To a colleague who has gone ahead

In the tender hours of Friday dawn last week, His Honor Judge Lorenzo A. Paradiang Jr. (retired) breathed his last. For sixteen days he bravely fought for dear life in the internal care unit of the hospital where he was confined. But God’s will prevailed, as always, over human will. Despite the prayers of his loved ones and of his close friends, he went away.

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean”, wails a poet. But the loved ones of Pare Lorenzo (we are kumpare because I am the godfather of his youngest child) know what their tears mean. No, these are not droplets of complaint, rather, these are just undefined syndrome of a feeling all human beings are susceptible to.

Saying goodbye to a loved one departing towards another life is not only painful, it is faith-threatening. For the heart cannot help but ask, Why is God deaf to our plea? Why could he not postpone the passing away of our loved one? God of course understands such reaction. He loves us so much that he must be crying as we cry, sorrowing as we sorrow. Yet he allows things to happen despite our prayers, despite our fears, for he knows that in time we will understand.

God wants us to understand that every season will end. Pare Lorenzo’s season as a brilliant student at the UV, as a high performing and deeply committed judge, as a sharp and insightful columnist and as a loving and exemplar husband and father – the time for these like the time for everything and for everyone in this life, has to come to an end.

“So cry all you want, but crying won’t get you nothing”, says another poet. Really? Why did Jesus cry when he heard of Lazarus’ death? Why did he shed tears when he contemplated on Jerusalem and its disaster day? Indeed, to cry is to say, I love you. It means I need you. A part of me will be gone when you are gone. My world will be a different world.

But it will be a tolerable world. The memory of our loved one will linger around to remind us of happy moments once shared and savored. His thoughts too will be a guiding light as we go through our grind of days and years. For a life lived fully and well is never forgotten. The warm body may be gone, but a warmer presence is always near full of assurances of peace and love.

As we came into this world we were nothing. The soul was there but it was formless like a lump of clay yet untouched by human hands. Then the Potter shaped us as we wanted him to shape us, whether as a crude and rugged receptacle or as a shiny and imposing pottery. He gave us a choice what we wanted to be.

Judge Paradiang chose to be extra diligent as a student. He worked hard to set his mark upon what he was doing despite financial handicaps. He took a straight course, despite the temptations to digress, avoiding the whims and caprices of many young men in the fifties. This made him a sort of students’ idol in the UV, a leader and a scholar of no mean caliber. He first taught English grammar (I was briefly under him), then set his eyes towards Don Juan Rivera hall where law classes were held, and after four years passed the bar with a flying mark.

Three weeks ago we were set for a work conference on a UV project, but in the morning of the appointed day, his youngest daughter, Celeste, called me up saying that his dad could not make it because he had been hospitalized.

Judge Paradiang loved poetry and one of his favorite is Tennynou’s “Crossing the Bar”. So by way of saying farewell, here’s a few lines: “Sunset and evening star; And one clear call for me; And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea. . .”