TO WRITE 30 is to die. Writing 30 is an idiomatic expression that refers exclusively to death of a journalist. The idiom has sprung from the old tradition, now abandoned, of ending each manuscript with “30” to indicate the end of the story.

One day in the last week of April 2008, our fellow The Daily Guardian columnist Bassinette Noderama, single at 45, wrote what she claimed was her “last column.” She was bidding goodbye. After one year of suffering from cervical cancer, she had fully prepared for the afterlife.

Early yesterday morning, I got this text message from our editor, Francis Allan Angelo: “Bassinette passed away 3:00 a.m. today.”

Bassie was the only daily columnist of The Daily Guardian until April last year, one year ago, when she wrote that she had been diagnosed of cervical cancer, stage 3-B. But she showed no sign of fear. Ironically, it was she who would comfort her concerned friends and colleagues, witing, “My idea of death is going to sleep, then to wake up in the presence of Jesus.”

She stopped writing to undergo chemotherapy sessions. However, this resulted in a disease of the heart called myocardial ischemia. Since then, she left it all to God while helping herself, restricting her diet to fruits and vegetables.

Without necessarily giving up, she made plans for her death, looking forward to it as eternity with God.

Till the early months of 2008, however, between hospital confinements, she remained strong enough to come to the Atrium Foodcourt for lunch. I would often see her there, if only to persuade her to cling on to life. I would tell her stories of friends and relatives who had recovered from cancer.

I told her the story of my own brother Efren, who, way back in October 1996, battled an excruciating cancer of the pancreas. Told that his only chance was Whipples, a delicate surgical procedure from which only two percent of previous cases worldwide had survived, he agreed to go under knife at the AFP Medical Center in Quezon City on January 21, 1997. Ten years have passed and he is still alive.

I could not forget the big smile that Bassie flashed when our publisher Lemuel Fernandez and I paid her a visit in her hospital room last April 9. But she winced when we attempted to touch her. Apparently, she was in pain, and so was no longer thinking of staying alive much longer. All she was asking for was freedom from pain in her last few days; she was looking for a specialist in pain management.

No doubt she had found such a specialist. Last April 23, she sent me a text message announcing that she had gone out of the hospital and was now under the home care of Dr. Gene de Jesus, 39, a Singapore scholar in palliative care. “Super buot,” she described him. “Nami gid para sa terminal cases. Hanga gid ako sa iya. Kita ang sincerity magbulig sa katawhan.”

What a brave woman, I mused. Till the end, she was not thinking of herself but of people around her.

Goodbye, Bassie. Keep that smile in your closed eyes and lips because you will always live in our hearts.

***

You can’t put a good man down.

This is the cliché that best describes the determination of local broadcaster Jonavin R. Villalva to obtain a multiple-entry visa to the United States.

Better known as Jhey R. Villalba, traffic reporter of Aksyon Radyo, he went to the US Embassy in the afternoon of last May 5 for his scheduled interview. He had prayed hard he would make it.

A day before, colleague Alex Vidal and I had treated him to breakfast, asking him to remain calm and confident, and God would do the rest. Alex, a veteran world traveler, had already done him so much favor in facilitating his application requirements.

Indeed, when Jhey R emerged out of the embassy after the interview, he was crying while running towards Alex, who was waiting on the street. He had passed the interview.

Now holding a multiple-entry BI-B2 US visa, Jhey R hopes to go with Alex to Las Vegas next month to cover the Manny Pacquiao-David Diaz fight.

Congrats again, Jhey R.

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