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what a way to spend my rest days.i’ve been really excited of being able to grab a really good schedule. working in a call center, having a sat-sun off for 3 or 4 months straight is a blessing that i’ve been so thankful for. but last weekend (i hope)is the worst.

first off, i was not able to go home ‘coz late friday night i had this terrible colds. deciding i’d go home early the next day for i terribly miss my baby, the colds decided to give way to a full blown fever coupled with runny nose, watery eyes, the works… so i’ve spent better part of the day in bed, with books and meds…

i got an SMS saying that a friend has been rushed to MAK MED due to hypertension and mild heart attack. i would’ve dragged myself to visit him had he not been in the ICU and i thought i couldn’t see him anyway. another friend arranged for a visit the following afternoon. the fever has taken its toll and i fell asleep early.consequently, i was up at the crack of dawn, feeling much better, was able to hear a morning mass after several months of attending the evening sched.

have decided to pay my friend an early visit since there’s nothing much to do, when i got at least 3 simultaneous SMS saying that my friend has passed away last night around 11pm during which he had another attack. =((

i went back home in a state of shock relating to my roomies what has happened. there was that empty feeling that overcomes one everytime there’s news of death. it’s neither disbelief or denial nor was it affirmation or acceptance, just mere emptiness.nausea came next.

plans were made to visit his wake that same day. though feeling a sickly again, it didn’t even cross my mind to decline. too bad it didn’t cross my mind that ‘he’ would be there. as hard as it was to admit, i was not ready to see him. i do not know the exact reason why i’m not. i just knew the moment i realized it was him sitting there in Starbucks i wanted to make a 180 degree turn. it was all i could do but i could not turn my back from my dead friend. and uhm yeah, ‘he’ was much closer to PME so i should’ve known he’d be there.

i quietly berated myself from reacting that way.though i tried hard not to be obvious, i could not deny myself what i truly felt. i was a bundle of emotions going to the wake. a whole mixture of humiliation, embarassment, confusion mixed with the grief i was feeling for my friend.

he totally ignored me and i realized it was a scenario i was not yet ready to handle. midway thru the first mass for the wake, nausea returned and i threw up (yeah, ewwww). good thing some other friends were there who readily assisted me. talk about humiliation. i could not even concentrate on solemnly praying for PME’s soul. though i have only been with PME a few times, i’ve felt how much of a lively person he was, the kind who’s lived his life to the fullest, and somehow that thought initiated the feeling of loss. he’ll surely be missed.

as for me i was such a drag. i would’ve wanted to stay longer at the wake but my body did not allow me. i was short of breath and when i look at the mirror i was white as a ghost. just really lucky another friend cared to take me home. and i promised myself i’d be back for the burial.

when things like these happen, one is forced to realize how short one’s life could be, and how it really pays living everyday as if it were the last. but what if doing so would mean trampling with many hearts and playing mindgames? what if getting everything you can out of life would mean leaving nothing for someone else?

i believe PME has lived his life exactly the way he wanted to, spreading his contagious jolly personality to anyone who’d come close.evidence to this was his family’s sorrow…that’s why so many friends immediately came the first day of the wake, some regretful that they’re not able to see him ’til it’s too late, mostly thankful for being able to get to know him when he’s still alive. i am both.

thinking about his life…and death, i shudder to think of the what if’s… i do not have the face to present to death, not right now. when so much depends on me, and my recent happy memories date back to last year. i do not know how i’d be succumbing to the end of it all when i know i have not spend the last few years of my life making the most out of it, when even ‘his’ mere presence treatingn me as invisible was enough to make me sick (that maybe an overreaction since i was really sick then).

i know wherever PME is right now, if he’d be asked what he’s done with his life, he’d be able to come up with a lot of good replies. as for me, if i die right now and i’d been asked of that question, i’d die again of shame.

you go in peace PME, wherever you are, spread that infectious smile that you’ve generously imparted to us. i wish i could be like you. thank you for the thoughts and for everything… you will be missed and i believe you’d be remembered the way you wanted to be remembered…

as for ‘him’… i don’t know what to say. i can no longer say my heart broke that day. it can’t possibly do so when it was not even whole to start with…

but heck, along with the resolve and the wall that i’ve painstakingly tried to put around me for the past week of excommunication… it did not only break… it came crumbling down.