Lent

I SAW my younger -- and only -- brother die twice.

The first time was when he was four, and I was 10. After convulsing madly, with black ants coming out of his nails, he went into a coma. He was given 24 hours to get out of it or he never would. After all my hysterics inside the hospital room -- jumping, wailing, puking -- I was sent out. He was left alone inside to recover or die. That was on March 5, 1993.

Our years together had been typical of brothers, punctuated by fighting, punching and kicking each other. I had asked for him, wished for him, prayed to the Almighty that I would have a sibling. But I never was appreciative of him during our early years together. I cared for him, but I did not know how to show it. So he was being taken away from me. That quickly, that suddenly.

Out of the hospital room, with a glass window between us, I promised God that if He would let Bryan Nathaniel live, I would care for him the best way I could -- perhaps even more than I could. I'd do anything and everything just so he'd live. It was a prayer, a bargain. And God heard and granted it.

Twelve years later, last year, Bryan was a freshman in college and I was fresh out of college. I decided not to work immediately so I could have the time to ease Bryan into the fast-paced life in Metro Manila. He seemed so precocious but at the same time so innocent, even child-like, although he was turning 17 that September. We bonded really well. We shared the same passion for books and movies. We went on book-shopping sprees, watched movies and DVDs, ate pizzas and pastas and bought Christmas gifts together for our family and relatives in the Bicol region.
That was what I wanted: to be with my brother and see him grow.

Last Feb. 28, we were together -- me, him and Mom -- for an event at which I was being awarded a prize. I treated them to coffee and pasta and shared part of my prize with them.
Mom went back to Bicol that same night. The next morning, Bryan left early to hear Ash Wednesday Mass.

He never reached the church. He was hit by a passenger jeepney while he was on the way there. And the driver and his passengers didn't care at all. People who witnessed the accident simply stood there and looked, and then just walked away, as if it were a cat that had been hit. It took some time before someone picked him up from the street, bloodied and hardly breathing, and took him to the nearest hospital.

I got the call while I was on my way to work. I saw Bryan in the emergency room with doctors and nurses around him. Just two nights earlier, we were making plans for the weekend. Just that morning, we said goodbye to each other. Now he was there, in the emergency room, unconscious. And I was trying to control my shaking.

I had to call mother who had just arrived in Bicol. I had to inform a father in Saudi Arabia who was still asleep, perhaps dreaming that one week later he'd be home for good and we'd all be together, finally.

My eyes were focused on my brother. The doctors' words and everyone else's faded into the background. I was alone. The only familiar face in that room, in that hospital, was dying. I held his feet. I looked at the monitor, which was showing his heartbeat growing weaker. At 7:50 a.m., Bryan was pronounced dead.

There seemed to be a rift, a rupture in time, between Feb. 28 and March 1. It seemed that the only continuity was time itself and that the events were disparate and disjointed. How does one go from being alive one second and dead the next?

I remembered March 1993, the pleas, the prayers that he would live and that I would have another chance to take care of him.

I had that chance. In my imperfect and flawed way, I had loved and cared for Bryan. And God saw that I had fulfilled my promise. He took Bryan at a most difficult time, when he was battling the demons of youth. But He took him also at an opportune moment, when he had made the decision, an affirmation of faith, to hear early Mass on Ash Wednesday. He was taken in the most painful way, and yet God, in doing so, preserved Bryan's child-like and happy nature.

It was physically painful for Bryan and it was emotionally gut-wrenching and shocking for us whom he left behind. But there is that hope, that faith that Bryan is in better hands now. In the loving arms of Mama Mary, as my Mom keeps telling me.

It has been a long and surreal Lent for us and a different and melancholic future lies ahead. There are the happy memories to summon and then there are the images at the hospital, at the morgue, at the funeral house. There are those he left behind: the children to whom he was teaching Catechism in Bicol, his family, his relatives and his friends. His death has to mean something, although what it is isn't clear to me yet. Eyes blurred by tears and hearts filled by sorrow cannot have a clear vision of what lies ahead. We just limp forward to some unknown future. We look back and we look forward. We look outward and we look inward.
Where do we find the strength to move on? In God. In Mary.

I look forward to Black Saturday and to Easter Sunday, when this Lenten season will end. I look forward to the new light after this utter darkness because I believe not only in the Suffering Christ, but more so in the Resurrected Christ.

Published April 13, 2006. Philippine Daily Inquirer, Youngblood.