Elegy August 18, 2006

SOME tragedies leave you without words. You just keep asking, "Why?" Knowing there are no answers out there, finding little comfort in the thought, or platitude, heaven wanted it that way.
Such a tragedy was the deaths of Hazel Recheta-Calimag, Arnel Guiao and Ismael "Maeng" Cabugayan before the sun fell last Sunday. All worked for ABC-5 television. Hazel was a reporter, Arnel was a cameraman, and Maeng was a driver. They were coming back to Manila after burrowing for a week in Albay to cover the impending explosion of Mayon Volcano. Their replacements had arrived that morning, and they had left the shadow of the mountain shortly after lunch in a light and cheerful mood. Why wouldn't they? They were going home with "pasalubong" [arrival tokens' of pili nuts and other Bicol region stuff for their loved ones, one of the small perks of living the itinerant life of media workers.

It was in Pamplona, the town next to Naga City going Manila, where it happened. I know the place, I've driven there many times. It's a pleasant part of Camarines Sur province, full of lush greenery, something you see few and far between in the North Expressway, the sides of the road dotted with makeshift stands selling "Formosa" pineapples. The road itself is made of concrete that stretches straight ahead with very few curves.

It was a pleasant afternoon when Hazel, Arnel and Maeng got there. It had been drizzling, but the road wasn't wet. It was well before sunset and life went on as lazily in that part of the world on a late Sunday afternoon as it had done for as long as God and the folk of Pamplona could remember.

It was the last thing the three would see on earth.

There are several versions of the story: It happened on a lonely stretch there and nobody could say for sure what took place. The common thread seems to be that one of the tires in the Nissan Frontier the ABC crew was driving blew up, causing the driver to lose control of the wheel. Some say he was overtaking when it happened, others say he merely tried to avoid plowing into whatever lay on the right side of the road by swerving left. Whatever it was, the vehicle fell directly in the path of an oncoming bus. The impact of the collision drove the Nissan clear underneath the bus, killing the three probably instantly. Or at least our collective grief demands from heaven that they died instantly, without one tiny crack of time to feel pain.

I knew Hazel well -- having been lending a helping hand to ABC-5 for some months now -- but barely knew the other two. Arnel and Maeng I must have seen a few times in the covered parking lot of ABC-5, but never got to talk to them. Hazel I knew to take things in stride. She was one of the toiling media practitioners who were content to do their jobs as best they could. She got assigned to cover a story in any beat, she did it without fuss. She took life as life dealt it. She waited 14 years to have a child, reconciling herself to the often frugal ways of Providence until Providence finally gave generously. She gave birth to a girl a year ago. She was proud of her daughter. More than anything in this world, her daughter gave her a reason to live. She was 37 when she died last Sunday.

She got along very well with the world while she lived. The media people that flocked at her wake last Monday night didn't just go there to express solidarity with a kindred spirit or fallen comrade, they went there to say a tearful goodbye to a friend. What drove them there wasn't just the thought that it might have been them lying there but for a strange twist of fate, it was also the incomprehensible reality that someone they had laughed and cried with was in that state. Truly, you have to ask of heaven why.

Edward Navarrete and Erel Cabatbat, a news manager and reporter of ABC-5, would tell me later they got the hardest assignments of their lives that Sunday evening. It was to tell the families of Arnel and Maeng their husbands and fathers would not be coming home that night. Or ever. Erel would say: "Assign me to cover the campaign against the Abu Sayyaf, assign me to cover the anti-NPA war in Luzon, I'd sooner do that -- no, I'd volunteer for that -- than go through that night all over again." Arnel was 42 years old and Maeng 37. They were the breadwinners of their families. Arnel left two daughters (22 and 15) and a son (14) while Maeng left a boy (13) and girl (6). Unable to comprehend the news, Maeng's 6-year-old kept asking, so when was her "tatay" [father] coming home, he promised to be back that day.

There were the cares of the living to compound the tears for the dead. Edward would tell me Maeng's wife was so stunned at the news, all she could blurt out after a long moment of speechlessness was, "Paano na ang mga bata?" ["What will happen to the children?"] Work benefits go only so far. It's an agonized cry that I can only hope will reach the ears of benefactors and school officials who might want to pitch scholarships in the direction of the kids. Life hasn't been kind to them, maybe some people can.

I don't know that deaths of this kind will ever yield any sense, but if we must extract some meaning from them, like oil from dead earth or gold from the pit of it, it is probably some appreciation for what journalists do. More than soldiers, they're the ones who risk life and limb, shuttling to and fro in cars, trains and planes, rushing in the direction of fire where everybody else is running away from it, to tell the truth about life, such as truth or life can be told. They're the ones who, when they die in the line of duty -- never has that phrase sounded purer -- evoke John Donne's words with special force: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind./ And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee."

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