BENCHWARMER

Ramon S. Dacawi
Brenden Foster is not alone

The journey to the grave called life, set in motion by birth, matters not how long but how. The quality of the voyage lies not on the thickness and softness of the cushions we accumulate and hold on to, to ease our own travel, but on the degree of comfort we share fellow passengers.

This thought came back last week. It was triggered by the humanitarian legacy of Brenden Foster, the 11-year old boy in Seattle who succumbed to leukemia after seeing his dying wish to feed the homeless come true. It’s a thought we – the living – hear and cling to for comfort during wakes and funerals.

Given the chance, anybody would like to make a difference, to help bring one’s community closer to what it should be. The difference in Brenden’s case was he was supposed to be too young to know and make a difference.

How could anyone, however older, but as sick and feeble and in extreme pain as Brenden was, even think of the plight of the homeless in this coming of winter?. Doctors gave Brenden a few days, if not hours or minutes, to live. How could the kid find the time to make his wish come true, much less see it unfold?

The difference was that, against all odds, Brenden still made his wish. In so doing, he triggered a giant wave of goodwill still rippling across parts of the world. In so doing, he opened our eyes to the fact that however humble we are, we, too, can make a difference.

The man that he was (and is among the thousands who responded and will surely continue to live out his wish), Brenden never gave up. It was an advice he gave during a talk with reporter Elisa Jaffe of Seattle’s KOMO News: “Follow your dreams. Don’t let anything stop you.”

Dying, he was full of insight, courage and caring. “Just having one,” he said when asked what he thought were the best things in life. “It happens. It’s natural,” he said of death. “I had a great time. And until my time comes, I’m going to keep having a great time.”

Ms. Jaffe later wrote: “When I met Brenden Foster, I met an old soul in an 11-year old’s body.” Brenden, who dreamed of being a marine photographer, was and will never be alone. In a troubled, seemingly impersonal and impassive world shot full of apathy, there are other little angels out there. And bigger ones, too.

A year or so before Brenden began his brave battle against leukemia, another boy about to turn seven asked his mom to cancel his birthday party. The kid, son of a Baguio policeman and a court employee, turned over the amount for the balloons, food, cake and gifts to an ailing toddler he met at the city hall. Soon, a young girl followed suit. She added her own would-be B-day fund to the amount raised by Baguio folksingers for John Tofi Estepa, a four-year old boy with brain cancer.

Folksinger Conrad Marzan was speechless when a girl barely in her teens had her mother bring him a family size Coke bottle. The kid had turned into a piggy bank and wanted to add the contents to Tofi’s fund. Tofi’s father John was himself surprised when a domestic helper in Hongkong arranged three bank transfers of P3,000 each to heighten Tofi’s fighting chance.

“I just want to help, as I’m also a mother, the lady in Hongkong said in an overseas call. Her call came early in Christmas, while Julian Chees, an accomplished karate practitioner and teacher in Germany was on a humanitarian mission to Banaue, Ifugao. Julian was to P70,000 to two families who lost two kids in a landslide buried their common house along the rice terraces.

Last August, Julian visited his ailing mother back home in Maligcong, Bontoc. He had with him P120,000, about half of which paid for medicines of patients in Bontoc and Baguio. Shoshin Kinderhelfe, a foundation his karate students established, set aside P66,300 for the education and other needs of four kids in Ifugao who were orphaned when their parents died in a bus accident last April.

There’s that Baguio girl and nurse in Connecticut who goes by the internet name Princess Lea. Three years ago, she and e-chat room mates bankrolled the surgery of then 10-year old Santy John Tuyan. Santy came out of the hospital with a mended heart and is now back in school.

There’s that lady and solo parent in Kentucky. For three years now, she has been sacrificing her earnings for whoever needed it most among ailing kids and adults here. When her work visa expired last June, she still sent, praying it wouldn’t be her last remittance.

Last February, her namesake here quietly wrote out a check for P50,000, “for those who need it most”. Like her namesake in Kentucky, the lady had just survived cancer. Last week, Baguio-bred architect Freddie de Guzman called, asking how seven-year old John Brix de Guzman was in his battle against leukemia.

Told the boy was still fighting hard, Freddie, who recently lost his job, said he’d send some amount. It will be his latest remittance for the boy and for other patients in a personal, quiet out-reach program he began three years ago.

There’s that gentle soul who now and then sends someone to drop fund support on the desk of RCBC bank vice-president Rolly de Guzman. There’s that bank executive who digs into his pocket when he reads about a patient in dire need of medicines.

There’s the Baguio-BIBAK community in California who looks forward to the next humanitarian concert to be mounted by Conrad, Joel Aliping Richarc Arandia, Felix Tayaotao, Miggs Meru and the rest of the musically inclined Baguio boys and girls in America.

There’s Conrad’s wife Pilar, their son Nickolas, the siblings Bryan and Ellana Aliping who sent their stipends and trick-or-treat candies for kids here. From Michigan, couple Paul and Jenelyn Balanza and their kids Sunshine and Paulo recently wrapped gifts for two wards of the children’s cancer ward -Mark Anthony Viray, 10, and Edlyn Joy Dacanay.

With them and others out there whose names this limited space can’t accommodate for now, Brenden’s legacy – and the spirit of this yuletide his last wish rekindled - will live on. (e-mail:rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).