Death and Meaning Theme Analysis

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.

“Listen,” Mom said in that moment, hugging me closer. So I did. Baby birds chirped just outside the window. “One thing dies, and another is born. Maybe the puppy’s soul now has wings.”

The article included the fact that four low-level officers were eventually charged for killing that seventeen-year-old, but their punishments were minimal and only happened after massive protests. But what about the other victims who never got a hashtag? What about Jun?

Would there be justice?

Definitely not if nobody even knows what truly happened.

So maybe that's it—maybe I can find out. If his friend is right, maybe there are witnesses; maybe there's video; maybe there's a flawed report.

He stops. Reaches up and pulls the sack off his head.

It's Jun. His hair's a mess, tangled with sticks and dirt, and the lower half of his jaw is missing, a gory mess in its place. His eyes meet mine. Two stars in a clear winter sky.

“What happened to you?” I ask.

The exposed muscle and sinew where his lower jaw used to be twitches as he continues moving toward me.

“I'm sorry for what they did to you. I'm sorry I lost your letters. I’m sorry I was too afraid to speak to Tito Maning again tonight. But please tell me, what happened to you?”

He doesn’t answer. He can't. Instead, he stops a step away. Then he reaches out and places his palm against my chest.

I wake.

Tita Chato puts out her cigarette. “What happened to Jun is a tragedy, whether or not he was a drug pusher.” She pauses, gathering her thoughts, then continues. “But he is dead. We cannot bring him back to life. You need to accept that. There is nothing we can do about it except mourn.”

I clench my jaw.

She's not all that different from Tito Maning. Though her words were delivered with more compassion, they were the same: I am not truly Filipino, so I don’t understand the Philippines. But isn't this deeper than that, doesn’t this transcend nationality? Isn’t there some sense of right and wrong about how human beings should be treated that applies no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak?

I'm alone in this. Somebody needs to clear Jun’s name even if nothing comes of it. We failed him in life. We should not fail him in death.

“Tell me, Jason Reguero, are you willing to die to find out what happened to your cousin?”

I clench my jaw as I consider my answer. Part of me wonders if this is all that serious. It's not like I'm writing some investigative piece that will be published for millions to read. Finding out the truth about Jun isn't going to change the world.

But then again, this feels important and part of me is sick of never doing anything of significance in my life. I go to school. I do homework. I play video games. I'll be going to college in the fall, where I'll pretty much do four more years of the same—and for what? If I died right now I will have died having done nothing and having helped nobody.

“Yes,” I finally say, trying to imbue the word with the heaviness of the conviction I feel in my soul.

A man holds a photo of himself kissing another man on the beach.

A large family posing together beneath a cross together holds a photo standing in for the father.

All of these people, dead—yet alive again in these images thanks to my cousin. In all of this, there is both beauty and sadness, light and darkness, pain and something that might be healing.

Maybe Grace is right. Maybe it is worth it.

She laughs at the memory and I laugh with her. “Kuya Jun had a way of making people pay attention, of making them realize that others existed outside of themselves and getting them to care. But I don't…and I failed him. I stayed quiet whenever Tatay yelled. I left the room whenever they argued. I never asked Nanay to let him live with us again. I never even protested when they told us there would be no novenas, no vigil, no lamay, no funeral.”

[…]

I'm not sure what to say. Maybe I should tell her it's not her fault, maybe that it's all okay because he's with God now? I try to channel Jun because I think he always spoke the truth as he felt it, but I don't have that ability. I offer no reassurance, no wisdom. I only hug her tighter and start to cry with her.

Tito Danilo continues. “And later, he started selling.”

“But why?” Grace asks, desperate.

“Shabu is a hunger suppressant. You see, it is cheaper than food, so many of the poor start for this reason, and then they become addicted. As for why he started selling? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe to make money to keep feeding his addiction.”

I close my eyes, as if doing so will rewind the story erasing everything Tito Danilo has just told us. As if it will stop the warping truth. I can't reconcile this version of Jun with the one I had come to know to love, to admire.

I nod and let my graze drift upward. A bird flits across the rafters to a nest high in the corner. It reminds me of when I heard the baby birds chirping outside the window the day that the puppy died in my hands. What was it Mom told me in that moment? Something about death making way for new life. But what new life has come from Jun's death? I don’t know.

I imagine souls trapped overhead, bouncing against the steepled ceiling like invisible balloons whose strings have slipped from careless hands.

In the car with Tito Danilo and Grace on the way back to Lolo and Lola's, I think about how there's a new grief in remembering Jun now, knowing what eventually happened, knowing that he was more than my idea of him in ways I do not like, knowing that there's probably so much more I'll never know.

I was determined to find the truth. And I did—at least a piece of it. But was it worth it? What do I even do now?

This didn't play out how I thought it would.

I expected the truth to illuminate, to resurrect.

Not to ruin.

“Jun died a tragic death before his time. But that does not extinguish the good that he did on this earth. It lives on in the lives that he touched, and like a single candle's flame, it can grow and make what is dark light.” He pauses to let that sink in. “I invite each of you now to light your own candle from his, signifying that his goodness, his love, has multiplied through the ways he touched each of us, will continue to multiply through those we will go on touch.”