On losing a son

e had dreams; he said, ‘Papa, one day you will be very proud of me’.” Those were the words of a weeping, grieving father whose distraught face caught my attention on television several days ago. His name is Horacio Tomas Castillo, Jr., and he was in tears, his voice shaking, because his son who carries the same name he and his own father bear is dead – an apparent victim of fatal hazing allegedly carried out by a law school fraternity.

Mr. Castillo Sr.’s weeping, distraught image made a deep imprint on me. You see, we are used to the sight of mothers crying. But fathers? When a father publicly cries, the pain must be very, very deep. It is a cry that, I presume, the Heavens hear right away.

Mr. Castillo Sr.’s pain and sorrow reminded me of my own. Five years ago, the baby who was supposed to be our third daughter died in her mother’s womb. She died in the eighth month of her conception, succumbing to suffocation by her umbilical cord.

I do not recall having cried aloud. But I did weep. Bitterly. Inconsolably.

The severe emotional pain is borne out of the distortion of what a parent believes to be the natural order of things – that the parent is supposed to die ahead of the child. The death of the latter is one thing a parent would never want to see in his or her lifetime.

My aunt, former Supreme Court Justice Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, painted a vivid picture of that pain when she spoke at the wake of her daughter, my cousin, Atty. Chingky Ynares Santiago.

Ate Chingky passed away in October of 2015 after a long battle with cancer. Justice Ynares-Santiago spoke on the last night of her daughter’s wake. She said:

“I had hoped that I would not have to do this tonight. I stand here before you to perform what is perhaps a mother’s most difficult and most painful task: paying tribute to a dear daughter who has gone on to Heaven… ahead of her.

You see, we, mothers, have never imagined the possibility of doing this task. We always believe that it would be our children who would preside over their parents’ transition to the next life. It should be the daughter, we believe, who should be standing here and not the mother.

“The reality which faces me now is a stark contrast to what a mother hopes for. Deep though the pain may be, I will have… at some point… to accept that timeless truth that, quote-unquote, ‘God’s ways are not our ways’.

“There is another reason why I am standing here despite that pain. I stand here to do a dear daughter… justice.”

When child stares at the lifeless body of a parent, the child weeps for the things they have shared and gone through together in the past.

When a parent stares at the lifeless body of the child, the parent weeps for the things that will never be; for the hopes and dreams that will never be fulfilled; for the laughter that would never be heard; for the many moments of joy that will never be felt.

I guess there is a basic difference between a mother and a father. The mother looks at her child and sees the child as he or she is at the present moment. Theirs is a bond that has been built even before the child was born.

The father looks at his child and sees the future. He is obsessed with what the child can be, can become, and can be able to have and to do.

That is the fact that has so clearly been expressed in the words of Mr. Castillo Sr. as he wept for his son’s death. “He had dreams,” Mr. Castillo lamented. And his son’s dream was clear: he wanted to make his Papa proud.

Mr. Castillo Sr. was weeping not just for the demise of a child; he was inconsolable because dreams and hopes died with his son.

Whoever may be responsible for the death of Mr. Castillo Sr.’s son should know this. They killed a person. With the death of that person, dreams and hopes died, too.

Sometimes, dreams and hopes are more powerful than life itself.

Mr. Castillo would know this. After all, he traces his bloodline to Dr. Jose Rizal’s sister Soledad Alonzo-Rizal de Quintero. Didn’t his forebear die at a very young age for dreams more powerful than death?

Perhaps, Horacio “Atio” Castillo III, Mr. Castillo’s late son, saw his joining a fraternity as a way of fulfilling his dream of becoming a lawyer and making his Papa proud.

I guess Atio knew the perils of a violent fraternity hazing. I believe he counted the cost and may have said to himself that the risk is worth it if that is the price he would have to pay to fulfill his dreams and make his Papa proud.

Mr. Castillo Sr. had a son who did everything to make his father proud.

From a father who lost a daughter five years ago to another father who had just lost a son, I say this to Mr. Castillo, Sr.:

I share in your sorrow for the loss of your child.

I share in your pride, too, for your son Atio. Yours was a son who would do everything to fulfill the Dream. He paid the price for it. He was brave. Courage is in the blood that flowed through his veins.

May you find consolation in the thought that your son deserved the name he carried.

And, that name is yours.