Post-Christmas Pondering
People have been asking me how my Christmas went. I’ve been meaning to write down a narrative of the events that transpired, but everything was just too surreal to put down in black and white. Took me a while to digest.
So anyway, here’s what happened:
December 23
We began our Christmas festivities by attending two wakes. The first was for an old family friend, the kind your dad got into scrapes with as a child and got drunk with as a teenager, the kind you wind up calling Tito (Uncle) even though you aren’t really related. The second was for my friend’s father. Both died two days shy of Christmas.
Tito Ochie Baes was a geochemist by profession, a musician and composer by blood, and an activist by conviction. He lived in the house behind the place my dad grew up. He was raised in a family that was always making music: composing it, singing it, or playing it.
What I didn’t know was, Tito Ochie was one of the people who started the student activist movement in UPLB way back during the Martial Law days.
So there I was at his wake, sitting quietly on my monoblock chair, watching people come and go, eavesdropping on people’s conversations. A lean guy with Chinese features and spiky hair walked by, carrying an RC car and remote. It took two seconds for me to realize that he was that same kid my dad and I used to refer to as “The Marshmallow” and “The Pillsbury Doughboy” on account of his size and build. (Imagine a small, round, cuddly, fair little boy who looked like he would go “dooooing!” and bounce back up if ever he fell over.)
Couple of minutes later, they started arriving. I knew the mold. I had seen and talked to them before. I was related to people like them. They were wearing malongs and ethnic garb. Mojo sandals and faded jeans. “Abu Sayyaf” scarves. Some looked like old hippies gone respectable. Some looked like academics. Some looked like members of Joey Ayala’s band. But they all sounded like they regularly sat down to a breakfast of Renato Constantino and Paulo Freire. I heard familiar words from the snatches of quiet conversation: Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan, Martial Law, cadre…
Someone set up a karaoke, and LCD and a laptop. And then they started the program. Several people stood up to tell the rest what they knew about Ochie Baes. His brother. The friend he grew up with. His co-workers. His mother.
A poet stood up and read her poem entitled Paghahati (which translates roughly as “Dividing” or “To Halve” Jeez, I suck at translating Filipino). My initial reaction was “I want to write like that!” After the first minute of envy, I started getting drawn into the poem. It spoke about how things must first be divided before they are made whole, destroyed before they are recreated. There is struggle in creation. There must be brokenness before things can finally come full circle.Â
Which brings me to the first lesson of the day: only the people who are willing to be broken are those who will learn about wholeness. Only those who are willing to lose their life will gain it, and live it to the fullest.
I would have stayed longer at Tito Ochie’s wake, but I had to pay my respects to my friend’s dad. So I left for wake number two.
My friend’s house was a short jeepney ride away. When I got there, the pastor of the Evangelical Baptist Church was in the middle of a short message. There were people than a ticket line for an Angel Locsin movie.
(NOTE: By no means is this essay finished. But I have to do the dishes and tidy up my room. Part two follows shortly.)
