Suicide wasn't in my radar for possible things that can possibly happen to Ret. Gen. Angelo Reyes. Thus, I initially thought that the 2 texts messages I got announcing his demise yesterday were hoaxes. Tragically, it turned up to be true.
As is typical for the death of any eminent figure, Messr. Reyes' death generated a plethora of opinions, views, ideas, emotions, finger-pointing, hand-washing, ruminations, divinations, laments, consternations, etcetera. One very vivid fact though caught my attention: Of all places, Gen. Reyes chose to end his life at tomb of his parents, more specifically over his mother's. It's classic psychological notion that under lots of stress, in sleep people spontaneously take the fetal position. How heavy the stress could Gen. Reyes have been carrying to have led him to take an eternal fetal position right then and there in the embrace of his beloved mother's tomb (his mother who once before held him in her maternal womb; pardon the pun)? I think so heavy enough for him to have also taken his mother's tomb, as his mother's warm, loving, and embracing womb. Maybe, the sound of that mortal shot that fell him was actually his own form of a hopeless and hapless child's cry for help.
Whatever he may have been; whatever secrets or golems he may have been grappling with; what could have been his reasons for pulling that fateful trigger, human civility calls for each of us to at least show our sincere expression of condolences. And that we do express here. Our condolences then.
Yet, we musn't forget that Gen. Angelo Reyes' death, just as his life, also left still so many questions unanswered. Indeed his fall has just ended a chapter in our national life. Yet, there still are so many chapters to surely follow, and must follow, still to be examined, still to be brought to light. Indeed, our quest for the truth, for the right, for what's just, never ends because as Socrates said, "An unexamined life is a life not worth living."
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