unburdensome

I've gotten used to wakes. There's always one if you had the mind to look for it. With enough friends, you'll always be invited to one. After a certain age, you'll always be begrudged to attend. And being the kind of guy with lots of friends, lots of old relatives, and who's also part of a certain chorale-by-the-coffin type of choir, I've seen my fair share. And yet, being the guy in white, the guy that's learned the fine art of sleeping on monobloc chairs, the guy who's now receiving all the condolences, I have to admit the view from the other side is quite unexpected.

For one, I didn't know that there's a clock ticking once the last breath escapes. Also, I didn't have any funeral parlors on speed dial. I have yet to get used to hospital officials quietly referring to my dad, prefaced by a guarded pause, as "expired". There was no time to grieve, it almost felt like a luxury to sit in a corner and worry how much life would change and how much one has lost after such a tragedy. The real tragedy is how the world still turns, albeit bleaker and darker.

But the funny thing is, death, with its uncompromising constancy and unwavering finality, seems to elicit from people unexpected kindnesses and a sort of tacit expansion of acceptance and patience. All is forgiven for the grieving; all is tolerated for the bereft.

For someone, like myself, who likes standing on his own feet, who never capitulates to unbidden charity, who humbles himself into thinking that the kind efforts of friends are better spent on someone poorer, weaker, needier than himself, the experience of being lifted up by the warm outstretched arms of bosom buddies and family bound by blood is freeing.

I've lived my life and built my relationships around the ideal that what I owe my dear acquaintances is my conscious effort to be low-maintenance, facile. It ain't so bad on the other side after all.

To all who visited the wake, the blood-donors, or even just those who texted/messeged/ym-ed/pm-ed: thank you. I owe my calmness and so much more to all of you, thank you.

looking back, looking forward

A friend of mine got his planner today. It's the Starbucks one, the one everyone keeps dissing since we all remember how great a deal it was before. The one that had its "buy 1-take 1" stubs replaced with monthly discounted coffee bags. The one that isn't leather anymore. The one that grew pale and drowned in the inundated market of mimicry and sticker-books from shifty competition. The one we look at, contemptuous, from the perspective of the past and whisper quietly to the nouveau coffee-fiends, "We've seen better."

But, to my friend, it didn't seem so shoddy. It was tastefully packaged in red, wrapped in thin muslin, precious and new and so full of blank pages brimming with invisible opportunities. To him, it was his first planner, the catalogue-to-be of his first year at work, recorder of the dream that is his life right now.

And maybe that's the truth in all things that shift and change in the river that is the life we all live. That in our flawed humanity we, in our ingrained disdain for failure and disappoint, tend to focus unconsciously upon the lost endings instead of burgeoning beginnings. We get so obsessed in the should, we make the mistake of missing all that could.

We fascinate ourselves, I think, with the horse's mouth's every detail in the utter folly and misplaced faith that all of life's unintended prizes lies within them an explanation, a rationale on why we're so fortunate or unfortunate. I say rub its neck, listen to her whiny in consent, claim her and journey further into the mysterious valleys destiny has to offer.