when we do, their memorials will lose all significance.

Our memorials matter only while we live. Strange, but we make these memorials precisely because we want others to remember our departed loved ones even when we’re gone. For ourselves, we need no memorials. After all, we hold them in our hearts. While we live, they remain in our hearts, alive and well somehow, with us still. They come to us in our thoughts, in the grief that never really goes away, in the tears we shed in the quiet of night. We need no memorials in stone or marble. We are their memorials. But we inevitably become dust. The real memorials become dust.

It may be disheartening to think that our loved ones will finally be truly dead, finally unremembered, when we who had loved them, who remember them, are dead as well. But even in such a disheartening thought, we may find some consolation. After all, who wants to live forever remembering a loved one, when one can join that loved one in whatever existence follows this life?

Give me a reunion in ashes anytime and let my memorials fade.

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So what for silent nights

A Christmas Offering

(I wrote this piece in 1982 when I was still a student at the College of Business Administration of the University of the Philippines in Diliman. It appeared on the front page of the December 1982 issue of the Guilder Newsletter. I no longer really "celebrate" Christmas, but I'm putting it here as an offering this Christmas season to whoever may be reading. - Jose Luis Tolentino)

We can just imagine how it must have been at the start, when such a real silent night took place, when all the lights we know of now took the form of a single bright light leading the magi to the Child.

Christmas nights, as we know them now, are anything but silent. Even when the songs and laughter of expectant children take respite, the lingering traces of their tones escort a mind of sleep. Christmas lights burn and chant till dawn, and for consecutive nights, a choir of churches manages well to sing. Young people dream of dates; some worry over funds. While the rest of the family sleep, a child wishes for those presents lying by a tall and jolly tree, each night for him setting with the toll of a kind, imaginary bell bringing time closer to the day. A lonely man as these occur, watches from his window—ponders; for a while, he smiles.

Christmas nights are never silent. Often, the faces of the people speak; worries and disappointments come out, hope and anticipation accompany the smiles of others. Around campus, the mood is strong. The cloudy Christmas sky, almost distinct to the season, hails an oft-claimed joy, proclaims the much-said goodwill to man. Gifts are passed, nights are planned. Expectancy of better things relieves the solitary man, and almost everything is carried out with a Christmas theme.

We never think of Christmas nights as silent, yet the song remains perhaps the most popular and durable of the season. Christmas nights, in fact, come as the busiest in the year for most of us; we greet friends we hardly know, relatives who, for the most part of the year, remain as strangers. We do feel it, don’t we? It is a mood that we ourselves bring toward the end of a year; for some, it becomes a reflective, depressing season, and yet we want it; it is tradition; Christmas has been with us since childhood.

Christmas nights were perhaps better when we were kids, and for some of us, the dread of actually encountering a real “silent night” during a future season, is not so distant. It would be fortunate if all of us were to spend the rest of our days experiencing Christmas nights filled with the joy and the air of brotherhood.

Yet we need not worry about silent nights in Christmas. Even in the worst of times, Christmas comes, and it comes with its sounds, its lights, though less intense, but always, the voice of Christmas reaches us and sings.

Christmas nights are anything but silent. It is only when the last light of Christmas passes out, when the final traces of a Christmas song are sung, that the silent nights suddenly arrive.

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The madman comes

Published in Prime Weekly under the column “Still Life,” April 27, 1989

He wasn’t anything at all like Nietzsche’s madman who rushed to the marketplace in the bright morning hours and proclaimed the death of God. Neither was he anything like those who roamed the city in tattered clothes, unwashed and apparently deranged. Rather, he seemed quite conventional. He had, I felt, the appearance of a fairly wealthy man, the air of a politician, the eyes of a philosopher. How could anyone, I asked, mistake him for a madman? That he was, however, so they insisted. The madman comes, they said, he comes. Even then they listened. From him, perhaps, they sought amusement.

At the park on a Sunday afternoon I saw this man, this madman. It was the first time I had ever seen him. At the park he attracted the attention of passers-by. There, by a small, curious crowd, he spoke.

