A MONTH ago, one of our deaf scholars died. She was 17 years old.

Her name was Micaella and she was full of life. Although she was the only deaf living along the estero (creek) beside the Divisoria mall, she made herself part of our community there. She played with the kids and even taught sign language to a few of them.

Full of hope, she was really her parents? child. Two years ago, Micaella?s father responded to a survey question on how he viewed the future of their family. He ticked the smiley (:) and wrote, ?Mataas ang pangarap ko, eh. Sana ay makatapos ?yung 2 anak ko at balang araw ay wala na kami sa bangketa [I have big dreams. I hope my two children will finish their studies and hopefully, in the future, we won?t be on the streets anymore].?

Micaella?s deafness caused her family to move from their hut in Bulacan to the estero beside the Divisoria mall ? despite its unhealthy state ? so she could be near a school for the deaf. Such was their love and hope for her.

Micaella?s father and mother are atypical of hearing Filipino parents of deaf children. Unlike most parents in a similar situation, they were not disabled by their child?s deafness.

A few years back, an Australian volunteer of our office observed that the hearing parents go through different psycho-emotional states from the moment they discover their child is deaf. As indicated by preliminary research completed by our organization early this year, the states seem to be similar to the death-and-dying stages probed in the ?60s and ?70s by the famous psychiatrist Dr. Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross. These include states of non-acceptance, questioning, disappointment, shock, hurt, sadness, loss, shame, fear, worry, resignation and empowerment.

The study needs to be explored more as we have not yet identified how the states are arrayed, the duration of each state, and other similar research problems. We initiated the study because we had observed in the families of our scholars the lack of expressed closeness between the deaf scholars and their hearing parents, and the breakdown in communication.

One would think that parents of deaf children strive to learn sign to communicate with their deaf children. But incredibly, according to the results of our survey among 151 scholars in May 2007, around 81 percent of the household heads (and 77 percent of their spouses) could not pass the evaluation for Basic Sign Language. Fourteen percent of the household heads, mostly fathers, were not communicating with their deaf children at all, including 3 percent of the mothers.

Many organizations for the deaf, including ours, have responded to this reality by offering sign language classes to the parents. But we have realized that these classes are not enough to get parents significantly involved in their deaf children?s lives and to invest more in the latter?s continued development.

The parents have questions. And worries. These are death-and-dying, if not similar, issues.

Of the 127 responses of parents in the study, 30 percent expressed sadness when they discovered they had given birth to a deaf child. Their sadness is of such depth that one parent replied, ?deepress na deepress [very depressed].? Another parent expressed the sadness in metaphor,?parang gumuho ang lakas ko [it?s like my strength vanished],? and still another, ?binagsakan ng langit at lupa [it feels like heaven and earth fell].?

Twenty percent of the answers were questions, mostly expressing worries (15 percent) about the future of the deaf children ? whether there is one. Thirteen percent articulated non-acceptance, 9 percent hurt, 5 percent fear, 4 percent disappointment, and 3 percent sense of loss. The psycho-emotional state that I could not find in Dr. Kuebler-Ross? seminal work ?On Death and Dying,? which is present among parents of deaf children, is the feeling or sense of shame.

However, there are parents like Micaella?s who immediately get over their sense of distress and focus on what they can do to help their deaf child. They represent roughly 3 percent of the respondents. The others are able to hurdle their issues only gradually as they see their deaf children grow.

The parents? acceptance of their deaf children, the calming of their worries, and their pro-active sense with regard to their response to the deafness of their children surface when they learn of the opportunity available to, or the ability of, their deaf children to get an education. Forty-one percent of the parents expressed that. They realized that, except for the inability to hear, their deaf children have the same capacity as hearing children.

Unfortunately, the opportunity to get education in the Philippines is not accessible to all deaf Filipinos. There are not many schools for the deaf in the country. We still have not even been able to correctly account for all the deaf children. How many deaf children are there in the Philippines anyway?

Many of the hearing parents of deaf children are unaware of the educational opportunities for their deaf children and of the need of these children to learn a language, especially sign language, for their holistic development.

We dream of a day when education is accessible to all Filipino children ? with or without disability, deaf or hearing, of a minority or the majority, rich or poor. We dream of a day when families like that of Micaella need not risk their lives along the creeks of our metropolis to be near a school for the deaf.

Micaella died of liver ailment, apparently due to the condition in the estero where she lived to get an education.

Micaella died to get an education.

Roberto S. Salva is the executive director of the Catholic Ministry to Deaf People Inc. Contact him at babisalva@gmail.com.