Beautiful, golden, and gone too soon

There was a borrowed poem read inside the cremation chapel during the requiem rites for the departed journalist Chit Estella on Tuesday, a main line of which honestly defined what her life and career was all about.
Gone too soon, indeed.
But the trauma over Chit’s untimely death was magnified by the thought that it could’ve been prevented if our loose-footed leaders had bothered to attend to what Chit, competent and completely committed, had written and fought hard against.
An immovable force against the dreadful brand of yellow journalism, Chit had bore down hard not only against the corrupt and irresponsible, but also against pretenders and born fakes in government.
* * *
The theme stanza of the said poem goes thus:
“You sparked the creativity/ In us whom you taught/ And helped us strive for goals/ That could not be bought.”
Jenny Santillan-Santiago, who worked with Chit during the founding months of Tempo starting the second half of 1992, later explained it was not the poem written by one of Chit’s students at the University of the Philippines.
The main mourner, an aunt of Chit’s, had obviously plucked the poem from the Internet, with significant, very moving effect.
* * *
Chit, 52, was killed after her taxi was smashed by a kamikaze passenger bus on Commonwealth Avenue, where the government had (again!) loudly imposed strict speed limits.
The back of Chit’s beautiful head was reportedly bashed.
But what lay there inside the white coffin on Tuesday, minutes before the cremation, was a doll of a sleeping saint, her serene, lovely face shining in angelic fulfillment.
She wore white vestment, but these glittered golden in unmistakable divine radiance.
But, come to think of it, didn’t Chit’s life and career radiate something golden and pure?
* * *
She’s a “very human being,” sobbed an elder sister who flew in from abroad in time for the funeral.
Speaking in the present tense, as though Chit, youngest and also Chiquitita, were still around, the sister rued how she failed to place that fleeting dollar-a-minute call to say, “I love you dearly, Chit.”
Chit died with her boots on, “leaving behind a project (at Vera files) concerning educating civil society organizations on human rights investigative stories.”
* * *
“She’s very ethical, very firm,” said Ellen Tordesillas, one of Chit’s trusted allies in her chosen field, who added “Chit was always offended in being offered a bribe.”
A well-loved mainstay at the UP College of Mass Communications, Chit was in the forefront of shaping committed journalists, ever armed with the tenet that journalism is not a mere profession, but a calling, a vocation.
This only means that the trauma has grown immense, considering the generations of journalism students she would have led in the right direction with her singular goal to always win the race for Truth.
* * *
That said, it would not be an exaggeration to conclude that Chit was herself on track to being extolled like our revered practitioners and genuine mentors of journalism, namely Eugenia Apostol, Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc and Kerima Polotan, an all-time favorite.
Anyway, after the rare luck of being able to place a clutch of sampaguita blossoms on her coffin before it was sealed, I noticed a standout wreath on its left side, with the name of Noynoy Aquino, President of the Philippines, prominent on the condolence ribbon.
Walking from Arlington to the jeepney terminal on N. Domingo in San Juan, I wondered how Chit would have been alive, happier of course, if the President had instead lived up to his word and seen to the strict enactment of ordinances in our wild, wild, death highways.
I did not bring a handkerchief, honestly thinking it would be of no use.
Good God, what a waste, I found myself mumbling on the steaming summer street.
I walked on and had to dry a tear with the sleeve of my old shirt.