Murder of Oneself

Former Armed forces Chief and Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes shot himself this morning.  This happened before he was scheduled to appear before a Congressional Hearing investigating corruption in the military.

Suicides don’t happen in the Philippines as frequently as in other countries.   I guess it’s because people who suffer from depression could get more social support from family and friends than those in more progressive countries are usually left to fend for themselves.  And there’s the Catholic guilt.  Only a few believe in the finality of death.  It’s condemned as a most abominable sin by an institution that preaches existence beyond corporeal death.  So it’s not as easy, unlike those countless Japanese who throw themselves at oncoming trains to assert personal integrity and honor.

When someone takes his life in a country of God-fearing citizens, the reaction is generally unresponsive, precisely because it’s a big social no-no.  But not in Reyes’ case.  He was a political celebrity.  And beyond the fact the speculation revolves around a headlining corruption issue (How guilty was he about the corruption charges?  He didn’t want to drag loved ones and other friends in top positions into the whole mess?), the circumstances relating to his suicide were most cinematic.  He didn’t just jump to his death from a high floor.  He didn’t hang himself inside his bedroom.  Too common to generate as much interest.  He went to his mother’s grave whom he famously adored and shot a single bullet into his heart. 

Reyes’ death has gripped the nation.  Life has imitated art once again.  Think Romeo ingesting poison and Juliet stabbing herself, to liberate themselves from a doomed romance.   Geraldine Page drowning herself in the ocean after being perpetually rejected by her husband in Woody Allen’s Interiors.   Vincent D’Onofrio’s horrifying murder of his drill instructor and his own self in Full Metal Jacket.   

At least in the movies, we knew how it all led to that.  Will we ever find out why Reyes killed himself in such filmic proportions?