‘…the knowledge that my time may be up at any moment leaves me all the more intent on making every second count for myself and for others…’
YESTERDAY, I did something I rarely do – I went to the wake of a colleague and friend from Nickel Asia who succumbed to an aggressive form of colon cancer at the “young” age of 60.
Before yesterday, I had only been to one wake in the last four or six months, and that was last November 16 when I was able to catch the last night of the wake of Frederick “Ricky” Dandan, a beloved friend and fellow UP Maroon who not only played for the State U but also became the head coach of the men’s basketball team. (Ricky also became the right-hand man of coach Bo Perasol, another beloved friend and fellow Maroon, when the latter was head coach of the Coca-Cola PBA franchise basketball team.)
I don’t go to wakes as a general rule because I’d prefer to remember my deceased friend when he or she was alive. Peering down on a lifeless body (in my view) mars my memories although foremothers it is necessary for closure. Not for me, because the attitude I take with death is that the deceased has just gone on ahead, leaving on a long vacation, one that I, at some point in the future, will take myself.
One of my two jokes about going to wakes is that I take reciprocity in life seriously: if you’re nice to me, I will love you. If you make my life harder, I’ll do what I can to make yours harder too. I’ll go to yours if you’ll go to mine, but since you can’t go to mine, then I won’t go to yours.
The other joke is that I only go to wakes of people who are either really close to me or people I want to be sure myself are really dead.
On the drive to our customary “pagpag” after the wake, someone in our party mentioned that there seem to be more people getting sick and passing away these days, and somehow it seems true. But is that just a function of social media, which helps broadcast to the world what used to be known only if one were to open a newspaper to check the obituaries? Or is it a function of age – as we age, more of the people we know go on that long vacation, leaving that impression that it is becoming a more frequent type of “flash report” we get via direct message on our phones or tablets.
I’ve always said that when my father passed away in September 2016, I felt some form of release, a sense of freedom. Because I had no one else to worry about if I wanted to go wherever I wanted to go or do whatever I wanted to do. At the same time, it also dawned upon me that my dad’s passing was the end of his generation, and mine was next. And it also dawned upon me that where his specific line of the family was concerned, I was the last remaining one in the Philippines and that line was going to end with me.
My mother’s death in 1993 left me face to face with the reality that one day I too would have to go; my father’s passing in 2016 left me with the feeling that I was up next. But both events also left me with that sense of freedom and also with an appreciation that every single day that I wake up is a bonus intended to be celebrated and maximized. Rather than paralyzing me with fear or depression, the knowledge that my time may be up at any moment leaves me all the more intent on making every second count for myself and for others as much as I can.
Because I’d rather do that than fret or nope or tremble in fear of the inevitable. Instead, I’d like to see the inevitability of it all as liberating.
Sometimes, it’s when you don’t have a choice that you are freest.
(RIP sir Ador Cabauatan. Also to UP law contemporary and UP-APSMer Mar Tolentino.)
