A Bruised Reed

By Rolo B. Cena

Random

Dumaguete Star Informer

November 20, 2016

She’s a bruised reed!

Literally, she’s biologically damaged:  She has a stage four breast cancer and endures the pain alone without the loving comfort of her husband – thanks but no thanks to the till-death-do-us-part and seemingly slip-of-the-tongue contract that becomes unpopular to early marriages today.  She has to sustain her plight sans the aid of chemically generated medicines for the demand for it downplays the need to feed her five children and a granddaughter with scanty meals at least two times a day. 

Essentially, she’s socially neglected:  She has to work alone to maintain a home within the structure she and her kids are trying to call a house of their own.  Her husband left her for no apparent reason; one day, they never saw him coming home.  Some of her biological siblings have unconsciously turned their backs on her.

Without any doubt, she’s physically exhausted:  She works as a freelance beautician knocking at neighbors’ doors in the village offering her services to wives and mothers who are just staying home whole day.  In between services, she launders for young working neighbors who cannot clean their soiled clothes due to the fast-paced working culture of the metropolis.  Literally, she tries to make both ends meet. 

She’s the talk of the town:  Others blame her for not demanding from her husband support for the family; others pity her for her unequalled rendition of struggles to sustain her family.  She could be a candidate for the “best mother of the world” award for making up for her husband’s absence and for pulling up her children together towards this end without fail.  She could have given up – given up her life – but she remained.

Once she told me she’s guilty.  If she were to blame, who’s not to be blamed?  If it were her fault, it would have been different.  She was not a predator; she was in fact a prey.  I told her.

If she were to blame, this care-free society would have to blame several predators, too:  Perverted parents who rape their kids; husbands who push wives over to the edge; superiors who ill-tongue staff and subordinates; employers who violate labor standards; drug traffickers who victimize the vulnerable youths and underprivileged; criminals who discriminately take lives for their pleasure; government officials who greedily amass wealth at the expense of countrymen, and who else?  There are too many to mention.   

And I told her more of these marauders that have to be blamed – if not persecuted - time and again without reservation.

Once she told me she’s ashamed to go on and felt the weight of the whole world on her feeble shoulders.  But shame is no longer a taboo today; shame has become a blue berry cheesecake everywhere:  A senator protecting drug lords she housed inside the National Penitentiary; Justices protecting social offenders in their areas of responsibility; police chiefs protecting pilfers within their localities – all these are in the guise of friendships, social connections or acquaintances.  And why should she be ashamed to earn an honest living for her family when no less than a lady senator having a intimate sexual trysts with an inmate, or the yellow team pinching the Yolanda Funds that leave Leyte folks homeless to date, or the Chief of Police murdering a witness in the guise of serving an arrest warrant with the end in mind of shielding top officials, and of course their cohorts.  There’s a lot more to mention that only time can demand.

Is standing up to the value of working honestly hard, feeding and keeping a family more shameful than those slime, grime and crime these too-good-to-be-true mentally-dehydrated politicians and narco-politicos committed?  Shame has become a marvellous dessert after midnight nowadays; greed a main course full board.  Diners – political, social or not - no longer know how to take a balanced diet.  They have become unconscious and less aware that the concoction they are taking becomes too risky for their guilt-rotting physical and spiritual bodies.

Nevertheless, she’s an inspiration.  She’s surviving and still feeling better today.  She still works, cuddles her granddaughter, hugs her kids and longs for a normal life free from these consumeristic substances that shorten ages or defy human lives.

She deserves a bethzatha where the society can lay down her sick and frail body to rest until the sun sets upon her time to go.  More than that, she deserves elaborately adorned bethzatha to acclaim her life story of lingering pains sustained through time that this post-modern consumeristic society does not care about delivered in various rhetoric and discourses or in a state-of-the-nation address.

Various stories have been told and re-told in those centuries-old bethzatha that witnessed the rise and fall of men, government and civilization through time:  Stories of shame, stories of failure; stories of frustration, or stories of success.  And hers is a story of grace under pressure.

Hers is worthy to note and emulate: After all, when a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years touched the cloak of The One whom ancient and modern civilization called Jesus, the bleeding stopped.  She was healed not because she touched the cloak of Jesus; she was healed because of her tremendous faith in God.

 

Truly, she deserves a story.  She is a sister in faith; she could be your sister, too!