Sunday, August 19, 2007

To live and to die

Earlier today, I came from a little gathering with the Superintendent. He hosted us to welcome our new Assistant Superintendent. Being the person that he is, who always had a way of inspiring the cadets, I can't help it but be emotional of how he hard it was to mantain a certain feeling in the past weeks. Like him, I also felt that the previous week was more like a roller coaster ride.

This morning, a group of my classmates participated in a Fun Run for a cause called "Takbo para kay Toledo." It was a fund raising campaign initiated by the members of PMA Class 2006 to help their valedictorian who is now sufferning from the rare Bile Duct Cancer. I think many will remember his story as the one shown at Maalaala mo kaya a few months back. On the other hand, last Friday, somewhere in the south, three of his classmates (my upperclass) together with one member of Class 2005 was killed in an encounter with the Abu Sayaff Group. The irony of it is that as one PMA graduate struggles to extend his life while down there four other PMA graduates are gone.
In the previous death of 2Lt Camelon, I was able to stop my tears, with the four recent deaths, I failed. How does one accept death as a natural occurence of life when it happens so sudden to those of us who have come to accept it as such? As I said Death is death but to say that it is simply death is simply a insult to the life that these people have lived. And it is basically because of the same reason that we join hands and do everything that we can to keep Lt Toledo alive. To allow him to just pass away without a fight is an insult to the life that he lived. And I really think that the statement is true to all of us.

With the reality of death getting into me more and more each day as we mourn the death of several of our brothers in arms comes the emergence of really facing living and dying in its genuine form. To face it and deal with the issues of how to live and how to die. Life becomes so real that I can't help it and ask myself if I am giving justice to this life I am living?

1 comment:

RPJA said...

of course, there would be doubts about the life we are living, about its meaning, and about our purpose.

but there must come a point where we should stand our ground and just believe in ourselves, in what we do.

ah, the richness of life...