More and more now I recoil from seeing troubling things. Because once seen, they stick in the mind’s eye and often they are shocking or sad and there’s nothing one can do about them.
Often, it is the sight of accident victims or the victims of violence. Or even day-to-day things one could just dismiss but which resurface with a persistence because they point to some really big problem in our society.
I could not bear to look at pictures or watch videos of the children of Gaza, whether lifeless or bloodied and bandaged and in shock, staring and uncomprehending of why they and their families are being bombed to smithereens.
Closer to home, I would come upon people who met “untimely” deaths, like squashed motorcyclists or victims of summary execution dumped by the roadside.
And more personal still would be the sight of my father on a slab at a funeral home, about to be embalmed. When I realized I could not stand the sight of the embalming, I turned around, but did not leave the viewing area. I still wanted to keep him company, somehow. I just stared into the semi-darkness until it was done. But the image has stayed with me: his pale, lifeless body on a slab in a room awash in pitiless white light. My final memory of him.
“Papa, call the police!” my young son once said as we sat in the car waiting for takeout food to be brought to us. “Why?” I asked in alarm, turning to face him. He had averted his gaze from the passenger window and through it I glimpsed a “taong grasa,” an adult female vagrant, completely naked, who was walking in our direction.
I also averted my gaze and assured him, “It’s all right, somebody will get her and take care of her.” I think I may have said something about mental illness and how such people may have caved in under the stresses of life. I don’t fully remember. What I remember is my son’s distress and his turning away from the sight of a naked woman walking along the highway under the bright noonday sun.
People take off their clothes in protest or for the sake of “art,” but this was clearly brought about by extreme poverty and abandonment and I did not want to add to her “shame” by looking a second longer.
Yet we cannot shield ourselves or our loved ones completely from the crushing hardships of life and the violence in our troubled country.
I remember seeing raw video footage of the confrontation between police (reinforced by army auxiliary and civilian volunteers) and a group of cultists in Pangantukan, Bukidnon, way back in 2000. Calling themselves the “Catholic God Spirit” but more popularly known as “Tadtad” (literally, “to chop”), they ignored commands to surrender and lay down their weapons, mostly machetes (the leader was wanted for attempted murder). More than the mayhem that followed what I could not forget is the look on the leader’s face as he weighed his options. With his hand on the hilt of his blade and puffing on a cigarette, he stood his ground. It was clear he was on the verge of making a decision. Give up, or not? Charge the police, or not? Finally, he advanced. A (warning?) shot was fired. Fully unsheathing his blade and wildly slashing at the air, he charged the police line. The police fired. Despite the continuous volley of shots directed at him, he kept running forward, and one would have thought his “anting-anting” (amulet) was working and keeping him invincible to bullets. After long seconds, he crumpled to the ground as his fellow cultists were also charging the police from all sides.
There was nothing cinematic in their manner of dying, no blood bursting, no flying backward as their bodies absorbed the high-velocity bullets. They just fell. And the police kept shooting, especially at those who were still twitching. Just to make sure. In the end, 16 cultists were killed; and four on the side of the arresting personnel also lost their lives.
Oh, there have been massacres of all kinds since time immemorial, many on a truly frightening and immense scale, I know. More recently in Rwanda and in what was then East Timor, where corpses floated in rivers and the stench of death reportedly permeated the air.
Maybe it is just the sight of blood I could not stand. Mine or that of other creatures. I always look away whenever I have to undergo a blood extraction for my regular blood work. Especially if it takes the med tech more than one jab to find a good vein. Unbelievably, there was even a time when it took four med techs to successfully draw blood from my arm, with me suggesting, Why don’t you try extracting from the vein in the back of my hand instead?
Walking on a floor slippery with flowing blood I could not forget, although that time it was the blood of tuna being butchered at the sprawling fish port in General Santos City. Such huge, magnificent, powerful creatures, sliced up for human consumption.
I don’t know if, now in my senior years, I have grown in compassion or in despair. Or maybe in both? And I have to struggle to nurture the former and keep the latter at bay.
Go deep, I tell myself. Serenity and composure do not preclude action. In fact, it could give me the discernment, to know what to accept, and know what challenges to face as bravely as I could. Not everything is bright and beautiful. Far from it. I know. I must see and at the same time not see. CS
