Patron Saints of Nothing

by Randy Ribay

At that point in my life, I had encountered death only in fiction. I had heard about other people’s relatives dying. But I had never seen death up close. I had never held it.

When I finally stepped outside, almost all my Filipino titas and titos laughed. Not in a mean way, I think, but more like it was amusing that a dog’s death affected me so much because it was nothing to them. Another day. Another dog. My cousins did not need to have someone stroke their hair and reassure them that death was part of life.

he was one of those people who moved through the world as if he had been around for a long time. An old soul, as they say.

We can only handle so much truth at any given moment,

wouldn’t do it that first time because it was the middle of the day and I was afraid of getting arrested, but he eventually persuaded me to go back later and climb it with him under the cover of darkness.

My desire to smoke has not yet surpassed my fear of getting caught.

You know how my parents are. I took the path of least resistance because if I didn’t send in those apps, they would have said they were cool with it but they wouldn’t have been.

I’m not sure what I want to do. For some reason, that’s not okay. Everyone acts like seventeen-year-olds who don’t have their career path mapped out are wasting their lives.

should be crying or throwing my controller down in anguish—but I don’t do any of this. Instead, there’s only a mild confusion, a muddy feeling of unreality that thickens when I consider the distance that had developed between Jun and me. How do you mourn someone you already let slip away? Are you even allowed to?

Our family doesn’t talk much, and usually anything important is passed along in fragments so that it feels like we’re playing that telephone game, except a sadder, real-life version.

“Take care, baby brother . . . and I’m sorry this happened.” The thing is, she’s not. Maybe she’s sorry I’m sad, but she’s not sorry he died. She didn’t know him like I did. Did anyone?

I want to be held. I’m seventeen years old, but I want someone to hold me like how my mom held me when I was a little kid.

Earlier I thought that I wanted someone to hold me. But now that someone is, it doesn’t make anything better.

I don’t remember the exact words, but I remember how he said something about how if people don’t speak out when something wrong is happening—wherever in the world—they’re helping whoever is committing that wrong by allowing it to happen.

Truth is a hungry thing.

this is a great quote

Most suggest that these killings are crimes against humanity, including a note about the international community’s condemnation—but inaction.

In every dead body, I see Jun. I want to look away. But I don’t. I need to know. I need to see it. These photographers didn’t want to water it down. They wanted the audience to confront the reality, to feel the pain that’s been numbed by a headline culture.

And this continues to be true. We're horrified by something for the moments that it dominates the news cycle, but then it shifts to another horrifying thing that allows us to forget the former.

It was like he used all his compassion on strangers and ran out by the time he came home.

It seems impossible that a place like this and a place like the Philippines exist at the same time on the same planet.

“Man,” he says, shaking his head, “I forgot you’re Filipino.” “Huh?” “You’re basically white.” I stop, stung. “What do you mean by that?” “Sorry, dude,” he says, backtracking. “Never mind.” “Tell me.” He hesitates. “Seth,” I urge. “I don’t see color, man,” he says. “We’re all one race: the human race. That’s all I meant.” “No, it’s not,” I say. And even if it is, that’s kind of fucked up. First, to assume white is default. Second, to imply that difference equals bad instead of simply different. “Promise you won’t get offended?” “No. But tell me anyway.” He lets out an exasperated sigh. “I just meant you act like everyone else at school.” “You mean like all the white kids?” “Dude, our school’s all white kids, so, yeah.” Except it’s not. The majority are, for sure, but his generalization—spoken with such confidence, such ease—makes me feel like he’s erasing the rest of us. Seth goes on. “You talk like everyone else. You dress like everyone else. And you, like, do the same stuff as everyone else. That’s all I mean. Chill.”

So much to unpack here. Especially the erasure of other people and specifically how easy it is to "forget" that someone is half-Filipino because they're white passing and the problems that brings. Like how we discussed in class the problems of assuming characters are white unless they're described. That being the "default" is wrong.

“You want me to come with you?” he asks, like he doesn’t understand why I’m upset. And that’s a big part of the problem. He doesn’t. He can’t.

It’s a sad thing when you map the borders of a friendship and find it’s a narrower country than expected.

the system in which police officers earn certain amounts of money for killing specific types of suspects, creating an economy of murder—especially since there are no bonuses for arrests.

But what about the other victims who never got a hashtag?

I may not have learned to speak my native language from him, but I learned to keep the most important things inside.

But, it seems to me that there are so many older than us who are able to take care of those in need. If everyone did a little bit, then everybody would be okay, I think. Instead, most people do nothing.

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

It doesn’t seem like there is a war going on—a war the country is waging against itself in the name of public safety, a war that has taken Jun’s life plus thousands of others.

Another way I’m not Filipino enough.