In memoriam…

A couple of months ago, my grade school alma mater burned down to the ground. It is just a couple of blocks away from our home but I cannot make myself witness the unfortunate event in the history of my hometown. My beloved alma mater! Destroyed! Gone! Annihilated by the blazing inferno that even neighboring firemen weren’t able to control. I felt really sad. My sister, who went to the same school, even cried with my daughter who at present goes there as a grade 2 student. It was an old, old school, mostly made of wood and one lick of the fire and it went swoosh! Ashed!

The school was an institution. Most of the people I know, the ones I grew up with, went there. My parents even. It survived a lot of disaster, World War, typhoon, flood, earthquake, termites… but never this very first fire (as far as I remember).

There were lots of memories made there. The grand staircase where we used to race (and got busted by the teachers), the secret doors and hiding places, the hideous canteen where we used to get our recess trays, the engraved names and codes in every passageways and most importantly the friendship that were made in every corner of that building.

Two decades seems like yesterday. The disaster made me look for the old grade school photographs and go down memory lane. My old classmates and my really old teachers. My favorite ones and my not-so favorite others. How happy we all seemed to be. How young and childish. Most have gone away but others stayed. Like me. I opted to stay.

Francisco Balagtas Elementary School, the public school I went to, may be rebuilt someday. I don’t know if the fire was for the better. To change the old and build the new. Stronger, bigger, and more attractive to the eye. But it was like erasing all the memories I had for my beloved school. But I guess life goes on and there’s the new brood that will make their own memories on the hallowed grounds of my FBES.

(Written: September 2007)