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| Quarantine Life, Week 3 |
It was already two o’clock in the morning. Sab and I were very much awake like it was only seven p.m. We’re quite dead set on overseeing the virtual instructions that this school year has been reduced to but the suddenness of everything has thrown our daily routine a little off. We’ve fixed ourselves a cup of instant noodles and played Only You on Netflix. I was keen on starting Crash Landing On You but Sab is never a fan of watching with subtitles. We've passed the opening credits of the movie when her phone rang. We looked at each other, bewildered. She was determined not to answer the call but her hand accidentally swiped the phone and a muffled voice can be heard from the other end.
“Beth?” she said as she picked up the phone.
It was her younger sister. She called to tell Sab that their sister-in-law just found their brother lying unconscious on the floor by the bed. Chaos ensued on the other line and any sense of order diminished as everyone made haste to take their brother to the nearest hospital. Then, Beth hung up. Sab was already in tears as we held hands and prayed like we’ve never prayed before.
……….
I met Sab in 2010. I’ve just wrapped up my first year of teaching at the school my Mama founded and that summer, she dropped by to submit her CV at the office. We passed each other at the hall with a quick, polite nod and ten years later, we’ve become great friends, crazy roomates, kindred-spirits and bona fide soul sisters. Sab is currently our school principal and has stuck with us through thick and thin. She is Proverbs 17:17 personified having seen her fierce loyalty firsthand… no agenda, no ulterior motives whatsoever, just a life-giving friendship.
……….
We sat in silence, stomachs fluttering with dread. Then, her phone buzzed. My friend curled up into a ball, covered herself with a blanket and started to cry quietly. That early morning, their family suffered a devastating tragedy, the very sudden passing of her younger brother, from acute pancreatic hemorrhage. He was in his thirties. One day, Julius was just telling Sab his plan to butcher the annual pig when she comes home for the summer break in their hometown of Natividad in Pangasinan, and the next day, he was gone. It is so surreal to grieve a sudden loss in these pandemic-blighted times. Sab and her family did everything they could so she can come home for her younger brother’s funeral but the circumstance just won’t warrants it.
I know the reality of life. I never presume our longevity is without limit but today, I am reminded of its haunting fragility and how breakable we are.
Over the weekend, her brother was finally laid to rest. Sab joined her family via Facebook Live and immediately after, she went to start working on her online classes the same day.
I know the reality of life. I never presume our longevity is without limit but today, I am reminded of its haunting fragility and how breakable we are.
Over the weekend, her brother was finally laid to rest. Sab joined her family via Facebook Live and immediately after, she went to start working on her online classes the same day.
“Does it still make you cry?” I asked naively.
“My tears won’t bring his life back. So, there’s that,” Sab said wistfully.
Her words brought me to when I lost Mommy (my grandmother in actuality, the woman who raised me), to pneumonia in 2012. Eight years later and that loss still stings because one can never really move on. We can only strive to find and create a new normal. But the grief stays, it just becomes bearable and blends to the background of our lives, like a music playing from another room.