“You call me mad,” he said, his eyes carrying an almost impressive fire. “But is my madness just the perception of your madness?”

He sighed with a weary breath, then he continued.

“My folks were mad,” he said. “I was their only child, and I was brilliant, the kind of child they had always dreamed of having. I topped my class, and they were proud of me for that. They showed me off, see our child, our brilliant child. I studied, read, memorized, learned. I grew wise, but my folks grew mad, day by day falling into lunacy. I saw reasons where they saw lunacy, order where they saw chaos, madness where they saw convention. As I grew wiser, they grew madder.

“Even as a child I was the only one who could see, the only one who could hear. I was educated by priests, and from them I learned science and mathematics, literature, the arts. I learned about faith and prayer, and I learned discipline. I guess they were good men, but I soon realized that they were mad. In their faith I saw contradictions. I entered the university when I was old enough and wise enough, and I stood in awe at the brilliance of worldly men with worldly notions, philosophers and statesmen, intellectuals, scientists. But they, too, were mad. Their principles were contradictions. I was educated by madmen, and when all that was over I worked with them, for them. I took their money and the recognition that they gave me. In madness I immersed myself.

“I rubbed elbows with men and women who sold their souls for comfort and prestige, artists of all kind who destroyed their lives for the chance to live forever. I mixed with intellectuals and scientists who enslaved themselves with the kind of work and ideas that would free humanity. Arts and sciences held my world. Philosophy held my thoughts, commerce held my life. I gave my time and my sweat, my toil. My very life was up for sale, and it was bought by madmen in a mad world. My very life was owned by them. We planned and dreamed, we toiled, we conspired. These were worldly men. I basked and delighted in their madness. Elsewhere were spiritual men. I took their faith and their philosophies and the rituals that would set them free, yet enslaved them.

“I then realized I had had enough. I was the only sane person among them.”

The madman stopped to catch his breath. No one was speaking now, no one was laughing. During the silence I kept my attention on this man, this paradox of brilliance and madness, insight and inanity.

“I just came from a gathering of wise men,” he continued. “Such wise men, I thought, such proud men who spoke before a crowd of simple folks. They didn’t just talk, no, they discoursed. I stood there with the simple folk and listened to these philosophers and intellectuals, the great thinkers of our time who sought their own place in eternity, their own contribution to the wealth of humanity’s ideas. They spoke of life and immortality, the nature of the universe, the destiny of humanity. They discussed the very meaning of life, these wise men. They debated politics, democracy and tyranny, the individual and the state, the endless isms that held us spellbound. Such wise men.

“They waxed with eloquence and brilliance, these proud men. Who could stand before them? Who among the simple folk could match them? They spoke of the hereafter, of the law and morality, of rebellion and the social contract, the social conscience, metaphysics, ideology, theology. One against the other, the arguments and insights of educated, brilliant men. They discussed the reasons for existence. They asked the timeless questions of humanity, and their audience listened in awe. The hungry, the sick, the homeless and the unemployed, how they all listened. Madmen making madmen of us all. I didn’t stay to see the end of it, I couldn’t.

“So I came here, seeking sanity. Tell me now, have I found it? Right here, right now, is there sanity?”

He turned silent and just observed the people who passed by and those who had gathered by him. He seemed tired, as if his talk had drained him of strength. Wearily, it seemed, he looked at each one of us as though he had the power to look into our souls. In our lives, perhaps, in our souls, he saw madness. He signed and looked down.

“I saw a child,” he said. “A beautiful child. How I felt for him, pitied him. The hope and the future of humanity, taught by madmen in a mad world.”

He said nothing more. The tears just started flowing from his weary eyes, and silently, we watched a madman weep.

