It’s good to be alive

After "Milenyo" swept across the country and destroyed homes, uprooted trees, knocked down billboards and put the metropolis in darkness, almost everyone wrote a piece about this super typhoon. Almost all except for this writer.

People who watched the news (at least those whose power lines were restored early) and saw what happened to me kept asking why I never wrote about the typhoon when I was among the biggest victims of this recent calamity.

I asked myself the same question, but it took time for me to find the answer to that.

Maybe it was too painful to write about it. Perhaps, I was still in a state of denial. Now that I look back, I guess I just got tired telling the same story again and again. A week after the calamity – when people were still asking me for details on how it happened – I had to scrape all the lessons I learned on politeness from school and my parents to be able to say this without being offensive: Please spare me. I’m not telling it another time. If you have to know, my house was blown away. End of story.

Of course, people meant well. And if there is something I can be thankful about for this calamity, it is the fact that I saw genuine sincerity and kindness in friends. Dr. Vicki Belo and Joey Santos, for instance, asked me what they could do for me that instant. Marichu Maceda offered to bring me food since she knew I didn’t have a kitchen anymore. My neighbor lawyer Harry Roque and his wife Mylah came to the house and took pictures to show to the insurance people – and just to see how I was doing.

But I will never, never forget the kindness of my buddy Jun Camcam, who was very sincere in offering me their spare room and kept inviting me for meals. (When I was unable to come to dinner, his family sent over sotanghon soup, a beef dish and brownies for dessert.)

And then there was Rosa Rosal. When I called her up to inform her of what happened to me, she was having difficulty finding her way in the darkness of her room because power had yet to be restored in her house. But within the hour, she was able to find the number of her contractor, Architect Francisco Bernabe, and Tats Rejante Manahan (yes, wife of the esteemed Mr. M – Johnny Manahan – of ABS-CBN), one of the best TV writers of the ’70s and ‘80s, but has since shifted to interior designing (and she is also good at it).

And so now my house is under renovation again (unplanned since I just had it done last year). When people ask me what I am busy with, I tell them I am rebuilding my house and then I have to tell them what happened to it and I have to repeat my "Milenyo" story. Okay, a part of the aluminum cladding on the side of the roof was blown off at the height of the typhoon and strong winds came in and pushed down the ceilings of the hallway, kitchen, guest room, living area and part of the dining room. Since I had an opening in the roof, the rains came in and flooded the floor and destroyed it in the process.

The house is now a sorry mess – with construction people working 12 hours Sunday to Sunday. (Demolition work alone took days.) My pocketbook, of course, is the biggest victim since insurance – I’m sure (I have yet to collect) – will only pay for so much. To my horror, VAT is P90,000 – and that just came as a result of a stroke of a pen in Malacañang.

Then over the weekend, we had a series of earthquakes with aftershocks. I wasn’t home when it struck at around 10:30 p.m. of Friday (Oct. 20). But I was doing my bathroom chores when it struck again at past 1 a few hours later. I remember that because I had just finished talking on the phone to my Startalk executive producer Reylie Manalo that time and we were going over the line-up for Saturday’s episode. At 6 a.m. of Saturday, there was another one. I was so tired and sleepy I pulled over my blanket and went back to dreamland.

In the early hours of Sunday, there was another quake. Instead of getting scared, I actually just got annoyed. Enough! I heard myself saying. Then came another aftershock five minutes later and all I said was: Stop! I’ve had it! Those must have been the toughest words I’ve ever uttered because I was talking to nature. Imagine if it talked back to me by way of sending more aftershocks.

But before I went to sleep, I did say a prayer to the Lord to thank Him for sparing life (mine and others) and properties. For all the things that happened to me, I still have a lot to be thankful for in this life.

I just look at it this way: Next week is All Saints’ Day. With that super typhoon and series of earthquakes that just passed by, I’m still the one visiting the graves of loved ones instead of the other way around. Oh, it’s good to be alive!