First, she was my boss. The workplace doesn’t exactly lend
itself to the establishment of ties beyond the immediate and superficial, and
when I met her, a friendship wasn’t exactly top of mind. She was incorrigible
and demanding, but also pleasant and patient. She wasn’t the kind of boss you’d
hate; more like one you’d tolerate. We worked together, and I didn’t think I
could squeeze anything more out of that basic, banal relationship.
She left before I did. (The office, I mean). People spew out
the generic and often meaningless “Let’s keep in touch,” but, surprisingly, we
really did. She would text or call at odd moments just to say hello. She’d
share stories about her family, how she moved one daughter to another school
and how the other one was starting college soon. I’d tell her how things were
going at my new job while we had ensaymada and hot chocolate at her new office.
We’d make plans when we were in each other’s neighborhoods. She’d ask for
contacts or bounce story ideas off me while I borrowed the occasional suitcase
or ask her for career advice.
I never really thought about why we were in each other’s
lives: she was a fortysomething wife and mother of two daughters, whose
greatest joy in life was spending time with her family, and I was a
thirtysomething single guy whose Saturday nights were spent in rock concerts or
greasy bars with cheap beers and a cloud of cigarette smoke perpetually hanging
overhead. But I always picked up when she called, and she did the same for me.
Always, no fail.
The meet-ups became more infrequent, as these things often
go, but each one was a welcome respite from the toils of everyday life. Her
presence was a safe space, where I could exhale my troubles and inhale
good-natured ribbing. “Peeeej, kilala mo ko,” or, “Peeeej, alam mo na yan”
constantly escaped her lips, as if we had known each other all our lives and I
was supposed to already be aware of the advice du jour.
When she called to tell me about the disease, she was crying
and I was dumbstruck. Speechless. What else can you say in a situation like
that? No, I don’t know that everything’s going to be all right, and no, I don’t
know that she can beat the crap out of it.
Cancer. My least favorite zodiac sign, invading the life of
a person who least deserved it.
It came and went, and there were good days and bad. Not much
changed in our relationship: there were still the unexpected calls and texts
about this and that, and the effort to see each other despite the distraction
that is life. There were updates about chemo, and I saw her a few times when
she was completely hairless because of it. At her suggestion I even did a story
about a foundation for people fighting the disease. She got better, and for a
while I could almost pretend the cancer was just a bad dream, because there she
was in front of me, full head of hair, all-smiles and animated, telling me how
proud she was of her now-in-UP daughter.
But then she got sick again. And sicker. Apart from the
occasional visits to the hospital, she never told me about the bad days. When
we talked it was almost always about some random thing; an opportunity to do
freelance work for a visiting international broadcast network, names of people
she could possibly feature, industry contacts. She would call and she never let
on that anything was out of the ordinary. And so I became complacent, settling
back into the routine of our familiar, comforting relationship.
And then she died. A mutual friend, Dennis, called to tell
me she was looking for me. I had some free time that day and asked him where
she was and that I would love to see her, too. “Wala pang place e,” he said. I
didn’t understand and asked again if she was at home. “Yun na yun,” was all he
could say. And then I knew.
Condensing a rich, remarkable life into a few words and
sentences—it just can’t be done. Volumes of full-length books aren’t enough to
capture the essence and beauty of a soul, especially one as good and as pure as
hers. We sometimes wonder how completely arbitrary life and death can be, and
make feeble attempts to rationalize the order in which we all, well, “move on.”
I won’t do that. Instead I just choose to revel in the
memory of an extraordinary human being. She radiated kindness, joy and
enthusiasm; a constant reminder that truly good people exist and that when you
find them, you hold on to them and do everything to keep them in your life as
long as you can. Until they let go, and then you let them go.
