George Babsa-Ay Jr.
- Death’s Hopeful Message - November 6, 2024
- Sir Francis - October 16, 2024
- The Aras - September 11, 2024
Of late, news of the deaths of two good friends, a mere fortnight apart, came via Messenger. Popo, 48, and Darwin, 36. Both were decent people, and so, are well-loved, and tears fell a mighty torrent at their wakes.
Popo was a wonderful presence, a rock sundry folks held on to when swept into a vortex. Ask the lives moved by his kindness – the warmth in his sparse words. His reassuring silence.
Darwin was just as silent, but to be dutiful even when severely ill tells a lot. He was more than a muscle. Surely, more than those whose mess he cleaned. Because he had Character. Grit. Dignity. At a time, it was easy to break.
So – in rooms lit by long candles, their flames flickering in the cold wind, amid brewed coffee, and alternating hymns sang and hummed in Iocal dialects and the testimonies that lasted until dawn, the same question nagged at the mourners: How could this have happened?
In her testimony, Popo’s aunt said she was the last person Popo, slender and mild-mannered, spoke to on the phone and she swore nothing in his voice hinted distress or anything amiss. Before the illness got full-blown, Darwin, father of two toddlers, was a picture of health, not shy with his chiseled body fit for any bodybuilding tilt.
So, how?
At the back row, Popo’s elderly parents sat, who now had to bury their youngest son around noon in four days; and a young widow, for the longest time, tried to be brave for two wide-eyed toddlers by her side. On a tray three chairs to their left, a pile of candies glittered, but the toddlers just looked straight ahead, at times at the ceiling or the floor, but often toward the casket where their daddy lay.
The hymns, if sang elsewhere, may have offered some measure of hope; but in these solemnly-lit rooms, where the sighs heave deep, they seem to offer little relief, and the testimonies on the kindness of the departed, although always heartfelt, only seem to remind, at times, the bereaved of their great loss.
But it is rather impossible to read these moments. For almost everyone there had yet to overcome his or her own disbelief.
And so, for the grieving brother and sister, staving off tears, to express their gratitude to those who came to share their grief, we are the ones who are re-assured there is still enough courage and dignity in the world. And that, often, it is our presence we can ever really give.