Mio

Mio is my five-year-old grandnephew. During our family gatherings he usually plays alone, plays with his toy cars and robots, and asks the smartest and most unexpected questions that reminds me of my own son, Nico when he was Mio’s age. He is smooth and fair skinned and according to his mother, has “the longest eyelashes in the world” that makes him very much an attention-getter from people especially of the female kind.

He is a much-loved boy, being the only boy among four grandchildren of my younger brother Joe. My nephew Jon dotes on him like a true father, while my brother Joe has treated and raised him like a son. You see, Mio’s mom, my niece Jasmine is a single mom. But that is not the reason why I am writing about him now.

Mio the innocent, loveable, and everyone’s darling of a little boy is now stricken with ALL (Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia), a form of cancer that attacks the boy’s white blood corpuscles leaving him easily susceptible to attack of infection due to a weakened immune system.

My brother Joe, who is probably the closest to him after his mother, is devastated and so are the rest of the family. His mother Jasmine, who just recently landed a most demanding job hoping to secure a bright future for her son is, to say the least, shattered to pieces. “I don’t get it!” she says, “I just don’t get it!”

I am sure the unspoken question for me, as an elder in the clan and a former priest, in Jasmine’s mind as well as in the minds of my family and immediate relatives is the question “why”. Why Mio, who is an innocent boy? Why him? I can respond, “Why not?” But I am sure it is not an acceptable answer.

I can answer too in a negative way. It is not a punishment for the sins of his parents. It is not, as the pious would say, God’s will or part of God’s plan that we should just accept, nor it is a cross placed on Jasmine’s shoulder because God knows she can carry it. I honestly do not think so.

There are more answers, biblically and theologically profound like what William Young proposes in his book “The Shack”. In that book God’s answer to the problem of evil goes: “At this point all I have to offer you as an answer is my love and goodness, and my relationship with you; essentially what Jesus offers us in the Gospels, not an intellectual answer but a relationship.” But I do not intend to go there now.

I have been asking the same question ever since God knows when and I have come to the conclusion that there is no answer that would satisfy me. I have stopped asking the question and discontinued looking for answers until I read a certain Rabbi Moss who has this very Christian thing to say: “So keep asking the question, why do bad things happen to good people. But stop looking for answers. Start formulating a response. Take your righteous anger and turn it into a force for doing good. Redirect your frustration with injustice and unfairness and channel it into a drive to fight injustice and unfairness. Let your outrage propel you into action. When you see innocent people suffering, help them. Combat the pain in the world with goodness. Alleviate suffering wherever you can.

We don't want answers, we don't want explanations, and we don't want closure. We want an end to suffering. And we dare not leave it up to G-d to alleviate suffering. He is waiting for us to do it. That's what we are here for.”

This answer resonates with me not only as I can see it happen in my life but also as I see it happening now with other people in Mio’s case. Consider the following:

The whole Mendiola clan (my family and my siblings’ families), individually and as a whole, has taken steps to help Jasmine and Mio by digging deep not only into their well of prayers, but also into their common bank account that the clan had established for cases like Mio’s. Jasmine’s friends and even non-acquaintances have also reacted in a way that is overwhelming and even mind-boggling to some.

Mio's mom Jasmine is not giving up. She continues to ask the question why is this happening to her Mio. She has stopped looking for answers, instead she has decided to fight for her son's life. She has started a blog, where she expresses her emotions and feelings that is raw and sometimes irreverent, to ask for help. Help she is getting indeed and how!

These are what other people have done for Mio so far: (From Jasmine’s blog http://miofightscancer.blogspot.com).

• Mio’s ninang (Godmother) has set up a bank account for those who want to send donations for Mio.
• Jasmine is a professional make-up artist, aside from being a freelance writer, and one of her colleagues now sells beauty products in her website for Mio.
• An Art Director in Singapore and a former colleague of Jasmine is coming up with a prayer rally called Mio'clock. He's building a logo to initiate prayers at 8am, the time Mio was born, to be sent to the high heavens for Mio's recovery.
• Another godmother of Mio has taken upon herself to be the point person/ representative in coordinating projects that can raise money to fund Mio's treatment.
• Two of Jasmine’s friends are organizing a Mio Marathon, a fun run in the works to raise funds for Mio.
• Another friend had the brilliant idea of using Mio's drawings as a template for some artsy things that can generate funds for him.
• Piso Para Kay Mio. (Pwede rin namang hindi piso!) but a good friend of Jasmine informed her that she's decorating a can that she'll bring around to solicit donations for Mio.

