There's someone died in our neighborhood. It was all too sudden. I didn't know him and most likely so was he to me. But not's the story about.
It was supposed to be the usual face in our neighborhood where summer energy was on its peak. Everyone was on their spot fanning away their seasonal outburst of grumpiness towards the heat while kids were at their own phase, absorbed and oblivious to any kind of inconvenience. I was also planted to my seat and doing my actual task of listening to a podcast. I was absorbed too but still grounded to the other noises polluting the surrounding. Then I heard a few people panicking about something, the air seemed like it turned dry and heart stopping, and distant voices were trying to reach out something I couldn't make out. But given the jostling nature of our street, I was made to believe that nothing serious happened at that brief moment, like it was just a loud and confused noise and there's nothing worthy from it that I had to stand up and protrude my neck from our window just to check what was commotion I thought was happening. So I went through the day but still carrying that mystery at the back of my head which I felt really happened. That's when I asked my sister when she went upstairs and joined me in our working/study station. They were slouching in the second floor when that happened so I thought maybe they might have heard a little clearer bits of story from outside.
I almost missed tapping that one letter on my keyboard when she flatly told me that someone died from a heart attack. It was the guy named 'Nestor' who I knew of, he was more known as 'pilay' who rides an old-fashioned bicycle around the street as he couldn't walk because of his left leg. I was shocked. He was literally dead. I didn't know him personally but just by thinking that he was sitting there on the street corner while his bicycle, as I could picture it, resting against the wall, and he felt that throbbing pain against his chest and the last thing that everyone knew about he was already hovering between life and death on the ground while the world is still going on oblivious of that one life already being taking out. This reminds me of Virginia Woolf's Death of the Moth which I enjoyed reading back when I was in college. This short story is about the life of the moth which, from the perspective of the persona, was too small to be cared about by the world. When it was close to dying, the persona threw this question out almost like soliloquizing, in a world that so gigantic what is the death of a small specie in it? And when the persona thought that the moth has already lost any signs of life, she looked around and saw that the afternoon rush of autumn was still untouchable. The sky was still bleeding with colors of the season, birds were at their happy state as always, and the treetops were still whooshing its way along with the wind current. And not even a soul realized that a moth has just lost it life.
Thinking about what happened last Friday, how does it feel when you are just only about on your last few breaths before your death? And you are just doing your usual thing, like hanging by in the streetcorner, probably sitting and taking your time to tame any form of growing uncomfortability due to cruel summer, then after just a few blinks when you feel like you will just take another heartbeat, you're gone. Is this how life also looks like when you still have a long stretch of thread but suddenly something cut it off?
I remember the last part of my reading in Woolf's The Death of Moth when I said that life might be mysterious but at least we have an access on it. Unlike death, words we usually associate with it are just empty adjectives to materialize it but the truth is we don't know what death really is. Just as much as we have no idea when, where, and how does the death would knock us off. The thought might not yet be as scary as living and suffering in life, but can you imagine that you are just doing your normal day and the next that the people around you knows is you aren't breathing anymore?
How about your dreams? Those little whispers of what ifs and when that happens?
How about your secret manifestations in life?
How about your goals in every ten years of life? When you reach 30, 40, 50, and so on.
How about the life you haven't envisioned yet but still you want to experience once you get there?
How about the supposed many chances in life when you can't still figure out yet what you heart truly wants?
How about the many uncertainties you hated at first when you're starting but you know in time you'll realize that these are the things worthy of heart-pounding moments?
How about your dream for yourself? I know, you are still not closing the idea of having your own family, when you can build the home you have been longing for ever since you have already realized that you aren't really at home when growing up. When you can translate your love without judgements and when you can start your life anew with those people who you will entrust your worries and happiness to.
Even as much as we want to die at times, we know that deep in our hearts, we are still hoping for the world to just be gentle with us. We still want this life because of those people who chose us despite the reasons not to. We still want this life because we are not letting of go of that hope that maybe we just have to wait a little longer before we reach that contentment. We still want this life because it is still fun. At the end of the day, we only want nothing but to love and beloved.