Anticipating Storms

Storms remind you of things you can't control and things that are fleeting. And life is one of them.

More than 26 years ago, the entire family was in mourning. It was to be the loneliest Christmas of all. The first-born, a beautiful baby girl of fair skin and aquiline nose, left as quickly as she had came into this world. The family was in so much deepest grief that the whole family took a funeral vigil of more than two months. Sobbing, teeth-gnashing and chest-beating suddenly found its home in a two-story and stately wooden house by the beach. The tiny angel's abuela fainted as soon as the tomb was being sealed.

Years later, the second-born son would have a vivid dream of his dead elder sister he never even met. He dreamt that he was on a cemetery on a top of a hill. There were plenty of people wearing white flowing gowns, and there was a long line snaking from the top of the hill and the queue stretched on for miles. The sister was there. It was her. The boy knew, because it was heart telling him so. The One was there. His face radiates a light that was as bright as the sun but yet doesnt blind. His face is so beautiful and compassionate that no painting of Him comes close. The boy's tears flowed like the purest spring that suddenly burst forth from a parched earth. He woke up sobbing. His pillows soaked with tears.

Deaths are like Latin novels in his family. Years later, during the funeral of his beloved grandfather, a tornado appeared out of nowhere before the cement on the freshly sealed tomb dried. It ripped through a section of the busy section of the provincial town, injuring one of the drivers that the family hired. The earth trembled. The wind was electric. The twister lifted the poor man's tricycle and hurled it a few meters away with the driver still in it. Before the grandfather died, the boy went home from the university to take care of the preparations for the airflifting of his abuelo to seek better treatment in Manila for his swelling tumor in his gall bladder. As he was being wheeled to the plane, the sky was overcast and there was a light drizzle. The grandfather was ashen-faced, sad. It was indeed a farewell. The next time they would meet would be at the old man's funeral. When the abuela died, it was albeit quieter, save for the hysterical Born-Again service that drove the boy nuts- a fitting end to the endless proselytizing of his Uncle, who seems actually bent on putting up a new religion on the basis of his daughter's religious visions of the heavens and hells. It was scary and daunting. On the surface the boy was indifferent and with his usual sardonic self. But he was afraid. And no one saw that. Because noone cared. He felt being used as pawn, a spineless puppet that would bow down to everyone just because they were older and they were family.

The boy waited for someone to scream for a commercial break. But it was no ED TV. And he was no movie star in some reality show that has gone awry.

He then came to accept that in fact this was maybe what life is all about. It is about anticipating and accepting challenges, making decisions, and moving on. And continue loving. Because if he stopped loving, he would stop believing in dreams. And when you stop dreaming, you start to die.

That boy was me.