This year has been a milestone, or millstone, all around. It?s the year many people I know died. Some too young to die, like Alecks Pabico of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism who was only 42 when he went last month. It?s been a cruel year for musicians in particular, local and foreign, as I?ve had cause to write about in past months. Journalists, too, though not as cruelly. It?s enough to make you feel the ache in the bones or the weariness of age, whichever comes first, this spectacle of friends going.

It?s also the year my mother died, early this year. Which made the last couple of days, All Saints? Day and All Souls? Day (is All Souls? Day a euphemism for All Sinners? Day?), especially resonant, or poignant, for me.

The last couple of days, however, have also afforded me occasion not just to mourn the dead but to remember the living. They have afforded me occasion not just to dwell with sadness and despair at the fleetingness of things but to gaze with awe and wonderment at the replenishing of life. Or at death becoming life-giving and life becoming death-dealing. That has been plentiful as well, the ironies piling one on top of the other in this crazy, exhilarating, magic-realist country.

Chief of them is the death of Corazon Aquino. One would imagine that the death of the biggest thorn in the side of Arroyo would have constituted a mortal blow to the opposition. And there were many who said so?I heard that expressed in private and in trepidation and in good number during the vigil for Cory. If Cory dies, the thinking went, who was going to rally the people to oppose any attempt by Arroyo to cling to power?

But lo and behold, Cory died and almost overnight People Power came to life. I have little doubt that process had been gestating for some time, but its suddenness?or indeed unexpectedness?still amazed me. I myself expected Cory?s death to pose problems for the regime: How do you stop Pinoys from flocking to a wake? How do you stop Pinoys from joining a funeral? But I never imagined it would become the Edsa it did. I never imagined it would turn the election into an Edsa III.

Indeed, I never imagined it would spell the death of Arroyo. It happened, completely ironically, completely uncannily, completely miraculously, at the very time Arroyo was full of life, or at the very time she seemed poised to seize a new lease on life. Her State of the Nation Address (SONA) last end-July (has it been only three months?) was not the SONA of someone who meant to leave. Nor was her demeanor after she came back from the United States: she was waxing triumphant, and defiant. Then, almost overnight, she was gone. Literally, in the media. For the first time since she rode on the wings of People Power in 2001, she disappeared from the front pages and prime-time news. A phenomenon that has lasted to this day, though to a lesser degree: She has been buried in the news. The cold hand of death could not have been colder.

Just as well, death rode on the crest of the flood, particularly the one brought on by ?Ondoy,? which took everyone by surprise. Government was unprepared (corruption is not a universally recognized form of preparation for disaster) and as a consequence scores of Metro Manila residents died. Many were trapped on roofs, waiting for days for help. A great many more lost their possessions, as the rampaging currents carted off their belongings more efficiently than the Akyat Bahay Gang. Not as many drowned, but that is no comfort to their kin, many of the dead being children.

The spectacle of Metro Manila after the waters of Ondoy receded was not unlike that of war, or the aftermath of a battle, with much weeping and gnashing of teeth. I haven?t seen the metropolis more ravaged and desolate in a long time, and as with the deaths this year, many of the ravaged and devastated were people I knew. Some were friends of mine.

But suddenly, too, from out of nowhere, the country sprang to life. Spontaneously, instinctively, naturally, men and women, young and old, executives and istambays, came together to help. The spectacle of bayanihan, of community spirit or neighborliness, a concept that had nearly been forgotten from desuetude or paranoia, was a joy to behold. Without expectation of reward, without expectation even of recognition, people just came out wanting to help, the youth particularly. And help they did, rendering their government superfluous. But then their government had been superfluous, or dead, for a long time.

Still just as well, up till only little more than three months ago, the country saw only a dark moon in the horizon. The world was in the grip of recession, oil and food supplies were dwindling, the changing climate was threatening cataclysm. Things weren?t better at home. Hunger was stalking the land, thieves were draining the land, Arroyo was haunting the land?the last, like an unsavory character in the vampire movies, threatening to live forever. All the country had by way of options were candidates from the trapo handbook promising more of the same.

Then from out of the blue came Noynoy Aquino, reluctant to run, embarrassed by all the attention a resurrected People Power had thrust upon him, wanting to prove himself first. But eventually being driven by the people themselves to make the plunge, proof of where the driving force was coming from being his pole-vaulting to the top even before he announced his intention to do so. Change had come to the Philippines as much as to America. Suddenly, out of the deepest darkness, a burst of light. Suddenly, out of the blanket of despair, a ray of hope. Suddenly, after a long long time, Filipinos could breathe again, Filipinos could trust again, Filipinos could dream again.

Strange how in death we keep finding life.