40th Day

But then that's how death is. It turns the mundane important, the trivial unforgettable.

Friday is Bong's 40th day. As old people would have it, that's when the soul is finally freed from being earthbound; finally accepting that he has to go to the light. That's what they say.

As for me, probably because of that old wives' tale, I begin imagining tender moments with Bong: embracing me tightly, earnestly telling me that he is finally leaving and that he'll truly miss me. My imagination is probably just so great it makes the scene so vivid and the feeling quite intense. At times it's difficult to have this movie house in my mind, running those scenes that make missing him more sad, dolorific. 

This morning before going to the insurance agency I was finally able to pass by and visit Bong at his bachelor's pad. What I saw made me cry, really cry. There it was beside one of the vases, a plastic doll of a power puff girl. I suddenly remembered that Bong used to watch that cartoon whenever he caught reruns while surfing the telly. I found it weird, I never liked that cartoon but he just loved watching it, it escapes me why. When I made some trite remarks, he'd just ignore it and switch channels. In fact, I used to catch him watching morning reruns of that cartoon and when he realizes that I am already awake, he'd switch channels immediately. That doll made me remember a tiny fact of my past life with Bong, a simple event that I shared with Bong when he was alive. I've already forgotten that but the doll was a jolt of a reminder. It made me miss him more. 

I learned from Bong's mom that Angie, Bong's eldest niece at 9 years old owned that doll and that a day or two ago, she decided that she would bring the power puff doll and give it to Bong to make him happy because she knew that her Tito Bong loved the power puff girls. Sweet kid. She's the same niece, being the eldest she's the only one affected, who broke my heart when I saw her after waking up, she'd approach Bong's coffin during the wake, rest her head on the lid, looking at her Tito Bong lovingly while she kept wiping the glass pane with her forearm. 

Last night, I decided I should start clearing up Bong's stuff that I've left lying around my toilet. There's not much of his stuff lying around the room, and the few that were are kept fastidiously as was his wont: a pair of slippers and 2 pairs of rubber shoes lined up with mine by the door; some empty shampoo bottles that only he used; his water pick; a D&G cap, his favorite polo shirt that I keep hanging outside the cabinet for me to always see, several pairs of shorts, a few shirts kept in his clothes drawer, and his raggedy stuffed toy dog that he insists on propping up in bed.

I tried to start with the shampoo bottles. I thought I could just easily throw them away. I couldn't. I decided to just clean them up, dry them and put it with his stuff in the cabinet. I will probably just box them and place them under my bed, including the shoes. I tried to remove his waterpick, but I couldn't. Perhaps I'll try again tomorrow or perhaps on Saturday, but hopefully not never. 

It's 4:00 AM, there's no more time to sleep. Today is a new day.

One more time

A friend was helpful with her pity party analogy for the sorrow and the grief that come and go with the death of a loved one. The past few days since Saturday, I've been having a bit of a difficult time dealing with my loss.

I miss Bong, I see him in every inch of my room, like an old movie running in a loop.  It was only like yesterday that he was there lying asleep on my bed, brown skin on white sheets while I sit on my chair watching the movies, then a few days back he was brushing his teeth, cutting his nails, tweezing his facial growth instead of shaving, taking a bath, changing clothes, picking up my clothes, choosing my clothes, cooking my dinner, cleaning after I eat, riding in my car or washing it, helping my mom, watering the plants, trying to race ahead of my mom in sweeping the front of the house with the previous night's carpet of blue orchid vine flowers, looking after my dad when mom and I have to leave the house. Bong was in practically every minute of my past so many years. And then the film stops abruptly, I can only hear the flapping of the negative as the reel keeps going round and round. I have to flick the switch off.


Being alone seems so alien to me now. Why is it that I who fall for someone so far and few between, why do I have to lose the person I really felt one with despite our chasm of differences? Why can't I also have the 20 & 24 years (and counting) partnership that my 2 other best friends have? But then again why not? The only, yet shining consolation I have is that it didn't end the way relationships normally do but by force majeure, an act of God, that for mere mortals like me, is unfathomable as the chasm between the reality of life and the immeasurable distance that faith must bridge to a life hereafter.

Is it too much to yearn for the hereafter to come soon so that we could see each other again before I forget how Bong looked or how I felt for him? But then Peachie said that the yearning is nothing more than my grief talking. Sad, don't you find? To be told or to realize that what I feel is merely my grief talking.

Thus, I walk that bridge of belief, of faith that there is a time and a place where we shall all meet again, without pain or fear and neither shall there be tears. For if I think not that we shall meet again, then living perhaps would feel like falling into the wakeless sleep of forgetting.

Yearning for it, indeed is just grief talking but I think one of the reasons that I am caught up by my grief a bit more often now is because I am beginning to fully realize the impact of everything that I've lost and that as the days ebb and flow it is only my memory that would keep him alive in my mind and  warm in my heart. But memory fades just like everything else and that makes me sad. As time lurches  forward, no matter how hard I dig in my heels, the grief will lessen but I hope my memory will not, of Bong, his hopes and dreams and comic reliefs, from poympersias to santuryums, bonggangvillas and prinsesesas (a movie, believe it or not), and not the least, for everything that he did for me, for as he always said he rather prove himself by acts full of heart than of words oft said with an empty heart.