By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
sleeping.”
There was this client of mine who was a Chinese lady. She always had a joke and would crack one anytime. Sometimes the jokes though could be mean.
I was once at her office when a lady doctor friend of hers came a visiting. The doctor obviously needed a shoulder to cry on. She revealed that her husband just left her for another woman—presumably a younger one. After about a minute of giving some words of consolation, my client said, “Huwag kang magalala. Babalik din ‘yong asawa mo pag may sakit na.”
She was implying that if the husband would be sick of some incurable disease like cancer or would be in a terminal condition, and then he would go back to the lady doctor who would take care of him.
Several months after, I saw it happen to a lady who lived not so far from our office. She was taking care of the property of a sister and her family who were working abroad, She had problems with their tenant so she kept coming back. Then I came to know that her husband left her for a younger woman which was easier (compared to the case of the lady doctor who had three children) as they were childless.
A few years passed and then one time, I saw her pushing around a wheelchair with a man. I later learned that the man was her husband who left her many years ago. After he suffered a stroke and was paralyzed from the waist down, he sent word if his legal wife would take him back.
Martyr that she was, she agreed to take him back so she ended up taking care of him.
The man being paralyzed from the waist down, he could not say what former President Joseph Estrada said when interviewed by a reporter when he arrived from Hongkong where he had an operation on his bad knee. The reporter asked, “How is your knee Mr. President?” His answer was oblique. “Everything above the knees works.”
I learned later that the couple, the martyr of a woman and her paralyzed husband, went home to Bulcan, their home province.
Some say that in this case, the difference between the definitions of a martyr and stupid got erased. Well, a martyr is a martyr.
I have seen replications of this story arising from different factual backgrounds, but the main events were the same.
At first blush, it is grossly unjust to the woman.
But might not be. What if the couple were also a couple in their past lives but their situation was reversed. That is, the woman was the man, and the man was the woman. In that case, their situation in this lifetime was poetic justice, or karma.
You can say that the theory of having past lives is not true. But you cannot argue with the fact that God is omnipotent or all powerful. He can bring you back from the past to have a new life.
In light of this, the situation of the couple now can be said to be one of poetic justice, that God was not sleeping.**
