Patron Saints of Nothing

by Randy Ribay

When, where, how did it happen exactly? I need to know this level of detail. Why? I don’t know. Truth is a hungry thing. Maybe it’s because everyone else is so willing to pretend that it didn’t even happen that I’m starving for certainty.

I thought of the sermon we had just heard at Mass that morning. It was about the Good Samaritan. You know the one? I think everyone does. Or, at least, everyone has heard it. Every time I do, I think, surely, if I were in that situation I would be like the Samaritan and help the man in need. But how many times have I instead walked past?

Loneliness and noise. The American way.

am not truly Filipino, so I don’t understand the Philippines. But isn’t this deeper than that, doesn’t this transcend nationality? Isn’t there some sense of right and wrong about how human beings should be treated that applies no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak?

But, basically, those here are living their lives. Doing the best they can with what they have, I suppose. Doing the same things any of us do—only in smaller spaces with much less privacy. They’re finding ways to survive.

Surely the air your lungs first breathe matters. The language your ears first hear. The foods your nose first smells and your tongue first tastes. The soil you first crawl upon. My conscious brain might not remember, but something in me does.

It strikes me that I cannot claim this country’s serene coves and sun-soaked beaches without also claiming its poverty, its problems, its history. To say that any aspect of it is part of me is to say that all of it is part of me.

Fuck those people who say being born somewhere doesn’t count if you didn’t grow up there or because half your ancestors are from somewhere else. Fuck anyone who tries to tell you who you are and where you belong.

Kuya Jun always said it was important that we remember everyone’s humanity. The world needs to know that all the people dying here are not nothing.

And if we do not live according to what we feel is right in our hearts, then what is the point of any of this?

I wonder at our hidden depths. We all have this same intense ability to love running through us. It wasn’t only Jun. But for some reason, so many of us don’t use it like he did. We keep it hidden. We bury it until it becomes an underground river. Until we barely remember it’s there. Until it’s too far down to tap. But maybe it’s time to dig it up. To let the sun hit the water. To let it flood. Baha.

thought getting older meant you’d understand more about the world, but it turns out the exact opposite is true.

I have no idea what you were struggling with in your heart, what complicated your soul. None of us are just one thing, I guess. None of us. We all have the terrible and amazing power to hurt and help, to harm and heal. We all do both throughout our lives. That’s the way it is. I suppose we just go on and do the best we can and try to do more good than bad using our time on Earth.

When they say that they will see me next time, it fills me with sadness knowing that might be years from now, if at all. Yet I smile and hug them each in turn and try to will my brain to remember every detail of this finite moment because, in this world, there are no guarantees.

If we are to be more than what we have been, there’s so much that we need to say. Salvation through honesty, I guess.

But there are good things I can hold on to and there are other things I have the power to change. My family, myself, this world—all of us are flawed. But flawed doesn’t mean hopeless. It doesn’t mean forsaken. It doesn’t mean lost. We are not doomed to suffer things as they are, silent and alone. We do not have to leave questions and letters and lives unanswered. We have more power and potential than we know if we would only speak, if we would only listen.