Patron Saints of Nothing centers around the death of Jay Reguero’s cousin Jun. Jay is initially crippled by grief but resolves to find out who murdered Jun, and more importantly, to travel to the Philippines and figure out why Jun died. Jay seems to believe that Jun’s death will then mean something—that Jun won’t have died for nothing if the mystery of his murder is solved, and that some positive resolution will follow. But ultimately, Jun’s death doesn’t end up “meaning” anything—at least not in the way Jay wants it to—and Jay must learn to remember and honor Jun anyway. By demonstrating Jay’s growing understanding about death, the novel suggests that even if someone’s death served no larger purpose, it’s still important to remember and mourn them, even though the loss might be harder to accept.
When the novel begins, Jay believes that death has a deeper meaning or happens for some larger purpose, and so he thinks that this must be true for Jun’s death, too. Early on, Jay recalls a childhood memory in which he attempted to care for a stray puppy while visiting the Philippines. The puppy ended up dying, and Jay was distraught about it. Jay’s mom comforted him by telling him that when “one thing dies […] another is born.” At the time, this doesn’t stop Jay from being sad, but it does inform his attitude toward death throughout the novel: he wants something good to come out of a bad situation. While visiting the Philippines, Jay finds out that Jun was running an Instagram account that shared photos of victims of the government’s war on drugs. This account would have been hugely subversive, both because of the general public’s apathetic attitude toward those victims and because the government is trying to hide how many victims there are. Jay assumes that Jun’s activism via this social media account put him on a government watchlist and later got him murdered. If that’s the case, Jun died a martyr, fighting for some larger cause. This would prove Jay’s mother right: something good can emerge from something bad, and death often has a deeper meaning or reason behind it, which makes it easier to accept.
In the end, Jun’s death doesn’t end up having “meaning” in the way Jay hopes it will. In general, Filipinos’ attitude toward death isn’t the same as Jay’s. Jay remembers that after the puppy died, his extended family was unmoved: they didn’t think much about the puppy, and Jay’s uncle, Tito Maning, quickly and simply disposed of the body. Jay imagines that none of his cousins would have been told growing up that death has meaning. He encounters this attitude throughout the novel—his extended family grieves Jun, but they don’t seek out the hidden meaning behind his death the way Jay does. That’s likely because they don’t think Jun’s death has any inherent meaning. Later, Jay finds out that Jun didn’t die a martyr as he initially believed. Jun’s Instagram account may have put him on a government watchlist, but a vigilante killed him because he was selling drugs, so the Instagram account didn’t seem to factor into the murder.
Jun’s death therefore had no larger meaning, and he didn’t die for a cause he believed in—in fact, he may have been actively hurting that cause by selling drugs, something Jay has a hard time processing. As readers learn, Jun was concerned with systemic problems, whether that meant the Catholic Church’s hypocrisy, or the causes of the war on drugs (such as widespread poverty). He wanted addicts to be rehabilitated and drug dealers to be put to work, since most are just trying to feed their families. He also wanted the government to be held responsible for the murders they sanction. None of that changed because of his death, and again, he may have been part of the very system he wanted to dismantle. Selling drugs certainly complicates his moral position as someone who wanted drug addicts to be rehabilitated. In other words, his death wasn’t meaningful in any simple way. Nothing good seemed to immediately stem from it, and it was mired in moral complexities. That makes it harder for Jay accept and process.
However, Jay is still able to find ways to honor Jun, even if his death doesn’t have “meaning” and is therefore harder to accept. In many ways, Jun’s subversive Instagram account—which his sister decides to take over—provides a manual for how to honor the dead without deriving any larger conclusions from their deaths. The Instagram account features victims of the war on drugs so that people will remember they exist and think about them, but it doesn’t imply that they died for a reason—in fact, it implies the exact opposite. No matter who they were or what they were doing when they died, the victims’ lives had value, while their deaths were tragic. Along with his journalist friend Mia, Jay decides to co-write an article about his experience learning Jun’s story and about Jun’s connection to the drug war. Jay hopes that if they publish it, Jun will live on to some degree. His death still won’t “mean” anything, but his family will remember him and so will strangers. The article will honor the person Jun was but won’t suggest that his death served a larger purpose. Meanwhile, Jun’s family, spurred by Jay and Jun’s sister Grace, decide to host a memorial service for him, something they weren’t initially going to do. At this service, people honor Jun by sharing their memories of him and his many contradictions. Their grief stems from the fact that they loved and now miss Jun. Though the family is Catholic, no one claims that Jun’s death was part of a larger plan, which would make it easier to process. Instead, the family focuses their efforts on honoring his memory, which the novel implies is important whether or not his death had some profound meaning or purpose.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Death and Meaning ThemeTracker
Death and Meaning Quotes in Patron Saints of Nothing
At that point in my life, I had encountered death only in fiction. I had heard about other people’s relatives dying. But I had never seen death up close. I had never held it.
“Listen,” Mom said in that moment, hugging me closer. So I did. Baby birds chirped just outside the window. “One thing dies, and another is born. Maybe the puppy’s soul now has wings.”
