Let the dead speak

Let the dead speak | Daily Tribune

What a year, I recently exclaimed, following news of another death, another life gone. It has seemed like I would hear of someone’s relative passing almost every month.

What’s kind of crazy is that a few days before I found out about this latest one, I received news that a classmate of mine from high school had also passed on. One day, we were told, she just collapsed and then lay comatose in the hospital.

Turns out, initially, it was fake news that she had died. We were happy about that, but sad and troubled. She, who always reminded us to pray and have faith, was again reminding us of something just as important: Live.

Last Monday, she did pass on. Hers was a life we will remember along with those who had left us too this year. Then there is Emman Atienza, whose unexpected death raised conversations about mental health, cyberbullying, and the latest national scandal that unfairly linked her and her family to allegations that were not only baseless but malicious.

Emman letting go reminds us that families must, more than ever, hold on stronger together in these chaotic times. Her sadness reflects on a society that has turned almost feral in its anger toward perceived injustices.

But 2025 is also full of other things that died: Trust. Hope. The willingness to forgive.

Maybe this has been a year that this has been true for you, and not just pertaining to national issues that refuse to go away. It is knowing that no matter how much you try to be fair and forgiving, some people will choose to pull you down or push you to the edge.

So what to do? Step away? Push back? One thing: Speak up.

Some wise person said long ago that the problem with Filipinos is that we are too forgiving. It is why we love celebrations — any excuse to forget the matter at hand. We refuse to take an issue to its fitting conclusion; we would rather latch on to the next one to complain about.

But when the system that has allowed this kind of mindset to flourish falls in on itself simply because corruption in the form of budgets for development are stolen, one day it will all be revealed like an overfull can of worms.

The floods will show that 60 out of 16,000 flood control projects inspected are nonexistent. The floods that submerged cemeteries in places like Bulacan and Pampanga will remind the forgetful and neglectful of the billions pocketed by a few, and that they are still in power.

So much for public service and promises inundated with lies. We had tombs and mausoleums floating in muddy ponds from 2022. Recently, the earthquakes had the dead resting in pieces.

News lately flashed the frantic encoding of the names of the dead buried in the Manila North Cemetery from books rotting and torn at the edges. The search for graves has been a yearly problem perhaps that automation has been the key to navigating the burial sites.

Every year, we take the time to visit our dearly departed, bringing flowers, lighting candles and saying prayers. Meanwhile, the living are intent on killing us with despair.

Let the dead speak then, for many have turned in their graves. Undust, they call out. Clean up your act.