Your day began like any ordinary day, you were doing the same stuff and was certain nothing would be any different,until it was not.
It was noontime and the book I was reading had gone a bit dull so I decided to saunter by my friend's small eatery. Fancy is not particularly the adjective one would use in describing the eatery but people gravitate there like it was a soup kitchen dishing out rations to the homeless. It is manned by insanely funny friends who have an unfortunate habit of scalding each other with boiling cooking oil and shoving uncooked squid balls up the unwitting victim's nose. I went inside, observing and helping a bit when a man of around 50 stopped by and started to contemplate the food on display. He was known as Mang Ben, a burly, affable man who barely went out of the house. His funny antics, bawdy jokes and raucous laugh were highly engaging, Its as if Mang Ben was an Uncle you never had. He was cracking everyone up while endlessly poking quail eggballs with a stick and dipping it into the gelatinous sauce letting it sit there a little longer.
A tricycle halted in front of the eatery and disgorged a highschool student, my friend whispered "That's his daughter". Mang Ben,upon seeing his daughter immediately took her bag and quipped "your bag is so heavy, what's inside? a refrigerator?" at which everyone chorused in laughter. I noticed how he immediately planted a kiss on his daughter's forehead and wrapped his arms around her "Are you hungry? go and grab something to snack on" and the daughter started ordering stuff. I also noticed the way Mang Ben looked at his daughter while she was pouring sauce onto her quail eggs. It was a look of sadness, and longing, and pain and tender love. A look people in the airport departure area cast over their relatives on the other side of the fence, the kind which seemed to say something that cannot be said even during the most articulate moment in one's life. It left me transfixed, the spectacle infront of me was an unconditional love of a father to his daughter in the rawest form,it wasnt the nagging type we all tend to get from our parents, nor a restricted show of affection. It was simply Love.
"How's the damage? 12 quail eggs, 2 fries and 2 halo halos" inquired Mang Ben, and upon forking out the bill, off they went with his daughter's cumbersome schoolbag still clung onto his shoulder and arms wrapped around. I watched the two until they turned left and gone.
We went back to business,hours passed and we were all greasy,reeking of smoke and knackered when someone came running to the store "Mang ben just had a heart attack and he didnt make it." All of us looked at each other in disbelief and started muttering "he was here just hours ago, he was full of energy and cheery,how could that be possible?" It was only until we saw the remain of Mang Ben being wheeled into the ambulance did we manage to wrap our brains around the deeply harrowing news.
My friend was steady muttering "It must be my quail eggs that did Mang Ruben in, But we didnt notice him eating up that much, It's as if he was keeping us all entertained with his jokes in order to divert our attentions, If I knew he was downing quail eggs on end, I would have told him to stop"
The last moment of Mang Ben's earthly existence shows me the fragility of life, that there are so many reasons to be alive,but too many ways to be dead, even the most innocuous thing as a quail egg can put paid to a life.
We all get to think that Death happens, but not to us, and not to all the people we love and care about, we are immortal and so are the people we share great swaths of life with, its the mere concept of immortality that makes us put off the love we feel for another until tomorrow, and until the next day, and the next, until death knocks on our door to ferry someone that's close to our heart away and its just a little too late. Its easy to talk about the death of someone who is remotely connected to us, a death of a stranger, but what if the loss we have to deal with is that of someone closer to home? Is it really possible to be strong and see all the sense of it? Does it even have a sense to start with? Can we really get over it and move on or will we just be a piece of hollow ragdolls, forever walking through half-life, devoid of substance? Can we really still find the will and the reason to live when we have been mercilessly wretched to pieces?
Death happens.Death is in all form.
Don't strew with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!
