Grieving and giving in the aftermath of tragedy

We join other former residents of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan cities in mourning the many deaths there last week due to Typhoon Sendong, and urge our Inquirer readers to donate what they can in cash or kind to this newspaper and other groups’ fundraising drives, to provide succor and relief to the many families whose lives have been tragically marred and altered by the tragedy.

The disaster’s timing, just a week before Christmas, couldn’t have been worse, which makes the suffering and sense of loss even more bitter and painful to bear.

Donations

Cash donations may be coursed through the Inquirer Help Fund’s Bank of the Philippine Island’s Current Account No. 4951-0067-56 under the name Philippine Daily Inquirer Inc., until December  29 – or call the PDI corporate affairs office at 897-8808 and 899-4426.

The need is great, so please be generous. For our part, aside from this entreaty, we’ve been contacting our friends and colleagues to give and share from the heart – and pocket – because we’ve received harrowing reports from relatives and friends in Cagayan de Oro whose accounts have further deepened the sense of entire communities that have vanquished their terror to stare death in the face – and survived.

They may have cheated the Grim Reaper, but many of their loved ones didn’t, so the loss and temptation to despair is overwhelming. As we watch TV reportage and images of once safe and quiet neighborhoods known to us in our youth now blighted and savaged almost beyond recognition, we similarly and empathetically feel like we’ve descended into the pits of despair and desolation, from which only the flickering light of faith and hope in the help of caring friends and strangers offers the possibility of salvation – and redemption.

Tributary

Even more personally, we recall another flood in Cagayan when, as an impetuous adolescent, we “dared” to swim through the roiling waters of a small tributary that had swelled into a rampaging river, in order to get to our home in the city’s suburbs.

We were dissuaded from rashly risking our life only by the fearful and outraged cries of our grandmother, whose urgent shouts finally convinced us to wait for the flood waters to subside. What, we wonder now, would have happened to us if we hadn’t heeded her stentorian alarum?

As we grew up in Cagayan, we also had to contend with other tragedies, like fires, earthquakes and a car accident one New Year’s Eve, in which some of our teen acquaintances had perished. But, they were all relatively minor compared to the “biblical” tragedy that our hometown and its traumatized residents are contending with this Christmas.

Please, let’s pray for them and help them in any and all ways we can!