Coffee Thursday...
Death on a Thursday
Thursday, November 8. She hangs herself and leaves a diary expressing her depression out of poverty. Mariannet Amper, a girl from Davao, is only 12 years old and has the whole world ahead of her. She is consumed by her everyday struggle to survive, when all she wanted on that day is a mere 100 pesos for a school project, her desperation couldn't be silent. No more futile dreams, no more hope, the solution is to end life. She opted to give up, and her story lives to tell the voices of the downtrodden.
Thursday issue of The News Today, the front cover photo appealed to us. It happened on late afternoon of November 6. Nel, a 14 year old boy from Iloilo City, climbed the unfinished (overpriced) and controversial flyover in a suicide attempt. He wanted to die and follow his dead mother. He was believed to be under the influence of rugby solvent. He was rescued by the police. He lamented his sadness to be heard, and we choose not to listen.
Thursday after midnight, October 25. Pastor Martin Ambong was stabbed to death in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato. Villagers were shocked of the news that a man of mission who was believed to have no enemies was murdered. His face was flogged by a hard object and his body with 16 stab wounds. Thursday, November 1, the investigators found the killer was a church follower. The culprit said he was out of his mind when he did the killing.
Early morning Thursday November 15. Dulce Saguisag, wife of former senator Rene Saguisag was declared dead on arrival after a vehicular accident. We offer the family condolences. We condemn reckless driving.
I am not trying to associate the stories of death and its relevance on Thursdays but simply point out the coincidences in this column. We are confronted by aimless features on death and it is not a thing to be just neglected upon. I am deeply concerned how the articles remind us with our encounter with death. The month of November embarks with the commemoration of our dear departed to be remembered; furthermore we extend these thoughts to belabor this present day. Not to mention the Batasan bombings, and the explosion in Glorietta 2 that killed a number of people. We are left with this question: what do these stories put before us?
I always believe our life defines the very purpose of our existence. It is with a heavy heart to retire this world with meaningless deaths that cannot justify our living. Yes, accidents and unfortunate circumstances may occur but logic tells me otherwise. Somehow, we prefer to close our eyes and minds with fatalistic Filipino attitude that if it is meant to be it will happen. I personally disagree with the reasons we recounted in this page, and we can't deny the fact that responsibility should be taken into consideration so these insignificant deaths be prevented.
The child in poverty, the murdered pastor, the vehicular accident of a former senator's wife and the innocent victims of the tragedy in Batasan bombings and Glorietta 2 explosion, their chronicles give us a lesson to stumble upon about death. We give our sympathies and prayers but I think these fateful souls want us to learn something that if only they can break silence perhaps they can say at that instance on a Thursday or their last day, they don't want to die the way they did.
Death doesn't just take someone; it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed. Lives are changed.
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