Life breaking out of death

My brother-in-law, Atty. Rolando F. "Dondon" del Castillo, passed away suddenly in the early morning hours of last Friday the 9th. He died at his law office desk, working overtime on a pleading that had to be filed later that day.

A senior partner at one of the country’s leading law firms, he was known for, among other things, his workaholic habits and his talent for combing through complex Central Bank circulars. Dondon knew CB regulations like the back of his hand.

Thus, he was the resident expert in certain specialized areas of corporate law and, I’m told, deemed virtually indispensable. He will be sorely missed by the firm, particularly the junior lawyers for whom he always seemed to have time to chat and talk shop with, despite his absent-minded professor mien.

For his family, the world has basically stopped. Nothing is more important now than to mourn him properly and prepare his mortal remains for decent burial. His soul has, I am sure, long returned to God since I knew him to be a decent and upright man who kept his idealism intact despite the harsh realities of his profession.

As for loved ones he left behind, pragmatic considerations of living in this vale of tears must wait. Weighty issues such as Charter change, the abolition of the Senate, Dale Abenojar’s claim to having been the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest – only a few of the many personal agonies and political crises that scream in media today for attention – can be set aside for now.

These issues seem so trivial beside the urgency of grasping the meaning of the life, and death, of one man who was to many more significant and had greater personal impact on them than all of those other events.

I was in awe of his steadfastness to what he saw as his duty. For instance, he managed to be a regular faculty member of the Ateneo College of Law, one of a small but hardy bunch who stick to teaching despite the relatively modest compensation and the enormous demands on one’s time. He wound up teaching for almost 30 years.

But beyond the admiration for his professional achievements – he also held a Master of Laws degree from the Harvard Law School and was a regular contributor to one of the legal columns of the STAR – few people were loved as much as he was by all he came in contact with, from his son, sisters, brother, in-laws, nephews, nieces, grandnephews and grandnieces to fraternity brothers, students, classmates, law office colleagues and town mates in his beloved Taal, Batangas.

His sense of humor was legend, if somewhat eccentric. His sisters still remember dead lizards hidden in pillows, and his brother still winces at memories of Dondon’s patented parodies of early oratorical attempts in Grade School. An incorrigible prankster and practical joker, his victims also often became his best life-long friends.

He was the older brother I, as eldest sibling in my own family, never had. I also respected him as a professional colleague. Many of his achievements will forever be denied me, such as his three decades as a law professor.

He was always kind to me, as far back as many years ago when I was courting his sister. I suspect though that he waited for an opportunity for payback. In law school, although I had already decided which fraternity to join, a choice I have never regretted, he superfluously thought of clinching his sales argument by subtly reminding me of who his sister’s older brother was and what he could do to derail my quest. Happily, my decision was exactly what he had wanted to hear.

And yet, his sudden departure bothers me greatly. I knew that his medical condition, brought about by previous open-heart surgeries, required him to maintain a cautious lifestyle, a mandate which he didn’t always observe. But I always thought his history as a school athlete (co-captain of the college football varsity squad) and later as gym lizard (he once set a gym record for running time on a treadmill) would carry him through any health problems. Unfortunately, that might have been too optimistic. Our mortal bodies, it is now clear, can only take so much stress.

In the end, we cannot avoid the spiritual dimension. As one gets older, and more relations, friends and professional colleagues pass on, one has to think about where all human life is bound for. Surely, we tell ourselves, there must be more to physical existence, or else life, as fully as some of live it, becomes meaningless.

In the recent debates over the book and movie, The Da Vinci Code, and its alleged threats to Christianity, I read several books and magazine and internet articles which purported to "crack" the Code and debunk the theories author Dan Brown expounded in his international best-seller.

I said in previous columns that rather than be threatened by the novel, Christians should consider it an opportunity to strengthen one’s faith. Well, among the publications I read was a book written by a Protestant professor of New Testament Studies at the Dallas Theological Seminary, Dr. Darrell L. Bock.

In his book, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, after dealing with the now-familiar controversies stoked up by Brown’s book, one of his conclusions had to do with the importance of the truth of Christ’s Resurrection.

Dr. Bock wrote: "Living is not a trivial matter, nor are life’s choices. As common as life is, much about it remains shrouded in mystery. We do not know how long we shall live or what the direction of our lives will be. For those of us who are older, it is a mystery to look back on what life has been and examine what has caused a life to go in this or that direction. Many formative events were things we cannot control and whose rationale we do not really understand."

To Bock, there is one key point to the life of Jesus: "Jesus uniquely reveals and stands at the center of what God did and does for humanity. At the center of that story stand Jesus’ death and ultimately His resurrection. That Resurrection event, picturing as it does the breakout of life from death, is the real code to understand. In reflecting on the Resurrection, Christians declare that God made a vindicating statement about who Jesus is, where life is, and where life goes."

These thoughts are most comforting to me because they open up so many possibilities about the eternal life we all hope to enjoy. As far as Kuya Dondon is concerned, I know he is with Daddy Tony and Mommy Chong in Heaven. Like the rest of his family, I look forward to joining them all too one day and, with them, reaffirm that life does not really end, it merely goes to another, much better, level.