Come to think of it, when Jesus was confronted with evil or pain in other people, He did not look for answers to the question why. Instead, He acted right away. He eased the pain, He looked for ways to feed the people, He cured a disease.

What else can I say? People have continued asking the question why bad things happen to good people and stopped looking for answers because there is actually none; instead they have started formulating a response and they are doing something if only to alleviate even a little pain.

Come to think of it too, Mio’s name is the Spanish for “my” or “mine”. Apparently people have taken it literally and have adopted Mio’s cause as theirs too.

My Ateneo-La Salle connection

It is UAAP basketball season once again and members of our household are excited over the ongoing games especially when there is an Ateneo --La Salle game. You see all my four children are La Sallians while Thelma and I are De La Salle Graduate School alumni – Thelma in MBA and me in MS Counseling. So you can be sure that we are all glued to the television set during games of these two schools.

This year La Salle is a heavy underdog with its team being composed mostly of young rookies who may be promising but not yet fully ready for the very competitive seniors game in the UAAP. Ateneo, meanwhile, has retained its champion team from last year.

La Salle almost beat Ateneo in their first round game last Sunday, but their inexperienced showed towards the end. They lost by a slim margin in overtime. They are playing again this Sunday, and we all hope against hope, this young La Salle team will pull off an upset.

Occasionally, my daughter Mae would tease me that I should be rooting for Ateneo instead of La Salle because of my links to Ateneo. In a way she is right. I have links to Ateneo, having had a Jesuit education in my seminary years and even later in life. I am therefore steeped in the ways of “Ratio Studiorum”, the Jesuit official plan of education all over the world.

I am an alumnus of the Jesuit-run San Jose Seminary that is now a permanent fixture in the campus of the Ateneo de Manila University. The seminary transferred to its present location at the Ateneo campus sometime in the early seventies from what is now the QC General Hospital in Project 8, Quezon City. After getting my AB Philosophy degree in San Jose Seminary, I continued my Theology studies at Loyola School of Theology in Ateneo. And when I retired from the corporate world, I also obtained a Diploma in Family Counseling in 2003 from the Center for Family Ministries (an adjunct institution of Loyola School of Theology) located also at the Ateneo campus.

Personally, I feel that my links to Ateneo are merely of the “extended” kind (as in an extended family or “sampid lang”), and therefore not real to consider myself “blue blooded”.

My links to La Salle (De La Salle College, at that time), however, are so deeply and strongly personal that they remain with me to this day. My year and a half of stay at La Salle, no matter how hectic, were full of experiences that eventually shaped my future from then on.

And so I say, “Go, La Salle!”

Other deaths that touched me

I have seen countless deaths up close, deaths of people close to me as well as deaths of people I did not know from Adam. I also have been consoled and consoled others too by thoughts that say death is not the end, that death is just the beginning of true life, and so forth. But just the same, like many of you, I suppose, I struggle whenever I hear or read about the dying of a young man or woman who is so full of life and so promising. I struggle because death in this case all seems so senseless and meaningless to me.

The other day, the newspapers and television carried the story of Kennely Ann Binay, a 29 year-old young mother who ironically lost her life in the process of giving life to her fourth child, a baby girl. She had other children age 6, 3, and 1 year-old. This young woman, prior to this chapter in her life, probably was the envy of her peers. She was married to the scion of a powerful and wealthy political family; she had three beautiful children; she was lovely and glamorous. In a sense, she was definitely living a full life and death probably never was in her horizon.

Sometime ago, I was again disturbed by what I thought was the senseless death of another young woman, Tara Santelices. She was only in her early twenties, a recent graduate of Ateneo de Manila University and just like any young graduate of her age was dreaming of a bright future ahead of her. She was a member of a band and was aspiring to go to Law school someday. What also makes her case so disturbing to me was the way she died. She was shot in the head when she refused to turn in her bag during a robbery-holdup on the eve of her birthday. She was brought to a hospital and went into a coma for several months. Upon waking up, her family brought her home and lovingly cared for her until her vital organs finally failed.

