COLUMNISTS month.

If businesses do their
inventories, we take stock of
PINOY KASI
our lives, ending up thankful for
Ber in PH and US the good and mourning the
not-so-good, including loved
By: Michael L. Tan ones who have left us. The ber
@inquirerdotnet months are like coffee or,
maybe, more appropriately,
Philippine Daily Inquirer/5:04 AM more like chocolate, allowing
September 5, 2018 us moments that link past,
present and future.
Last Saturday I had to pick up
some groceries. It was around 7
I wonder if our long ber season
in the morning, so I was still
is proportionate to the hard
feeling I could have used a bit
lives we have as Filipinos, a way
more sleep. But, as soon as I
of rationalizing that there’s light
walked into the grocery, I
at the end of the dark tunnel
perked up hearing the music. I
that the year has been. The ber
realized it was September 1,
season offers many little joys
and the grocery wasn’t about
that come together to comfort
to lose a day of the “ber”
us and to gear us up with new
months; it was now playing
hopes and aspirations.
Christmas carols.
The popular Christmas carols
We boast of having the longest
are lively, like ad jingles. Terribly
Christmas in the world,
sticky tunes, they replay
coinciding with this ber season.
themselves in endless loops in
Ber as in remember, courtesy of
our minds, numbing us to life’s
the almost nonstop carols.
many trials and tribulations
(even as their stickiness
I used to find the music
becomes torment). With
assaulting, too loud and too
children, the tunes seem to
commercial in its intent,
switch something in their brains
because we know all too well
to make them dance.
that the music is meant to get
Sometimes, the family dogs get
us to begin Christmas shopping.
into the act, too, warming our
hearts and making us smile.
But then, we know, too, that
even if the call to shop begins
That weekend, I was following
so early, we still end up fighting
the memorial services and
huge crowds in December—
funeral of US senator John
everyone doing their last-
McCain, and was fascinated
minute Christmas shopping. So I
by the cultural and political
think there’s more to all this
scripts. In some ways, it was a
than commercialism.
kind of ber activity, too, with
Americans needing to feel
All cultures have ways of
there was hope for a nation
marking a year coming to an
embattled by (and I’m
end, and do this during the last
borrowing phrases from various
eulogies) cheap rhetoric, the
petty and the mean—all
references, without naming
him, to the incumbent US
president.
There were many touching
scenes, especially at the
funeral service, which had
been planned out by McCain
himself as he accepted he
would soon die of brain
cancer. I liked seeing two
former presidents, the
Democrat Obama and the
Republican Bush (son)—and
Bush passing candy to Mrs.
Obama.
I marvelled at the stoicism of
the widow, Cindy McCain,
which made the times she
smiled more striking. Not quite
captured by the cameras was
McCain’s 106-year-old mother,
said as well to be a very strong
woman.
Then I stumbled on an article
that led to a video clip about a
memorial service in Phoenix,
Arizona, and a eulogy from
Grant Woods, McCain’s first
congressional chief of staff. At
one point, Woods spoke of
McCain’s life as a prisoner of
war (POW) in the Hanoi Hilton,
the name given to the
Vietnamese prison where the
Americans were incarcerated.
McCain realized the guard was
Christian, and wanted to
express a shared faith.
Woods then retold stories from
McCain about how the
prisoners would get together
and share what they
remembered
of biblical verses, and, of
course, Christmas carols.
McCain’s
favorite was “Silent Night.”
Toward the end of his eulogy,
Woods moved away from the
lectern and used his foot to
draw a sign of the cross on the
floor of the stage. He then
returned to the lectern and
said, slowly, “Sleep in heavenly
peace. Sleep in heavenly
peace.”
I thought and wondered about
the North Vietnamese guard.
And then thought of the day of
that Phoenix memorial service:
Aug. 30. For once, the
Americans beat us to the ber
season.

Christmas was always a difficult

time for the American POWs,
but McCain had memories of a
North Vietnamese guard who
once walked past him in the
prison yard and, using his foot,
drew a cross on the dirt floor,
then quickly erased it again
with his foot and walked away.