Home for Christmas

TACLOBAN CITY, Leyte – Edgardo is not sure what time or day R-Jay will be home, only that he will be home for Christmas. Maybe it will be days before, maybe it will be on the eve, maybe his small, laughing son will walk through the door on the morning of the 25^th.

What Edgardo is certain of is this: when R-Jay walks through the door, he will run to hug his son. He will say he missed him, so much, so very, very much. R-Jay has been gone more than a month, the longest he has ever been far away from his father. And when Edgardo finally holds R-Jay in his arms, he will apologize for what happened on the morning of November 8^th. He will kneel before his son, he will say sorry, he will hope for forgiveness for making the choice that took R-Jay away, and he hopes R-Jay will forgive him.

The mistake Edgardo made was the same mistake many people made on the morning of November 8. It was made by a city councilor, a teacher, a village chief, a medical representative, a housewife, a British pharmacist and his wife on vacation, a radio announcer, a plumber, a nurse, an officer of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. The Mayor’s actress wife made that mistake, and so did the Mayor.

What they did was refuse to evacuate. Many paid with their lives, or worse, their children’s lives.

It is true they knew about the storm. They knew it would be big, a fast, ripping typhoon that would slam against the coasts of Leyte and Samar. There was word of storm surges, of possible massive destruction.

It is true but it did not matter, because storms were ordinary events, meaning little more than knee-high water and a day away from school. What mattered was that on the day before Typhoon Haiyan, the sky was blue. Many stayed home. Some say they stayed to guard the house. Others say they didn’t want to crowd evacuation centers. What was common is the belief that Haiyan was “just a storm,” easily dealt with, an inconvenience. 

No lock on the door

And so when Edgardo Almasan II, 40 years old, of Village 89, San Jose, Tacloban City decided to stay home to protect his wife’s small store – the door had no lock, and he was afraid someone would steal his wife’s packets of soap and bottles of Coca-cola—his wife decided to stay with him, along with his 4 children. Edgardo didn’t protest, not much. He wanted them evacuated, but he loved his wife, and didn’t think there was any danger to wind and maybe a bit of floodwater.

When the first wave hit, a 15-foot-high surge of water, Edgardo found himself at the center of a heaving sea of brown water, without wife or children. He swam, saw two of his sons fighting to stay afloat. He caught the closest boy, his eldest, R-Jay. He started dragging the 13-year-old to safety.

R-Jay told his father to leave him.

Pa, R-jay said, Papa, go save Ned. I can swim, he can’t.

So Edgardo let go, turned to grab his 10-year-old son, managed to wrap the boy’s arms around a tangle of water lilies before another wave hit and Edgardo was thrown, again, into the roiling waters that went past the peaks of the coconut trees.

Edgardo is not certain how he survived. All he remembers is that he was deaf from the wind, that he did not know where he was, and that he was certain he was going to die.

He’s alive

When it was over, Edgardo climbed down from a pile of rubble. He saw grandmothers and small children crying. He heard people call his name, asking him if he knew where this cousin was, or that father went. He paid no attention. He was looking for his family. He walked and walked, until a neighbor hailed him, said there was a boy in the funeral parlor who might be his son.

He was afraid to ask, but he did. Dead?

No, said the neighbor, alive. Look for him there.

There was no boy at first. Edgardo went back again and again. He thought he was going mad.

On the third time, he saw Ned sitting by the broken funeral parlor door. Edgardo ran, caught his son, crushed him in a hug, in time for Ned to faint in his father’s arms.

They stayed at a church for days. Edgardo left Ned to look for his family. It was hard, he said, because the boy kept clinging to him, wanting to stay with his father.

He went to search. Dug under trash. Turned over cadavers. Went rummaging inside abandoned houses with corpses caught under refrigerators. He refused to eat, refused to sleep. His brothers forced food into him, told him he was going mad. For a week he kept searching. He told everyone he met on the road about his Jocy and her black leggings and black jacket and white socks. No one had seen her, or R-Jay, or his daughters Eileen and Edelyn.

Lost girls

Edgardo now believes his wife and daughters are dead.

The hardest thing, he says, is to imagine it. He thinks of Jocy, calling his name, begging for help. Jocelyn, whom he met when he was 26 years old working as a security guard in Gaisano Mall in Cebu. Jocy worked there too. She was 20, and he fell in love with her and the smell of her hair.

He thinks of Eileen, his older girl, and how she used to sit at home watching TV. He thinks of his 4-year-old Edelyn, the small tornado who would run to the coast whenever he came home from the sea, who would poke at his pocket and giggle in his face and demand for P3. He would laugh and open a fistfull of coins. Edelyn would choose three of the shiniest coins. Then it was goodbye to Papa, and the pursuit of candy.  

Edgardo is now careful when he reaches into his pocket for money. He does not to look at the coins, especially the bright ones that shine in the sun.

Many men have gone mad, says Edgardo. He has a neighbor who wanders among the tents and the rubble, poking at trash, lifting rocks, a man who lost two children and his wife. One son is alive, but it doesn’t matter, because the man can’t get forget the ones he failed to save.

Edgardo is glad he kept his sanity. He may have lost his wife and daughters, but one son is with him, and the other is coming home.

Edgardo knows this. He told Ned this. R-jay is alive because R-jay can swim, unlike his mother, unlike his little sisters who were always afraid of swimming in deep water.

When R-Jay comes home on Christmas, Edgardo will apologize. He is sorry he let R-Jay go. He is sorry he didn’t drag him along with him when he rescued Ned. He is sorry, mostly, for choosing between two sons, and he hopes R-Jay will forgive him. He is afraid his son will not, but he will kneel if he must and beg if he can.

More than 6,000 died on the morning of November 8. Almost 2,000 are reported missing, many others are unaccounted for.

Edgardo believes R-Jay is coming home for Christmas. He is alive, and when he comes home and walks into a white tent at the center of a hundred other white tents in a wet field along the highway of Village 89, Edgardo will run with his arms wide open, because he misses the boy he didn’t choose to save. – Rappler