A Moment of Despair, Fortitude, and Guilt

Abstract

“Waray ko hira matabangi! Waray ko hira masalbar han delubyo!” (I failed to help them. I failed to save them from the deluge), I told Ms Juliet Calda, then instructor of Leyte Normal University in Tacloban City, Leyte, the Philippines. The faces of my younger brother and sister are still vivid in my memory. It took time and courage for me to forgive myself and that 1super typhoon that killed them and thousands more. This drawing is a testament of how helpless we are in times of natural disasters. Until now, the loud screams and throbbing sobs of my younger siblings still reverberate in my ears, and, as a big sister, it always pains me that I could not do anything about it, that I could not be there to save them from drowning. For a while, I lived in grief, longing, and anger, and such weight of emotions seems to linger in my consciousness, at times inundating my sense of being. I was desperate for help, too. I was hopeless. I didn’t know if I could endure those ravaging waters, the violent winds, and the biting cold while I was tightly hugging that coconut tree just so I could save myself.