The 26th

My personal marker. Serves as a reminder. Sorry, Ma.
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."
~ Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut

It is nearly the 26th of the month. It'll be the first death anniversary of Tita Mila's passing. It feels passe to say 'How fast. It's been a year already?' She wouldn't want that. She would want to see us enjoying at McDonald's with all the fast food amenities and saturated fat. She was nice like that.

I remember reading a story on the Philippine Daily Inquirer. It was from a column and I've forgotten all too well, the details of the story, the author, the name of the column and when I had read it. The gist was actually a question: "Why do we celebrate deaths and failures?" It was a baffling question for me at that point in my life, having lost no one.. YET. Well, no one important.

I remember the point of the article and it goes something like this: we celebrate deaths and failures so we remember a somewhat silver lining, we remember the Fall of Bataan to remind ourselves of the good that it has brought to us as a people, we remember the deaths of loved ones to remind us how happy we have been to have had them touch our lives, we remember tragedies to remind us that everything we touch in this life is but transient in material space but immortal in a dimension that we all share and pass on to the next seeds of our generations. Well, something like that. 

For many, this time of year, they count the days until Christmas. I do, too. I just wish that wherever Tita spends her time now, they have Christmas there, too. So she may recieve my greetings and gifts. I hope that Vonnegut was right that when we pass, we never really die but only pass on to a different dimension. A dimension where the physical senses are not enough to make us believe that we exist, we just know that we do.

Merry Christmas, Tita. And happy anniversary on your arrival at your own personal and non- physical dimension.