I think about my own death a lot. I’m probably too young to be thinking about it, but I do. More often than I would like. Now, I’m in no rush to die, but sometimes, I can’t help but wonder how I might meet my end. I’m strangely—grotesquely, if you will—intrigued. And frightened.
I wonder, will fate be kind enough to grant me a peaceful death? Perhaps I’ll grow old and gray, and one night, fall into an eternal slumber in the comfort of warm blankets and a cool breeze. Solemn, serene. Without agony or regrets.
Isn’t that such a beautiful way to go? I know I am not alone in wishing we could all grow old to be eighty—a hundred, even. Seriously, though, who would want to stick around for that long? By that time, most people you love will have passed away. The average lifespan of a Filipino is about 71 years, and chances are, if you somehow manage to reach a hundred years, your family and friends won’t be as lucky. It’s simple math. You’ll be left on your own, and there won’t be much to live for.
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My Lola was 82 when she died. It was almost bizarre, encountering death for the first time. Sure, I had been to a wake or two before—including my paternal grandfather, whom I have not once met when he was alive—and there’s the funeral parlor right across our subdivision, so people dying wasn’t an entirely new concept to me. But the death of my dearest Lola caught me off guard. I guess it never occurred to me that Lola was a person, too. She could, would pass away.
And how bizarre it was for death to choose the most ordinary of days. It was one of many Saturdays that should have slipped into the background quietly, forgotten like the Saturday before it. I remember waking up in the morning and finding my family in the living room eerily silent. No pandesal and eggs for breakfast like usual, the air charged with something I could not quite place. Something heavy and dark and intense.
Papa broke the news to me. Lola was gone. Just like that, she’s gone. I recognized it then. The suffocating weight hanging in the air. Loss.
I didn’t want to wake up to a Saturday morning like that ever again.
As a child, I had always prayed she would be by my side forever. Coming to my rescue when Mama is scolding me, telling me stories from her youth—all those afternoons she spent playing with her brothers in the waterfall near their home and how they squirmed to hide whenever the Japanese soldiers came. She treated me and my siblings with cakes for our birthdays. She knew how much I loved Brazo de Mercedes, and made sure I always got it on my special day, complete with a “Happy birthday, Keng!” on top.
Lola always indulged my sweet tooth. It’s why I rarely missed a Sunday with her at the church. After Mass, she would buy me cotton candy as a reward for not sleeping halfway through the sermon.
I mostly avoid eating Brazo and cotton candy nowadays. Sweet though they may be, they leave the same bitter aftertaste of grief on my tongue. I hated that Lola had to die, but more so that I felt relieved. She didn’t have to endure anymore. For what it’s worth, death takes it all: broken body and soul. There is no pain in the grave.
I’ve seen more deaths after Lola’s. Nothing that made me flinch quite like hers.
A couple of months ago, I saw an accident on the road. A motorcycle collided with an SUV. I didn’t stay long enough to find out if the rider was, in fact, dead, but considering that his bike looked like flattened tin, it may not be that big a stretch. All I could think about at that moment was how much I did not want to meet my end like that. So suddenly. So cruelly.
Every day, everywhere, people die. Old people, young people. Babies. The famous. The poor. The good and the wicked. That’s the way it has been since dawn. Death comes for us all.
Admittedly, it’s not just my own death I’ve pondered on. When I was younger, I used to bawl my eyes out at the thought of my parents ever leaving me behind. It still makes me tear up. I have imagined my best friend’s death. With her recklessness, it’s a miracle she hasn’t wound up dead in a ditch somewhere. And my dog’s.
At the back of our minds, we all know we’re going to die. Still, we try to bury that thought deep, too unnerved by its morbidity. Yet, we cannot begin to know what it is to live without knowing death at all. We can see the things that matter in life only if we look at death.
Mortality is the ultimate condition of life. We build our lives around the knowledge that it will end someday. This impermanence, then, gives meaning to everything we do. If we lived forever, would we have cared as much, or loved as fiercely? In death, we are reminded that we have but a fleeting moment to live—happily, unapologetically, truly live.
