The critically ill young man from Maguindanao who attended his graduation in a wheelchair has passed away.
Joemar Mangkok died at 25 years old of rheumatic heart disease, three days after attending his graduation at the Southern Mindanao Institute of Technology (SMIT) in Sultan Kudarat. He died at 6:50 pm on March 26 and was given an Islamic funeral yesterday.
Mangkok’s story became viral after his older sister Lynn Mangkok-Ayob posted photos and videos of him on her Facebook account over the weekend.
The photos and videos showed him proudly beaming on SMIT’s stage while holding his college diploma, sitting in a wheelchair, and breathing through an oxygen tank.
Mangkok graduated with a degree in secondary education, a huge accomplishment for the young man who had to stop studying several times due to his illness.
According to his sister, Mangkok was feeling ill during his graduation.
“He was feeling tired, and I actually wanted to ask the people organizing the program if he could get his diploma ahead of everyone else, but he didn’t want me to do it. I had to keep massaging him to make him feel better,” Ayob said in Filipino in a phone interview with Coconuts Manila.
“Initially, he wasn’t supposed to go up the stage but he really wanted to. So I asked the teacher if it was possible to bring him up, and we asked the school interns if they could help,” she said.
After the graduation ceremony, Mangkok was immediately brought to the hospital. In a previous interview with Coconuts, Ayob said that her brother’s illness was discovered five years ago.
Mangkok’s proudest moment would not have happened if he didn’t insist on studying this semester, going against his family’s pleas for him to just rest.
“We didn’t want him to go to school because we wanted him to get better first,” Ayob said. “But he kept saying ‘I won’t wear a white cloth until I wear a black one.'”
In Islamic rites, a cadaver is wrapped in a white cloth. Meanwhile, black is the color of the toga most graduates use.
“He also keeps saying that the whole world will get to know him. And it became true after his story became viral,” Ayob said.
Crying, Ayob said: “We are so happy because even if he has passed away, he achieved something that normal people could do. We are so proud of him.”
Mangkok is survived by his parents and eight siblings.
