Salonga’s spirit lives through everything good he stood for

“The spirit of the old Jovito Salonga is gone,” said Steve Salonga of his 92-year-old father, our former senator, whose body is hopelessly incapacitated and expiring from the effects of dementia, Alzheimer’s and a stroke. Is a person’s spirit recognizable only by his/her physical and mental condition? From a slightly higher window, people should be able to see that it’s the body of Jovito Salonga that’s gone (nearly gone), not his spirit. His spirit lives, guides and even argues with us through his works, writings and everything good that he stood for and that we honor and appreciate—even take for granted—about him today.

I am more saddened about Sen. Joker Arroyo. He may be still physically up and about, but his spirit is in the ICU, critically afflicted with political slavery. To keep Joker’s spirit alive you must summon it back from his brilliant past when his righteousness was still pure and not grotesquely spun as it is now. No matter how low he has stooped down, I still look up to his young idealistic heart.

I worry too for Vice President Jejomar Binay. The Holy Scripture tells us of a higher reality: The first shall be last. Perhaps it’s providential that the titanic coalition of “trapo” he formed is called “UNA.” Choosing rich and powerful but virtue-less allies is tantamount to pawning one’s spirit to the devil. There’s real risk that the VP might not be able to redeem his spirit.

I don’t worry at all for Mang Dolphy’s spirit. When he was being nagged into politics he simply said, “Madaling tumakbo, e paano kung manalo (It’s easy to win, but what if I win)?” That statement alone, not to mention the rest of his legacy, carried his spirit to a mountaintop.

Going farther back, what about Jose Rizal’s spirit? Doesn’t he sometimes write, speak and act through others? Didn’t he die again in 1983 at the airport tarmac as Ninoy Aquino?

What about the spirit of Jesus Christ Himself? He never left this world though He has ascended to heaven. The spirit can be at any number of places or everywhere at the same time, right? What if his second coming is simply the consolidation of the pieces of His spirit that lives on in each of us—like pieces of a puzzle coming together, forming one complete whole? What if the Book of Revelation is partly but principally a description of upheavals in our way of thinking in terms of spirit logically superseding the physical?

Sometimes on a quiet night, I open two bottles of beer, one for me and one for my Daddy. You see, it’s just his body that’s gone. His smile, voice and the good he stood for are right here with me. Sometimes I couldn’t tell his spirit from mine. Maybe we’re one spirit all along. Sometimes I get a strange feeling that you and I have been here much longer than our chronological ages—mainly pieces of one whole spirit.

Let me raise my bottle to Senator Salonga and all good spirits alive and well. Mabuhay po, live on.

—ERNIE LAPUZ,

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