THE WORLD DOES NOT STOP FOR YOUR GRIEF
As you rally your relatives over the phone, you will still be disturbed by calls from your sister’s suitor.
As you calm your mother down who’s crying over the phone, talking with a sister several continents away, you will still have neighborhood kids singing carols off-key at your door.
As you wait for precious messages from aunts and uncles for more information, you will still get stupid text messages in your cell phone, encouraging you to join their stupid money-making (well, for them) games.
As you compose e-mails for relatives who are overseas, you will be notified of other incoming e-mails composed of forwarded jokes, chain e-mails and porn. Worse, if your YM is open, you also get offers to cyber sex in the midst of worrying how to word your ‘sad news’ mail.
As you wonder what will happen to the plight of your orphaned relatives, you get delegated the task of making tabs for a report, in 60 copies, and to be distributed the following day.
As you cry inside over the last time you saw that loved one alive, reminiscing on how he cooked for you, or how sweet his voice was when he sang….you also have to listen to your officemate’s recent biopsy…or another officemate’s complaint about a husband…or how a friend’s daughter is making progress.
As you rush over to work, late because you had to make a lot of calls and stand by lest your mother has one of her nervous breakdowns…or as you rush home from work…eager to be there and lend a hand when needed, you get stuck in traffic due to shoppers and merrymakers all hounding the malls of Manila.
And in the midst of booking bus schedules and plane trips, you also have to pick up the brownies, fudgies, banana cakes, etc. you ordered for the supposedly Merry Christmas you’re going to have….and in the midst of making funeral arrangements several provinces away, you also have to wrap your gift to your favorite niece who you also plan to bring to your Christmas party in the office.
And in remembering how the deceased has also lost a wife and son before, and how some of his kids had not seen him for years, you also struggle with the schedules of those he’s leaving behind….the birthday party of a nephew, the court hearing involving a brother, the medical check-up of another brother.
And as you mentally adjust your finances for the coming days, knowing that some party and Christmas favors will have to be adjusted to give way to the funeral costs, a distant cousin visits you to borrow money for their own Noche Buena.
And as you mourn the loss of a loved one, you will still hear corny jokes, green jokes, crazy laughs and tickling conversations.
And if you sometimes feel bitter, you also realize that it wasn’t their loss to bewail…and when their season for grieving has come, it may be that your time of happiness has come again.