The article included the fact that four low-level officers were eventually charged for killing that seventeen-year-old, but their punishments were minimal and only happened after massive protests. But what about the other victims who never got a hashtag? What about Jun?
Would there be justice?
Definitely not if nobody even knows what truly happened.
So maybe that's it—maybe I can find out. If his friend is right, maybe there are witnesses; maybe there's video; maybe there's a flawed report.
He stops. Reaches up and pulls the sack off his head.
It's Jun. His hair's a mess, tangled with sticks and dirt, and the lower half of his jaw is missing, a gory mess in its place. His eyes meet mine. Two stars in a clear winter sky.
“What happened to you?” I ask.
The exposed muscle and sinew where his lower jaw used to be twitches as he continues moving toward me.
“I'm sorry for what they did to you. I'm sorry I lost your letters. I’m sorry I was too afraid to speak to Tito Maning again tonight. But please tell me, what happened to you?”
He doesn’t answer. He can't. Instead, he stops a step away. Then he reaches out and places his palm against my chest.
I wake.
Tita Chato puts out her cigarette. “What happened to Jun is a tragedy, whether or not he was a drug pusher.” She pauses, gathering her thoughts, then continues. “But he is dead. We cannot bring him back to life. You need to accept that. There is nothing we can do about it except mourn.”
I clench my jaw.
She's not all that different from Tito Maning. Though her words were delivered with more compassion, they were the same: I am not truly Filipino, so I don’t understand the Philippines. But isn't this deeper than that, doesn’t this transcend nationality? Isn’t there some sense of right and wrong about how human beings should be treated that applies no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak?
I'm alone in this. Somebody needs to clear Jun’s name even if nothing comes of it. We failed him in life. We should not fail him in death.
“Tell me, Jason Reguero, are you willing to die to find out what happened to your cousin?”
I clench my jaw as I consider my answer. Part of me wonders if this is all that serious. It's not like I'm writing some investigative piece that will be published for millions to read. Finding out the truth about Jun isn't going to change the world.
But then again, this feels important and part of me is sick of never doing anything of significance in my life. I go to school. I do homework. I play video games. I'll be going to college in the fall, where I'll pretty much do four more years of the same—and for what? If I died right now I will have died having done nothing and having helped nobody.
“Yes,” I finally say, trying to imbue the word with the heaviness of the conviction I feel in my soul.
A man holds a photo of himself kissing another man on the beach.
A large family posing together beneath a cross together holds a photo standing in for the father.
All of these people, dead—yet alive again in these images thanks to my cousin. In all of this, there is both beauty and sadness, light and darkness, pain and something that might be healing.
Maybe Grace is right. Maybe it is worth it.
She laughs at the memory and I laugh with her. “Kuya Jun had a way of making people pay attention, of making them realize that others existed outside of themselves and getting them to care. But I don't…and I failed him. I stayed quiet whenever Tatay yelled. I left the room whenever they argued. I never asked Nanay to let him live with us again. I never even protested when they told us there would be no novenas, no vigil, no lamay, no funeral.”
[…]
I'm not sure what to say. Maybe I should tell her it's not her fault, maybe that it's all okay because he's with God now? I try to channel Jun because I think he always spoke the truth as he felt it, but I don't have that ability. I offer no reassurance, no wisdom. I only hug her tighter and start to cry with her.
Tito Danilo continues. “And later, he started selling.”
“But why?” Grace asks, desperate.
“Shabu is a hunger suppressant. You see, it is cheaper than food, so many of the poor start for this reason, and then they become addicted. As for why he started selling? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe to make money to keep feeding his addiction.”
I close my eyes, as if doing so will rewind the story erasing everything Tito Danilo has just told us. As if it will stop the warping truth. I can't reconcile this version of Jun with the one I had come to know to love, to admire.
I nod and let my graze drift upward. A bird flits across the rafters to a nest high in the corner. It reminds me of when I heard the baby birds chirping outside the window the day that the puppy died in my hands. What was it Mom told me in that moment? Something about death making way for new life. But what new life has come from Jun's death? I don’t know.
I imagine souls trapped overhead, bouncing against the steepled ceiling like invisible balloons whose strings have slipped from careless hands.
In the car with Tito Danilo and Grace on the way back to Lolo and Lola's, I think about how there's a new grief in remembering Jun now, knowing what eventually happened, knowing that he was more than my idea of him in ways I do not like, knowing that there's probably so much more I'll never know.
I was determined to find the truth. And I did—at least a piece of it. But was it worth it? What do I even do now?
This didn't play out how I thought it would.
I expected the truth to illuminate, to resurrect.
Not to ruin.
“Jun died a tragic death before his time. But that does not extinguish the good that he did on this earth. It lives on in the lives that he touched, and like a single candle's flame, it can grow and make what is dark light.” He pauses to let that sink in. “I invite each of you now to light your own candle from his, signifying that his goodness, his love, has multiplied through the ways he touched each of us, will continue to multiply through those we will go on touch.”
