Over mounds of swahe and heaps of steaming rice, I was in the company of friends, gorging on our midday banquet of seafood and gossips, in a busy Baclaran Market. Our table that day was an extension of the earlier, holier one over which we concelebrated our morning Eucharist. It was Chrism Mass 2001.
To be precise, I was just a deacon then, a mere servant waiting on the table of the Lord. But I was king in that rowdy, Formica-topped version of the other-worldly one, happily chattering and chewing away, completely unaware of the impending gloom that a certain phone call would cast on me and my family only a few minutes later.
Sonia’s gone I would later learn. But the shattering impact of that rather rude announcement would not hit me immediately. The refusal, the denial on my part was just as immediate. It simply cannot be, my reconnoitering senses would argue. Or perhaps it is true. But what else is new? Sonia’s always gone…that is, to a nearby mall for instance, when the mercury shoots beyond 35; or to the market, when she fancies a dish she wanted to regale the hungry pack with; or to Tita Dory’s house, when she wanted to smuggle some treats. It was routine for her to be always on the go, and in haste at that, to the point sometimes of failing to realize that what she has just slipped on her sore feet was a non-pair of a sandal and a rubber flip-flop. She seemed to have always been on the go for something, or to some place, for a meeting or an errand, or a leisurely escape from the daily cares of household management. But as quickly as her going away is her prompt return back home, often with some stray kittens or diseased pups she has picked up on the way. These orphans she would then unfailingly and magically nurse back to their former cuteness, and would most definitely make them legitimate members of the family, enjoying the same privileges and rights as that of the rest of us.
But there was something in the hoarse, warble-ridden voice at the other end of the line which tells that Sonia’s departure that afternoon was unlike any of her previous ones. There was this frightening hunch in me which says that she has finally left for good. It was this finitude and permanence of that afternoon departure of hers, as what was coldly relayed to me, that finally froze me on my tracks. There’s no way one can shield himself from the suddenness of it all…she already took off with her one-way ticket to heaven.
Haste has always characterized her many journeys and escapades…got married when she was barely in her 20’s, gave birth to me on the first week of Advent of 1975, less than a year after the wedding; impromptu picnics at the nearby Luneta, her many trips to the seminary, often in her house dress and non-pair of footwear for my weekly allowance and fresh clothes. That Holy Thursday, hours before she left, she first attended to a dozen of things like she has always done: wake up early morning and do the laundry, prepare breakfast for the family, feed her four-legged children and a couple of ducks, go to the market, cook lunch, spare a dish for that old widower who lives beside our house, set the table, laughed hard with tatay and my siblings, a glass of water…and she’s gone.
As always, she has to go in a hurry…that afternoon, she doesn’t want to be late, because it will be her first Mass of the Lord’s Supper in Heaven!
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