By the time a mother buries her son, language is no longer language.
It becomes wound, weapon, prayer, and evidence all at once.
So when Rovelyn Baterbonia, mother of Ateneo basketball player Rene Clert Baterbonia, spoke through her grief, her words were not mere sentences. They were verdicts on a system that has failed her, and a mirror held up to a nation that too often looks away.
“Ayaw sila pakatulga… Tungod ba kay pobre kita, dili sila mangayo og pasaylo kanato?” (Don’t let them sleep soundly… Is it because we are poor that they will not even ask forgiveness from us?)
In those two lines lives the entire tragedy of the Philippines.
A mother’s grief becomes a metaphor for our national conscience
“Ayaw sila pakatulga” is not just an accusation.
It is a metaphor for impunity — the kind that tucks itself comfortably into bed while the poor bury their dead.
It is the image of institutions resting easy,
of officials unbothered,
of powerful people whose nights remain undisturbed
even as a mother’s world collapses.
It is the quiet indictment of a society where some families grieve loudly,
while others — the influential, the protected —
are spared from the noise of accountability.
“Tungod ba kay pobre kita…” — the oldest wound in the archipelago
Her second line cuts deeper.
It is not just a question.
It is a centuries‑old echo.
It is the whisper of every farmer who never saw justice.
Every laborer who died unnamed.
Every Mindanaoan whose suffering was dismissed as “far away.”
Every poor family told to “move on” while the powerful move forward.
In her voice, we hear the truth we refuse to confront:
In this country, poverty is not just an economic condition — it is a sentence.
A sentence that determines whose children are protected,
whose deaths are investigated,
whose stories are told,
and whose pain is allowed to matter.
A drowning that revealed who we are
Rene did not die in a warzone.
He did not die in a riot.
He died in a team‑building activity —
a space that should have been safe, supervised, and accountable.
Yet the silence that followed his death was louder than the waves that took him.
The institutions that should have stood beside the family instead stood behind statements.
Behind procedures.
Behind the comfort of distance.
And so a mother asks the question
that no mother should ever have to ask:
“Is my son’s life worth less because we are poor?”
This question cuts deepest.
“Dili sila mangayo og pasaylo kanato?” — the silence that wounds more than the loss. Here is a mother is not asking for miracles. She is not demanding the impossible. She is asking for the bare minimum of humanity — an apology, an acknowledgment, a sign that her son’s life mattered.
And yet she receives silence.
In the Philippines, “pasaylo” is not just “sorry.”
It is a cultural gesture of humility, responsibility, and shared grief.
To withhold it is to say:
“Your pain is not my burden.”
“Your loss is not my concern.”
“Your child is not my responsibility.”
When Rovelyn asks, “Dili sila mangayo og pasaylo kanato?”
she is really asking:
Why is it so easy for them to move on?
Why is it so hard for them to face us?
Why does our grief not reach their conscience?
Her question exposes a hierarchy of compassion —
where apologies flow freely upward,
but rarely downward to the poor.
Yes, no one should sleep soundly.
Not while a mother stays awake, asking the question we are too afraid to answer.
