Patron Saints of Nothing

by Randy Ribay

This is your story This is your son These are our sins and how did we ever get here without them —Patrick Rosal

Left alone, my confusion turns to anger, which starts to grow with nowhere to go like the roots of a plant in too small a pot.

As I do, I think about how even though there’s a lot I don’t know, I do know it isn’t right for Jun’s family to deny him a funeral. No matter how he died. No matter how he lived.

Maybe he wouldn’t have been killed in the street by the police, his death tallied as an improvement to society.

When you grow up in a country like the United States, you’re constantly told it’s the greatest place in the world. But then you go somewhere else one day and find out that bathroom doors like this exist, and you start to question everything.

Sometimes I feel like growing up is slowly peeling back these layers of lies.

It’s awkwardly formal compared to back home, where we usually all eat at different times, typically while in front of the TV or a book or our phones. Loneliness and noise. The American way.

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.

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.

“The Church tends to souls. Not the affairs of the state.”

I imagine souls trapped overhead, bouncing against the steepled ceiling like invisible balloons whose strings have slipped from careless hands.

I expected the truth to illuminate, to resurrect. Not to ruin.

I crossed an ocean to learn about what happened to Jun, but it’s what I’m learning in this moment that gives me faith that we’ll be all right, that we’ll figure out how to live without him in ways where we will never be fully without him.

“‘But the souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them. They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace. For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality; chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of Himself. As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings, he took them to Himself. Those who trust in Him shall understand truth, and the faithful shall abide with Him in love . . . The Word of the Lord.’”

1 Nov 2014 Dear Kuya Jay, Today is All Saints Day in the Philippines. Do you celebrate this day in the United States? Almost all Filipinos have this day off. Many of us go to the cemetery. We bring blankets, candles, food, drink, guitars, and so on, and spend the day at the tombs of our loved ones. We eat, we play music, we talk and laugh and tell stories about the dead. I know this probably seems strange. All of the graveyards I see in American TV shows and movies are always dark and scary and empty except when there is a funeral. But here it is a celebration. A time to honor our dead and remember their lives. I think this is a healthy thing to do. The day is also meant to celebrate the saints, of course. For example, maybe you have already heard of St. Blaise, the patron saint of wild animals, veterinarians, and throat ailments. Did you know he lived in a cave with all these wild animals? I think that’s really cool. Anyway, there are also many other lesser-known saints. There is St. Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists; St. Lydwina, the patron saint of ice skaters; St. Drogo, the patron saint of ugly people, and—another one of my favorites—St. Clotilde, the patron saint of disappointing children. You get the idea. There are a lot of saints in our religion, more saints than there are days in a year. A saint for almost anything you can imagine. People pray to them to try to receive their oddly specific blessings. But, to be honest, I don’t think the world works that way...

I drift off to sleep thinking of my cousin and me, of humanity and its problems, of oceans and islands. I imagine both of us, patron saints of nothing.

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.

We have more power and potential than we know if we would only speak, if we would only listen.