Not so long ago, there was the case of Amiel Alcantara, a Grade four pupil of the Ateneo Grade School who lost his life in a school accident. He was hit fatally by a vehicle driven by the mother of another Grade School student during dismissal time. The boy was the joy of his parents and siblings who were completely overcome by grief. Their son and brother was so promising, intelligent, and so full of life always wanting to play outdoors. But a freak accident took him away from them. The accident changed the lives of two families forever – the family of Amiel and the family of the mother-driver who hit Amiel.

I have been asking questions like Why? How could death be so cruel, so unreasonable?

Sometimes God answers us as we go through the ordinary routine of our lives. I found the answer this morning from the online column of the eminent Oblate Spiritual writer Father Ronald Rolheiser.

He was actually writing about the stories of two extraordinary women. On the first, he quoted from the book of Paula D’Arcy: “A woman… lost a son in an accident. Some years later someone was commenting on how hard this must be for her, not to get to watch her son grow up and marry and not to ever get to hold her grandchildren. Her response: "I don't think in those terms. The answer is that I don't know. I don't know what his life should have been. I realize today that his soul had its own journey and its own terms with life. This had nothing to do with me. But I got to participate for a while in the journey of that soul. For that I am unspeakably grateful."

I was struck especially by the woman’s response that I thought was the answer to my questions: “I don’t know. I don’t know what his (her) life should have been. I realize today that his/her soul had its own journey and its own terms with life.”

I also thought that the loved ones left by Kennely Ann, Tara, and Amiel, as well as the rest of us, can find meaning in what the woman said in the end: “This had nothing to do with me. But I got to participate for a while in the journey of that soul. For that I am unspeakably grateful.”

My thoughts on Cory Aquino's death

I am still hesitant to write about Cory Aquino. Unlike others, I can claim no bragging rights to write about her in an intimate personal manner. I don’t know her personally and neither have I met her in person at all. But this does not lessen the fact that I admire and idolize her as most Filipinos do. I admire her compassionate nature, her religiosity and spirituality, her leadership by example, her unselfish love for family and devotion to her children, and her love of country. I am proud to be a Filipino because of her and I am now greatly saddened by her death.

I shed tears while listening to the many heartwarming stories about her, from her colleagues, subordinates, friends, and especially from her family. I also started to reflect on the deeper meaning of her death in my own life.

In my reflection, my thoughts went back to the death of her husband, the late Ninoy Aquino in 1983. That death which I thought at first was senseless and meaningless in its brutality became clearer to me later on and much more so today.

I’ve realized in a more experiential and not just intellectual way the truth of the biblical passage that “unless the seed falls into the ground and die, it bears no fruit…” It tells us that the death of one person has a strange way of transforming others usually for the better. In this case, the death of Ninoy transformed Cory and ultimately the Filipino nation.

And if the death of Ninoy has transformed Cory from an ordinary housewife and mother to a fearless leader of people who hungered for freedom and democracy, I wonder now what kind of transformation will Cory’s death do to us Filipinos individually and as a whole?

Now that Cory has been laid to her final rest, I am saddened to learn that instead of asking themselves how they can make Cory’s death more meaningful in their lives, some people are more concerned today with proclaiming her as a saint and naming her a national hero. I have no problem with declaring her a national hero because she is undoubtedly one. But a saint?

I am not questioning her deep religiosity or her genuine spirituality. (These, I understand, are requirements among other things for sainthood.) Rather, I am against it (canonizing her) because Cory belongs to the Filipino people and not just to Catholics who would then appropriate her to themselves should she become a saint. The Catholic Church’s act of initiating her canonization would then become divisive at a time when what we need as a nation is more of cooperation, understanding, and respect for each other’s beliefs. It also seems contrary to the spirit of an inclusive Christianity that Jesus originally preached. Come to think of it too, Cory would decline the honor from the Church just as she had declined a state funeral from the government.

Instead of regarding her as a Saint, I would rather consider her as an honest leader, a compassionate friend, a devoted wife and unselfish mother, a true Filipino, and a faithful Catholic! That would make her, as Inquirer columnist Conrad de Quiroz said in his eulogy at Cory's funeral mass, “one damn good person”.

For Cory Aquino the simple housewife, that would be the most proper accolade for now.