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Friday, August 04, 2006
Malilong: Death of a father
By Frank Malilong Jr.
The Other Side
It is not easy being the bearer of bad news. The other day, I received an unusual request from my hometown in Masbate to inform a 16-year-old boy, who was living with us, of his father’s death.
I thought of ways to gently break the sad news to Nino but when I looked at the innocent face as he strode into the living room from school, the lines that I thought I had memorized vanished. I groped for words.
I decided to deliver it straight. Your father had just brought your mother to the school where she was teaching, I said, and was on his way home when six men ambushed him. He never made it to the hospital.
He was shocked. My heart sank as I watched the boy’s face turn pale, his lips pursed, as he gamely tried to fight back tears. Then the dam burst and he wept inconsolably.
What can you tell someone at the threshold of deepest grief? What can you do to assuage his pain? I wanted to tell him it was part of God’s plan, but what if he asked why God should plan for his father to die that way and so soon?
Fred Nallos didn’t die a natural death. His attackers made sure of that. Believed to be New People’s Army members, the men pumped bullets unto his body, stopping only when they were sure he would not survive. He did not. “Napurohan gyod, ‘Noy,” his wife, Inday, told me over the phone.
It is easy and tempting to condemn the New People’s Army (NPA) for turning orphans of Nino and his 14-year-old sister, especially since they did not give Fred a chance to defend himself. But Fred was a policeman and, as Inday herself noted, the government has just declared an all-out war against communist rebels. Policemen and soldiers had their marching orders from President Arroyo; the NPA had theirs from the communist hierarchy.
I have been away from my hometown for the most part of my adult life but relatives and former neighbors who visit and stay with us keep me up to date on what is going on in Pio V. Corpus.
They told me about the NPA being young and courteous, about barking dogs and knocks on the door at night when hungry cadres would ask for food and accommodation for the rest of the evening. Otherwise, they never bothered the local folks.
They never bothered the police, too. Both sides knew of the other’s presence, I was told, but have struck some form of modus vivendi under which no one touched the other. That informal truce ended last Wednesday. A new era, I am afraid, is unfolding.
Even as I grieve for Nino, I grieve and fear for my town. How sad that the grounds where we romped in our youth should now be stripped of innocence.
How many more Ninos will somebody have to console, how many more people will have to lose their loved ones before we can see the end to this tragic episode in our national life?
(fmmalilong@yahoo.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (August 4, 2006 issue)
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