over the weekend

I don’t know what to write today.

Aside from the fact that it rained so hard over the weekend.

Just lazed around and waited ‘til sundown. TV and fell asleep. The Christmas chill is too conducive not to do anything.

Until the news advisory.

Sendong killed hundreds in Mindanao. The typhoon, more than destroyed properties, claimed the lives of families, mostly children, women and elderly, just days before Christmas.

Still counting, more than 600 corpses have been recovered out of the areas most affected. Over 800 are still missing. Chances are, they may never be seen again.

How would the families who have lost their loved ones even be thankful they are alive?

When Reming and Milenyo devastated our province, most did not have the idea how to start and pick the pieces again. More than the tragedy of losing prized possessions over which we have toiled, most devastating is the tragedy of losing a family. More than losing them is not being able to see even their cold and lifeless remains –not giving them a burial at the least.

For those who have survived, life could go on, although changed tremendously. Maybe that is the process. We learn the hard way, and let go of things and people in the process.

On another perspective, the victims could have done these and that. Perhaps the turnout of events may have been different. They were caught off-guard, though. Disaster strikes like a thief in the darkest of the night.

There are issues to settle about how people and the government must respond to natural calamities. There have been for years. One arm will blame the other. They will react and discuss now. But after months, when there are less remnants to remind us of the tragedy that was, business comes back to normal. Even in the case of the sufferers.

We give out donations-all sorts- and that’s it. We show sympathy. We feel for them. For how long?

Now that the north of Mindanao has stolen the spotlight, we have forgotten the impeachment of our chief justice, we have forgotten about the name Revilla, we have forgotten that our former president is under arrest, some might forget that it’s Christmas.

That’s how it is.

We get reality check once in a while. While our heads in the center of government are throwing each other trash, destroying each other’s reputations, there were millions on the verge of disaster.

See? It makes sense after all. Least we forget, even in Mindanao where civil instability thrives, there lies risk for forces we can’t control-nature’s.

And that power is not in the government, not in people.

The disaster may have ended but the real battles are just beginning. Years forward, I wish the victims still standing on the same ground, only stronger.