Mortal Instruments

(picture via @kongkong622, via blitzmacalma)

When we had to leave our home last Saturday because of the epic flood that hit Metro Manila, I packed the most important of my belongings into a plastic bag which I placed inside my already loaded backpack. I wasn't about to risk them getting wet. These most important things were the following: my wallet, my cellphone and charger, and my hardback copy of the third book in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments Trilogy, The City of Glass.

Not that The City of Glass has become my favorite book in the world and the one book I'd take with me to the hypothetical deserted island. It was just that I hadn't finished it. And I knew I would need a distraction from the things happening that day.

I thought it was pretty apt that I was reading a series entitled The Mortal Instruments. This thought had nothing to do with the books themselves. It had more to do with the fact of my family and I watching a lot of our life washed away in the flood.

The flood waters rose quickly. By the time it was chest level in our first floor, we decided to leave the house. The water just kept rising and rising and, though we did have a second floor, there was no balcony there to escape from. So, I had my sister and my kids' caretaker bring my two small children out of the house and safe to higher ground, while I and the other caretaker stayed behind to pack necessities.

True to form, I concentrated on saving my books, while I had the other people secure everything else on our first floor. But there was no saving the furniture, which ended up floating around in our living room and kitchen by the time I swam out of my house. And things were worse in my dad's side of the house (we live in a sort of duplex), because they didn't have a second floor, hence they weren't able to save much.

Thankfully, what we lost weren't the most important things. We are all together, alive and well. I saved most of my appliances. My books are more or less fine. However, little things that I valued are gone--family mementos, albums, little knick-knacks that weren't worth much monetarily, but which I kept for what they meant to me.

And this is where I thought that the name "mortal instruments" was apt. I kept those things because they were tokens of things past. Yes, they were instruments--reminders of less tangible and even immortal things. They were definitely mortal. But they were mine. And I am happy that we are all ok, but the mortality of it all--of my things and of us, definitely strikes me.

Mortal instruments we are and mortal instruments we have. And perhaps it is the very fact that we are mortal makes me more appreciative of everything else that is. This is my paean for our lost things.

Now we rebuild, bit by bit, which is an adventure in itself. Because, when all is said and done, mortality just can't overshadow one grand thing--life.