‘I suspect that one big reason for their succumbing to this dreadful pandemic is the fact that the quality of COVID care one can get in the provinces is far from the urgent care one needs to battle against the virus.’
TWO days ago, my FB post consisted of three letters and three names. The letters were simply “RIP,” and the names were Jesse Abara, Larisa Abara and Maria Isabel Abara. Jesse and Larisa were husband and wife, he from Laoag and she from Calatagan, and Maria Isabel, aka Mia, was their eldest, born in 1997. If I am not mistaken, Mia is herself a mother to a young girl.
I knew Jesse as the kindhearted and utterly loyal albeit big and able-bodied personal driver of Iñigo Zobel when I worked for Don Enrique (EZ) from 1988-1997. Larisa, on the other hand, was a bright eyed, cheerful and slim member of the Zobel household, always fun to exchange greetings with whenever I’d walk into the kitchen to grab a glass of something to drink, ever smiling when I’d be lucky enough to join my boss for dinner in his Alabang residence or on the farm in Batangas. Because they were working for father and son, Jesse and Larisa had many occasions to get to know each other better; being both kindhearted as they were, it was no surprise that eventually they got married and settled down in Calatagan after they both retired from the family service. When Larisa’s eldest was born, she asked me and Evelyn Chotangco (now Villanueva) to be godparents. Evelyn was EZ’s longstanding confidential secretary, herself a daughter to two of EZ’s long-serving employees (Vicente Chotangco and Nanie Caisip), whose fathers, in turn, also worked with the young Enrique in the Ayala of the 1950s-1960s.
That’s how it was with EZ, and it was easy to imagine that, if and when the opportunity arose, Mia or any of the Abara children would also have been able to find employment somewhere and somehow within the operations of the Zobel family in Calatagan or, if qualified, in Makati.
But that is a possibility no longer, because COVID-19 has intervened. Last week, within a span of six days, Jesse (who is diabetic) passed away, quickly followed by Mia, and then by Larisa.
I suspect that one big reason for their succumbing to this dreadful pandemic is the fact that the quality of COVID care one can get in the provinces is far from the urgent care one needs to battle against the virus. After all these years and billions and billions and billions of funds for public health and public health insurance that has been spent, misspent or pocketed, many otherwise manageable afflictions are death sentences for millions of our countrymen living outside our major urban centers.
Jesse, Larisa and Mia are just the latest to fall victim to this grim reality, and their passing has deeply saddened me. The thought that they are just the latest and will be far from the last leaves me distraught.
Yesterday morning, I woke up at my usual 4:45 a.m., looked out the window and noticed it was still dark. Since I had an hour and 15 minutes before the opening of the “exercise window,” the 6-9 a.m. time frame that I half-jokingly said was MMDA’s “there is no virus out there” window for outdoor exercises, I took my sweet time in getting up from bed, walking to the kitchen to get a sip of cold water and then saying hello to my still sleepy dogs who only lifted their eyelids to watch me pass by.
Instantly, the memory of Jesse and Larisa flashed before me, and I couldn’t help but feel sad again. Then the face of the Health Secretary flashed before my eyes, and I was angry again. That’s when I knew it was time to dress up and lace up and do my every-other-day routine of walking and running and walking and running, because doing so never fails to clear my mind. And these days I need mind-clearing often because the thought of an incompetent but indispensable Cabinet member is never far from my mind.
Every time I see a blackened FB post with only a candle in it, I think of this incompetent but indispensable Cabinet member. Every time I read of a plea for prayers, or help finding an available hospital that accepts COVID patients, or a common question these days (When will these all end?), my thoughts go to this incompetent but indispensable member of the Duterte Cabinet.
And while I was hoping that as my own brush with COVID becomes more and more a memory, so will I think less and less often of this incompetent but indispensable Cabinet member. But no; because I see messages of condolences almost every day on Facebook, what is now the social media version of newspaper obituaries; I read requests for prayers almost every day from people who are sick or who have loved ones who are sick; and I feel the struggle of many people who try to remain mentally positive in an environment that is so sapping of our good cheer. And we couldn’t even get a consuelo de bobo from His Excellency who says he will not fire his Health Secretary and is willing to remain standing with him even if they are the only two remaining standing together.
This, in stark contrast to the way the previous Health Secretary was thrown to the wolves despite being a competent and decent career official. Or maybe because she was a competent and decent career official, someone not worth standing beside come hell or high water.
The choices we make have consequences; the choices people in power make, as in this case, have dire consequences. And the sad part is that it is we who are the ones to bear the brunt of those dire consequences.
Great are the chances that Jesse, Larisa and Mia’s deaths are in vain, because to the powers that be they merely join the statistics of those who were “not lucky enough” to have survived this pandemic. Maybe the only way I can somehow make it less so is to remember them, tell their story, and help many others see that things can and should be better and that there is something you and I can do to, if we put our minds and heart to it, to end this long national nightmare.
As some garish billboard puts it, Panalo tayo sa pagbabago, and pagbabago definitely means not more of the same.
Rest in peace, Jesse, Larisa, and Mia.
