GREGORIO, FORGIVE US ALL

It was a weltering hot that afternoon – not unusual in the Philippines, but not a time for
hurrying either. That’s why I knew something was wrong when a man came hurrying up the
stairs of the convent.
The man was Gregorio and he told me his wife, Lina who was pregnant, was sick with
cholera​. He and a friend had carried her for four hours from their mountain home using a
hammock as a stretcher. When they arrived at the town of Togoc, the doctor is gone.
Togoc is one of the several parishes situated in the mountains of the islands
of Negros with the population of some 20,000 people. The pastor there now, Father Eugenio,
told me that they have no doctor although they still have the wrecked clinic.
When I was there a year ago, a doctor sometimes visited us.
Gregorio wanted to borrow our vehicle to take his wife to the hospital in the lowlands –
a two (2)-hour drive over a rocky road. I explained to him that Father Eugenio had taken the
jeepney, but I would go with him to the clinic anyhow to see what could be done. We found
Lina lying at the clinic crying out in pain.
Obviously, she desperately needed help, so we hurried out to search for the young
doctor assigned in Togoc for six months rural training. But he was away in an outlying and so we
waited for what seemed like ages before he came back. He immediately wrote a prescription
for Gregorio, who ran barefooted along the road to a little shop stocked with pitifully small
supplies of medicines. He was back in a few minutes, only to say the shop didn’t have the
medicines Lina needed. The doctor wrote another prescription. Gregorio sped away again only
to return once more – breatheless and emptyhanded.
“We need dextrose” said the doctor, “but there is none here in town”. We all fanned out
through the neighborhood asking people if they had any… finally, a woman produced a
half-filled dextrose bottle which was left-over from what her husband used before he died. I
brought it to the doctor.
He looked up frustrated and said, “The clinic has no dextrose needle. We have to take
her down to Kabankalan.”
“Doc, you know she’ll die on the way” I said. “Isn’t there anything you can do?” He then
tried to insert the dextrose with a big needle, but the vein in Lina’s arms and legs had collapsed.
He tried the veins on her neck but that was no good either.
We all stood there helpless as Lina screamed in pain. Gregorio was mute with confusion.
Their little child was wandering around the bed. Finally the doctor gave her some Coca-cola –
the only medicine available. Once more the doctor said that Lina would have to journey down
to Kabankalan. Since the priest wouldn’t be back, there was nothing, else to do but start the
haggling for a rented jeepney. It would be expensive and Gregorio had nothing, but we were in
no position to haggle with a life at stake.
Gregorio laid Lina on the same hammock that he had used to carry her down the
mountain, and strung it up inside the jeepney. All the time she cried out in pain. We had no
sedatives to calm her down. The doctor sat beside Gregorio.
Before they left, I whispered to Lina to be brave, there would be help. “Hang-on”, I said.
The jeepney moved slowly bouncing along that terrible road until it slowly disappeared
from sight. I whispered a hopeless prayer as if God who forgives would also, at a stroke of a
hand, undo the accumulated effects of our unjust system.
When Father Eugenio got back to the convent the following afternoon, I poured out the
story to him. As we were talking, Gregorio appeared at the door. He looked as if he had walked
the whole way back which was 30 kilometers.
His face told the story – Lina had died halfway down the journey. She had begged to stop
the jeepney; the pain being too much. They stopped and as they did, she died and so also
taking the life of the child inside.
And now followed a strange development. The doctor and the driver insisted that
maybe she was still alive! They would not heed Gregorio’s plead to return to Togoc. So the
jeepney continued on and deposited Gregorio and his dead wife at a doctor’s house clinic in a
large barrio.
 The doctor was not there, and the housewife naturally got mad at Gregorio for bringing a
dead patient. But the jeepney driver would not carry Gregorio and Lina any further. “Against
the law”, he said and “Of course it would be bad luck too”.
The young doctor must have had very little understanding of just how destitute Gregorio
was – how desperately poor most of our people are – because what he did next still amazes
me. He went on to Kabankalan with the jeepney driver and asked an expensive western-style
funeral home to take care of the corpse. For Gregorio, who had to pay for the expenses,
anything was better than to leave his wife in an unfriendly house.
Now, Gregorio stood there numb and exhausted. What else could he do??? The funeral
home would not return her body till he paid the bills for embalming and for bringing the body
back to Togoc. It was 8,000.00 pesos. This was more than any amount Gregorio had ever held in
his whole life. Just think that 250.00 pesos worth of medicine could have saved the life of both
Lina and her baby!!! It was the end as far as I was concerned but not for Gregorio. He would
borrow the money from us and sell his land to pay us!
I suggested we send down our vehicle for the body, but there was a question about that
being illegal. And then, would Perfecto, our faithful driver, overcome the same superstitious
belief of carrying a dead body in his vehicle???
“Apart from that” said Father Eugenio, “Our beat-up vehicle might never make it down
and up again”
Gregorio watched us argue. He was beyond feeling….
Finally, we decided to consult Perfecto. When Father Eugenio left, Gregorio
pleaded, “Father don’t leave Lina in Kabankalan” and he wept.
Perfecto was brief and to the point – “The vehicle make it down, and we’ll get it welded
there.. Then I’ll drive it back, I’m not afraid to carry a dead body.”
Then we planned on how to deal with the funeral home – there would be some brutal
bargaining to do…
I have not told this story well – the details have been smothered over by so many similar
incidents… Did Gregorio carry Lina for 8 hours, not for 4 hours? Did we get the body back for
1,500.00 or what??? The cases blur in similarity and your mind stops making distinctions.
Sometimes I’m tempted to think that if we had enough money to supply the poor with
medicines, or not to have argue over the hiring of the jeepney, or not have to worry about the
wreck that our vehicle is, the problem would end.
That might help relieve our worry and tension, but would it solve the problems, for they
are recurrent and deep-rooted.
When we brought Lina back to Togoc, Gregorio asked for the lid to be taken off the coffin
so that he could be photographed with his child and wife for the last time. I’m afraid the picture
is not clear enough to be printed.
But when I look at it, I sometimes wonder – Gregorio, where are you now? Have you
returned to your mountain plot? Who looks after your little child? Do you blame yourself for
poverty, for Lina’s death? Will you ever escape from the shadow of failure that is not your fault,
but is rooted in exploitative and oppressive systems?
​WILL WE EVER WAKE UP?