It’s the 1st of November.
Let’s talk about death.
Everybody knows we are all bound to die. Whether we are the president’s daughter, the queen’s son, the duke’s nephew, the senator’s niece, the old woman living along the longevity of Roxas Boulevard, the skinny boy who walks barefoot on Highway 54… It’s a fact-whoever the hell we are, we’re going to die. That’s one attribute common to you, to me, to my ex’s, to my friends, to my pugs outside, to my persian cats in Baguio, to the Pine Trees in Baguio(there again), to the informative trees(informative, on each tree hangs a placard containing the tree’s name, scientific name, order, those identification-bound details) in UST, to the animal population, to the 6.7 billion people in the world. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.
Despite the fact that we are all bound to one common attribute, which is dying, the process of death for every plant, animal and individual varies. We all die but we don’t die in the same manner. This brings me now to my question-how would you like to die?
I don’t know how my beloved grandfathers died. It’s not that I don’t know when they died, it’s just that I was never there when they died. I never smelled their last breaths, never heard their last words, never saw their last positions. I didn’t even look at them lying in the coffin. I don’t remember crying when they died-not that I never shared a special bond with them, I did, but tears did not come rolling down my cheeks when I found out that my grandfathers died, just to check, they died on different dates.
I can’t figure out, before, why I did not cry. But now I think, I do. I did not cry because I know that death is soon for both my grandfathers-the one being old and tired and the other being a drunkard, a smoker and old. It’s sounds harsh but I think I expected them to die given the circumstances. I was not one of those people who loves sugar-coating inevitable-real-life-events by being optimistic. I am an optimistic person, maybe you are too, but our difference: I know when optimism can’t work its magic. I did not cry because I was ready for their deaths.
And my answer to my self-imposed question, how would you like to die, is related to my statements previous to this paragraph. I would like to die when I’m ready.
