He is gone

The words of my son reverberate in my mind everytime I face the computer now, "Ma, huwag ka nang magsulat." "Bakit Anak, sino ang nagsabi sa iyong patigilin akong magsulat?" But he didn't answer me.

Now, my son is gone. I will never know who asked him to do that but apparently it is someone from the political field who wants to silence me.

Can a writer be silenced at all? Can ideas be stopped from occurring? Why try to stop them? Have people run out of answers? Or have their positions made them so dizzy with power, glamour and visibility that they cannot figure out or do not care to figure out anymore how to be creative in serving the people?

Serving the people was a popular mantra at UP way back in the 60's but the service had meant we were to go up the mountains, be with the people, and possibly hold an armalite. I am not cut out for that one. I am asthmatic and need glasses. I could easily stumble in the dark.

Through the years, I have developed the idea that to serve the people is through education. So people ask me, "Ma'am are you a teacher?" And I answer I am -- a peripatetic teacher. I teach people wherever I am -- the smokers (Mama, ale hindi kayo guguwapo (gaganda) sa paninigarilyo), the jeepney drivers, the vendors, the streetchild (selling sampaguita but didn't know the name of his product), and many more. I think that we still have a lot of people who didn't finish elementary or even high school and this is why when I talk to them, they tend to listen.

Later on, I told my son, I am writing cultural reviews now, Ogening. No longer political articles. And I even sent him an animation of a cyclist, less than a minute. In our last communications, he had told me he wanted to write a script, asking me if I could give him a sample script. I was going to answer he on July 29, but then the news was broken to me by my niece, that he is gone.

Yes, now he is gone. Our last meeting is deeply etched in my mind. His eyes were sorrowful -- And I asked him to stay in the condominium, na hinulughulugan ko para matirhan nila ng kapatid niya. 

Yes, he is gone. And I am questioning, how come, he was pronounced dead by a mere paramedic or the police and not by a doctor in Singapore. How come, the doctor came in only during the autopsy?

Singaporean labor laws declare that when a foreign national dies, a doctor should attend to him. No one should touch him.