by Mita Q. Sison-Duque
ONE of the first “Seasons” columns I wrote for the Manila Bulletin pinpointed to an enemy of progress and well-being in our country. It was not the oil embargo, the inflation, nor the burgeoning world population, although the three could easily be contributory to the problem. Neither was it drugs, family disunity or education, or the lack of it. The Enemy, was Poverty.
We are not strangers to Poverty, but one that we had developed tolerance for in our everyday lives, through layers of generations, living or witnessing it. Little did I imagine that sometime in the future, The Enemy would rear its ugly head more tragically than what was possible, at the time, if only to make a point. Already, Poverty is being pointed to as the direct cause of a recent tragedy. I often imagined how we Filipinos, we of strong faith, could tolerate such difficulties without complaining, and for some more graphically than others, for its poverty even in the midst of plenty.
Today, year 2007, an eleven year old girl named Marianette from Davao, breaking the tradition of “upper stiff lip” and faith in a caring God, who provides our everyday needs, committed suicide, defeated by The Enemy. Was it a weakening of faith, a failure of our system to develop in our young moral values that sets our priorities straight, giving family life, respect for the elders and all old practices importance rather than instant gratification from material things? Of course, it is a totally difficult situation if meals are missed, and there is total absence of hope in a future. Is Marianette a much brighter child who cannot accept such living conditions, compared to the rest of what she sees, is a way of life for others, but not for her?
Barring mental illness which could affect even our young, the thought that a young girl on the brink of teen-hood and springtime, when girls dream of ribbons, dolls, dresses, ponytails and maybe the blush of an early first crush, tired of life’s hardships, ended it all, cowed by unrelenting inroads of poverty all of her eleven years of life. While it is true many Filipinos live a life akin to what Tevye described in a song in the Broadway play “Fiddler on the Roof” about life in Anatevka, an extremely impoverished Russian Village “ a little bit of this, a little bit of that, what have you got?”, suicide especially in the young was never a part of the equation. We are not a self-destructive people. We have strong Christian moorings that does not allow suicide. And definitely, we stare poverty in the face everyday, allowing us to step in tune with an acrobatic tempo to strike wherever Poverty misses a spot. More important, the suicide happened in the midst of the country’s generous economic gains, the pesos showing stamina vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar, a good sign of an upcoming economic health in the country.
Why? Although it is an isolated case, somehow it involves everyone. For indeed, when a child commits suicide, it strikes at the very soul of existence. Why does a child commit suicide?
Marianette’s suicide gives us a chance to examine ourselves at how we sometimes have become insensitive to our neighbor’s needs and how we as Christians act and care for those who have lesser than us. In the everyday grind of life, we sometimes miss the point of our humanity, our belonging to one human race and how we are answerable for our kind. In a way, the death of Marianette brings to a lead our shortcomings, we in our own individual way, and crystallizes how our society is becoming more callous to our neighbor’s needs, be they material or spiritual.
The suicide of a child is unfathomable, and makes all of us instant parents to those who need help. Still there are those who think only in terms of politics, equating a tragic event into one that smacks of failed administration of the country’s economy. To them healing is long in coming.
(Note: Ms Duque also writes for People’s Digest Newsweekly, a community newspaper circulated in Pangasinan, Region I and other parts of Luzon. She has authored two books: “Embraced by Sun” and “In the Beginning…A Nation, A President”.)