Shooting Your Heart by Your Mother's Grave

A friend caught me off guard when he asked for my opinion concerning the suicide of former Philippine Armed Forces Chief Angelo Reyes. I did not have one. My hectic schedule was my apparent excuse for that indifference and the seeming lack of opinion about the matter.

Deeply, I fear death. I fear anything that is associated with death. Yet, some friends wonder out loud my breakneck habit of fulling my throttle. They say it's bordering to suicidal--which reminds me of Albert Camus and anxiously, of Ernest Hemingway and Vincent Van Gogh. I am really uncomfortable dealing with this kind of theme. I like to imagine myself as Sisyphus carrying my stone uphill again and again despite the seeming absence of meaning of the task. But then again, as Sartre puts it, there is no excuse, there is no exit. Yet Angie Reyes just gave up the freedom of defining himself. Now, he let others define him to their liking.

Even then, I refuse to define him myself other than the fact that he gave up his freedom. Other than that I refuse giving any other opinion however great of humble of his surrender or defiance, whichever you prefer to use.

I refuse too to take suicide by its horn even as I want to admit that I am amused by G. K. Chesterton's description of it. He had it considered, but not today, so as he put it in A Ballad of Suicide, viz:

The gallows in my garden, people say,

Is new and neat and adequately tall;
I tie the noose on in a knowing way

As one that knots his necktie for a ball;
But just as all the neighbours—on the wall—
Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!"

The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
To-morrow is the time I get my pay—

My uncle's sword is hanging in the hall—
I see a little cloud all pink and grey—

Perhaps the rector's mother will not call— I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall
That mushrooms could be cooked another way—

I never read the works of Juvenal—
I think I will not hang myself to-day.
The world will have another washing-day;

The decadents decay; the pedants pall;
And H.G. Wells has found that children play,

And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall,
Rationalists are growing rational—
And through thick woods one finds a stream astray

So secret that the very sky seems small—
I think I will not hang myself to-day.

ENVOI
Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal,
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way;

Even to-day your royal head may fall,
I think I will not hang myself to-day

Let me however point out this fact that Angie Reyes (Angel of Kings--that's what his name means) did shoot his heart by his mother's grave when he has the spotlight focused to himself. Some say it was noble and heroic; others say otherwise. But how about you? What's your take? Was it a hara-kiri (seppuku) of a valiant soldier or an easy way out of a coward heart?