Goodye, Columbus!

Tomorrow is Columbus Day, as observed in most of the United States except among a growing number of Native Americans who feel that continuing to honor the memory of a man who initiated a genocidal trend in North and South America requires serious reconsideration. I agree, but this meditation is not about the resurgence of the Native American’s sense of cultural confidence and identity. Nor is it a review of historical events in which Columbus the Navigator played a leading role in the exploration of the world unknown to the Europeans, the discoveries they thought they made, and the consequences of the actions they performed in their migration to a New World. Nor is it a commemorative of that memorable coming-of-age novella that Philip Roth wrote about a summer interlude in the life of a young Jewish male in the eastern shores of the United States in the 50s.

But, yes, it is a “goodbye.” I meant to title this piece “Goodbye, Ben Govendo,” but the intimate tone implied familiarity with the person named that I cannot claim. Then it turned into a religio-philosophical treatise on “Death and Dying in the time of Ben Govendo.” I suspect that either titles would have offended someone who would find either or both distasteful and untimely. Having neither the narrative skill of a James Joyce, or the controlled passion of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Cien anos de soledad), I skewed the literally option, and settled for my old stream of consciousness, journaling-type of reflection.

It is a universal sentiment that parents should not preside over the interment of any of their children. This sentiment has always been the most emotionally potent argument against war in any continent. There is something offensively unnatural about parents standing over the casket of their progeny! Yet, in times of war, in the language of patriotism, draped in the red, white and blue, with echoes of a foghorn accompanied by a trumpet solo of taps, the grief and sorrow of loss, particularly of the young casualties of combat, at least, is experienced in the context of sacrificial worth and communal meaning.

But when an assault on human consciousness occurs as a consequence of a human miscalculation during an early Saturday morning tumble of a vehicle into a ravine, we are suddenly saddled with a profound sense of heart-wrenching bereavement. In the hour before the cock crowed, the snuffing of a young life at its prime sans evident purpose or reason, shattered the equilibrium of what passes for conscious spirit.

It is from such existential state that this reflection is written. I do not come to Ben G. as kin or friend, nor from the privilege of intimacy or the comfort of familiarity. The fact is, we do not know each other. I do know of him, and only just now. Ben started his teaching career from my workplace, San Vicente Elementary School. He was a dear close friend of one of our teachers who numbered in Ben G.’s company in the penultimate evening celebration before the fateful early morning. She is still reeling from the shock of having risen to a morning-after that bore not the color of resplendent rose petals but of the somber grief of the forlorn and the forsaken.

Ben G. taught the same Kindergarten class at San Roque that I substituted for when his predecessor still had the class. Another teacher at my school joined Ben and the recently departed Brunno Dalla Pozza in regular martial arts lessons. One of my 6th grade students was Ben’s class last year. The connection is tenuous, not sufficient for each of us to qualify as a reference to each other’s resume. Even if I recognized a kindred spirit when I learned that this peripatetic pedagogue once hightailed it to Thailand to feed the hunger of his venturesome spirit, I still do not come close to his corral of social contacts and associates.

So I claim no closeness; I come to Ben G. out of common humanity. The fragility of his existence, the mystery behind everyone’s mortality, our refusal to actively acknowledge our finitude, and our continual escape into pockets of delusions and illusions, with the promise of life eternal heading ancient and modern civilizations’ ever present temptations, the completion of Ben Govendo’s earthly existence cut to the quick the truth of the bottomless abyss over which every human soul hangs.

The human mind has learned to program itself to operate as if the eventfulness of life can be anticipated and predicted, planned and forecasted, determined and set into groove. There is comfort in both the promise and the acting out of this scenario, but blessed are those who know in their bones that even this one does not exist save as a crutch to our human frailty and psychological vulnerability.

To say “goodbye” to Ben G. then is to affirm the journey he took rather than bewail the destination to which he was fated. Saying goodbye to any death recognizes the authenticity of “railing against heaven,” and the universality of the depth spiritual experience of the inscrutable yet life-affirming response of Infinite Silence.

Many people from the Fertile Crescent claim descent from the wandering nomads Abram and Sarah. The traditions this tandem spawned are all focused on the affirmation of the possibilities-awaiting journey in the here-and-now. From the banks of joint rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates, with its established ziggurats and urban ways, came the call of the wild “to go forth where no one had gone before.” The abiding presence that accompanied that journey will be later given a name, whispered in sacred places and hallowed halls as YHWH, simply understood as the IS-ness of life.

Later, one would make this understanding central to the drama of human existence. “Life is always broken, always being taken away and spilled out. Therefore, choose, as I have chosen. Say, this is my body, this is my blood that is given for you. Take, eat, drink, all of it, and do so often to remember that what I am to you, ye shall be also unto others.” Before that supreme reality of the Real stands the only human option: choice. One freely wills to be! This wisdom will echo even to a desert prophet: “I will, anshallah!” From the banks of the Ganges would also come a simple, stark and rather commonsensical learning that Ben appropriated: Life happens. Let it be!

“How can you sing the praises of Zion by the rivers of Babylon,” lamented a psalmist. A man named Job said, “Yes, you can.” In a day of saying “goodbye” to Ben Govendo, I chose to lift the fruit of the vine to propose a toast: L’achaim! To life! The discerning may follow in the great Semitic response: Amein!

(Strictly a personal view. Vergara writes a weekly column for the Saipan Tribune.)