“Oras nang sambahin ang ngalan Mo / Para mabuhay habang-buhay sa puso’t isipan Mo / Sino ba ako para mapansin Mo? / Mga dalangin ko sa ‘Yo, sana’y pakinggan Mo / Pa’no ba ako magiging ‘sang santo / Para makasama Kita diyan sa tabi ng trono Mo? / Ilan pang pagsubok ang daraanan ko / Bago ako makaranas ng mga milagro Mo?”
fitterkarma’s “Kalapastangan” keeps showing up in videos featuring Rene Baterbonia—some posts say it was the music on the last video he shared, but I couldn’t confirm that myself.
It’s one of two LSS tunes, last song syndrome, stuck on repeat in my head now. The other is Orange & Lemons’ “Heaven Knows - This Angel Has Flown,” which Baterbonia’s Davao basketball teammates sang at his wake at the Ateneo de Davao University’s Christ the King Chapel.
“There are times when I’m lying in my bed / Hug my pillow and cry from this stupid ache / And my eyes are like windshields on a rainy day / Almost rubbed down, swelling, as I keep on / Dipping my face in these cold hands of mine / Heaven knows how bitter I am / ‘Cause this angel has flown away from me / Leaving me in drunken misery / I should have clipped her wings / And made her mine for all eternity.”
Listen to these songs while watching photos and videos of Baterbonia’s parents offering flowers at the beach resort at Dipaculao, Quezon where their son and Divine Adili drowned and died.
No matter how people defend Ateneo de Manila University these days, this fact remains: Baterbonia and Adili died under its watch. Their families, friends, fans, and even those who didn't know them before they died are still grieving.
It’s strange, isn’t it? Why grieve for someone you didn’t even meet before he died? This same phenomenon happened when Ninoy Aquino was assassinated on August 21, 1983.
But we grieve and mourn not only for the dead but also for what we have lost now that they’re gone. And death is not the kind of “gone” that is resurrected on the third day. Death is forever gone.
For Aquino, gone was the hope for him to be Philippine president, replacing then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. Gone was the return he had fought for, and the future his family and supporters had waited years to see.
For Baterbonia, he will never play for the University Athletic Association of the Philippines, the Philippine Basketball Association, and in international basketball tournaments. Was the National Basketball Association in his future, too?
We wanted to see him succeed, and for his family to live comfortably, the way he had always dreamed for them. We wanted to watch him grow into the player everyone said he could be, game after game, season after season. We wanted his mother to worry a little less, to sit in the stands and cheer for him as she always did.
The bereaved family feels the most profound loss, and this question may remain in their hearts for a long while: “Ilan pang pagsubok ang daraanan ko / Bago ako makaranas ng mga milagro Mo?”
And that “pagsubok” will soon include the court hearings where the full circumstances of the case will be detailed.
Death makes us realize how flitting life can be. On June 4, 2026, Baterbonia’s mother, Rovelyn, saw him off at the airport when he left for Manila. Four days later on June 8, he was dead. Just four days. What began as a hopeful departure for greener pastures in Manila ended in tragedy instead.
