Accents
Si Luisa, si Nilo, si Jonas, atbp. (2)
April 12, 2007, a date carved deep in memory. Two daughters and a wife remember with unceasing pain. May Wan and Tamara lost their mother Luisa Posa Dominado. Rosemarie lost her husband Nilo Arado. Small DM will only have the hazy picture of his father. Four people were bereft of their loved one: the three, orphaned in the spring of their lives; the tyke DM was but a bud too young to understand what happened.
Last April 12 was the third year commemoration of the abduction of Luisa Posa Dominado and Nilo Arado held in the place where they were abducted: Cabanbanan, Oton. TATLO KA TUIG NGA PAGPANGITA was the title of the programme emailed to me by Leeboy Garachico, their companion who was left behind after being shot. Did Leeboy survive to tell a tale, the usual expression in story-telling used to build up suspense? In the first place, there was no tale. Coming from an open forum in Antique, they were waylaid in the dark of the night. For Luisa and Nilo, it was goodbye earth and that was it. There was no tale to tell.
The gathering of family, relatives, and friends to commemorate the disappearance of Luisa and Nilo showed strength against the might of those who have the guns. To quote the Czech and French writer Milan Kundera, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Indeed, we don’t forget. If only my husband Rudy and I were not here in America, we would be right there remembering the demos and the marches, strengthening the ranks, voicing out the horrors of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture, and other desecrations of human rights.
The progressive organizations that assembled at the Museo Iloilo grounds Monday afternoon were a force to reckon with: Bayan Muna, Pamanggas, Anakpawis, SELDA, Gabriela. On arrival at Cabanbanan, the program started with an opening prayer followed by the community singing of Kung Ako’y Bumagsak. Louie Posa, Luisa’s brother and spokesperson of SLNM (Save Luisa and Nilo Arado Movement) gave a message. Rosemarie, Nilo’s wife, followed with another message. Messages from Bayan and Karapatan were delivered. Lawyer Janne Baterna spoke in behalf of NUPL and ILAC (National Union of People’s Lawyers and Iloilo Legal Assistance Center), two organizations engaged in the protection and defense of human rights. While protest songs were being sung, symbolic offerings were made and torches were lighted. All in all, it was a day of remembering and strengthening of resolve and commitment—Padayunon ang pagpangita!—as strongly proffered by Forge Pelaez of SLNM.
To paraphrase essayist and novelist Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting), the strength of our memories is our weapon against forgetting. Here are fragments of memories beyond forgetting:
From May Wan: “I love talking and hearing stories about Nanay. She has such an exciting life full of adventures that seem to come straight out of a fiction novel. The time she escaped through the roof of their stockade cell, repeating the same feat a few years later with a different set of cellmates. The time she gave birth while a platoon of soldiers were looking for her and even burned the paltera’s hair…
“…I learned from her all the practical knowledge I really do need. She did taught me about the solar system, first aid, bank transactions, grocery shopping and marketing tips, water conservation, how to clean the sewers without dirtying your hands, how to collect candle wax in a ball and use it to polish the floor of the jail cell, how to mend a broken friendship with pinipig ice cream, how to crochet, how to wrap your hair with a towel so it won’t fall off your head, how to be stubborn and righteous, how to know your self-worth and not seek the constant approval of others...the list is endless.
“When I was an only child and a brat spoiled by affluent relatives, my mother scolded me each and every day, or so I feel, due to my snobbish behavior and extravagant habits. She told me how people worked hard for each grain of rice I put in my mouth or negligently scatter on the floor or the table.
“…Nanay was a mother not only to me and Tamara but also to my cousins and to all the people she has sheltered. Our home, our lives are filled with people who have felt abandoned and neglected, people suffering from nervous breakdown, youths who have run away from home, women who have been raped or beaten or probably both, pregnant women approaching single motherhood and even just imperfect people who seem to irritate everybody else.
“I admit that I sometimes question why it has to be my Nanay who needs to help everyone with their problems all of the time. But one time, she was telling me about a girl who has run away from home and was staying at our house, had a fight with her boyfriend outside the gate in full view and within hearing distance of all the neighbors, threatened to cut her hair and scared my aunt who thought she was trying to kill herself with the scissors. Nanay said that she only pitied the girl and wanted to hug her because all the girl really needed was a mother. When she told me this, I thought how lucky the world is to have this woman who wants to help those who need it most. And lately I’ve been thinking how lucky I am to have the best Nanay in the whole world simply because she’s mine.
“I am hoping that in sharing this with you might make you see your own mother clearly, all the small and seemingly insignificant things she does for you that you might not appreciate much now but would attain a degree of significance only when she is no longer there.”
For a daughter, those are memories to draw strength from in the absence of her mother. Memories that console, that make one survive and come up a winner. May Wan confronting life, up and about into the world to live the courage and idealism of her mother Luisa because doing so would make Luisa’s presence felt in the lives of those she had touched. (To be continued)
(Email: lagoc@hargray.com)
