Apologies go out for the lack of coherence and parallel structures and tenses. I am writing this in burst mode: meaning without editing and without intention of editing. I feel that would best preserve the memories I am trying my best to recollect.
It's been a year since one of my better students passed away. Things are now hazy, but they were hazy at that time, too, anyway. I remember it now as I remember it back then, too. It was a blur in a year for me was an emotional roller coaster — nay, an emotional ditch. Finally, I chronicle the events as I went through them myself.
I begin my recollection with a memory of noticing a seat in class that Wednesday morning that was vacant. That desk in the far corner of the 3M classroom had always been silent to the teachers who held class there. Somehow, I noticed one person missing where the sun normally shone too brightly. I asked where the student who sat there was, to which the class answered, "Absent, Sir. May dengue." At the back of my head, I thought about asking whether he needed blood being a regular donor at Medical City. Somehow, I dismissed it at the time to focus on the lecture I was delivering.
Flash forward several hours later, our org just finished making the backdrop to the Mass to be held the following day. I spent some moments with my co-moderator after org period to catch up with each other. Eventually, I found myself at the Ateneo High School covered courts watching the student leaders rehearse for a presentation the following morning to celebrate Duffy-Delaney Day. (To the uninitiated, the Duffy-Delaney Day is a day when the faculty and staff of the Ateneo de Manila High School are honored for their selfless offering of their selves to the mission of the school.)
After seeing them practice, I was on stage inspecting the backdrop again and ended up speaking to then-Council of Student Organizations Chairman Paolo Tamase. At one point, he mentions a student who just passed away that day. He mentions a section. I mistook the section for the batch just higher. Then, he says a name. It took a few weird and awkward seconds as my subconscious pushed the name to the front of my mind. He was my student. He was supposed to be in my class that morning. He was my student in Sophomore and Junior year. He was a kid who has since gotten perfect in all requirements in my class (save for a small error in the representation of a number that should really be in decimal format but his answer was in fractional form). Most of all, he was a good kid, a good person, a good man.
Somehow, I felt I crashed into a dark pit. I couldn't cry, but I wanted to and needed to. It was too much of a shock at the moment. I ran back to my cubicle and there sat. And there wept — not at all silently. I'm not one to hide the fact that I'm a cry baby.
I then took heart and went to Mrs Albert's office to once again vent. She had been there for me the previous year when we lost a different student. Three words I said: "Have you heard"
She nodded, and there were just some minutes of silence between me and a friend. She understood me. She knew my pains. She knew my hurts. I leaned on her office doorway and could say not much. I remember saying, "me again." She knew how hard it was for me the last time out. This was not any easier. Sadly, her husband was already there in a few minutes to fetch her.
It was a cue for me to go back to my cubicle, grab my mobile phone, and message everyone as I, too, left the high school to go to the majestic church nearby. I walked ever so slowly trying to recall my student. The biggest memory was of him being held up right before their class night the year before. At that time, my thought was "Why do bad things happen to good people?"
And that was the same thought going through my mind as I began my long trek to a church that's really close. I entered the dark place and started to pray — or at least attempted to. A quick flashback to my cubicle and the sight of my students's status messages on Yahoo! Messenger and right in front of the cross, I tried to see whether mirroring my students would be cathartic. For the first time, I purposefully cussed. It was of no help, but it somehow bridged me with my boys. I understood them, too: they who must have been feeling much much more grief and pain.
I left soon feeling restless and lost. Fortunate enough to have found my way home, my boys have been talking to me, on Y!M and on mobile. Eventually, I found out more details about my student's wake. He would be brought to the Ateneo de Manila High School after midnight and he will stay there overnight for his classmates and the school community to be able to see him. I arranged with his best friend to meet at McDonald's and go to him at midnight.
Grabbing a change of clothes, I head to McDo to join Garry Dacasin hoping to be in school to welcome our friend to what would be his last return to school: the school he so loved.
We eventually got to the high school chapel a few minutes after midnight to find out that our friend was already there. With him were his parents and his little sister. From them I learned several interesting facts about him:
- My student was a die-hard Atenean. He did not eat supper after Ateneo lost to La Salle in UAAP basketball games.
- He wanted to become a teacher at the Ateneo High School when he would have grown up, apparently inspired by his own teachers.
These we learned on the eve of the day when the school was slated to honor its teachers — coincidentally the same day I found out that I had passed the Licensure Examination for Teachers in 2007, which confirmed that I am qualified as a high school teacher. I regarded it as a Duffy-Delaney Day miracle, but moreso a miracle through Alvin's intercession.
...being concluded.
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