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Mock the Executioner

Published in Prime Weekly under the column "Still Life," June 8, 1989

In a time of executioners, the executioner was faceless, nameless. He was the dispenser of justice in an intolerant society, the very sight of him and the mask that hid his face striking dread into the hearts of people. Only a few knew who he actually was. In this time of executioners, the executioner had taken many lives, some of which he felt were innocent. But then it was not for him to question or to argue or to judge, just to carry out the gruesome sentence. He had not the benefit of doubt that was thrown into modern executions. This was a time of executioners, and he was the executioner.

"It is my job," he often told himself. "It is what I do."

It was a secret that he shared with just a few others, a burden that he carried on his own.

When he had the time to spare and when the day was pleasant, the executioner took leisurely strolls just to pass the time away, to relax and to get his mind off the faces of people he had killed, the terrified looks of the condemned. He took those walks to mix with the ordinary folk, as though he were one of them.

One day while he was on a leisurely stroll, he came across a group of distinguished men and women, intellectuals, scientists and philosophers, statesmen, people from the university. There, at the square, as they carried on a lively discussion, the executioner stopped to listen. Some of the faces in the group were familiar. They were famous people, and their mere presence was enough to draw an audience. At the moment the discussion was being dominated by one man. A philosopher, another one of those famous and familiar faces.

He was rather elderly. He was thin and seemingly frail, but his very presence was impressive, carrying inner strength and conviction. The executioner knew this man; he had listened to this philosopher several times, and the executioner admired him, this wise and courageous man. That day, however, the executioner feared for him.

With impressive eloquence, the philosopher spoke of society, of its leaders and its institutions, of the government and the laws that were supposed to hold it together. He spoke of the moral decay and the crumbling conscience of the people and their leaders, and as he spoke of such things, his words carrying the force of his convictions and the outrage that he felt, the others listened. Now and then they nodded in agreement. Here was a wise man, a brave man, a true philosopher. The executioner looked on silently and listened. Here, he thought, was what the authorities would call a dangerous man.

Still he listened to this man as he went on, attacking the authority that held the land, the principles behind the laws, the institutions that yielded to corruption and decay. He attacked the very leaders of society; he denounced the greed and the corruption with such force that the others stood in awe of him. He spoke of change and revolution, of social upheaval. His words carried dire implications, but he seemed unafraid. His audience listened with awe, as did the executioner. But the executioner was well aware of the danger the philosopher was in. Sedition, they would say, rebellion, treason. Many times the executioner had seen it, and he feared for the philosopher. Still he kept silent. Perhaps the philosopher knew what he was doing.

The man himself showed no fear, and for some time his views went unchallenged. Then came those who questioned his assertions; finally they came forward to have their say, and a spirited debate ensued. Arguments were exchanged, and the philosopher defended his beliefs with the kind of eloquence and spirit that sometimes left his opponents speechless. He called for change, a real societal transformation, if by fire a purification of a society gone corrupt and decadent. He called for a tumbling of the pillars, a change in the institutions that had gone astray.

In the crowd there were those who nodded in agreement. Among the distinguished men and women there were those who agreed. From the philosopher's opponents came a tense, momentary silence. They stood there, faces flushed, their eyes filled with anger. The philosopher stood unwavering. Finally an official stepped forward.

"Men have died for less," he said.

And he warned the philosopher, stop this now. This was dangerous business.

The philosopher smiled. He grinned with sarcasm and eyed the official with disdain. He would stand by everything he had said, by his call for revolution and upheaval, for social transformation, however harsh. A purification, a cleansing of society. Once more the official warned him. Such treason, he said. The philosopher scoffed. Menacingly, the official pointed a finger at him.

"You shall meet the executioner," he said. "He shall have your head."

His voice said he meant it. Everyone was silent as he turned and walked away.

The silence continued as all attention fell upon the philosopher. After a while he smiled and looked at the distinguished faces in his audience.

"When that day comes," he said, "I shall spit at the executioner."

Again there was silence. And the executioner saw the man looking at him, as though the philosopher knew who he was. And as the scenes played in his mind, as he saw the philosopher coming before him on that fateful hour, the executioner stood there silently with the others, as though he were one of the ordinary folk, as though he were one of them.

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