When I die I'm going to dance first in all the galaxies... I'm gonna play and dance and sing. - Elizabeth Kubler-Ross



My roommate woke up this morning with tears in her eyes. She could hardly utter a word. From that look I knew something was wrong because I never saw her cry like that before.

As I write this, her grandmother is dying but she is waiting for her to come home. I got up of my bed and listened to her. She tighly hugged her pillow as she struggled to utter something to me. She wanted to go home today but she was short of budget. There was helplessness in her voice. She asked if she could borrow some money for her plane tickets and apologized for waking me up early. I felt for her. Her helplessness reminded me of my own years back, when my grandmother passed away. I said not to worry about it and told her to gather herself so she could catch the 9AM flight.

While on my way to the bank, I thought of lola who died without saying goodbye. My grandmother was with me almost everyday of my elementary days because she was a teacher at the school I was attending. We went to school together every morning and took lunch together everyday for eight years. When I got into trouble (mostly my fault), I ran to her. When a boy from the second grade (I was in grade one) pinned me down to the ground which caused a cut on my lower lip, she called him up and asked him to remedy my injury. The boy was stunned, cried and transferred to another school a year later. When boys at school challenged to fist-fight with me, I'd report them to her so they'd back off. During recognition rites, she was the one who'd pin my ribbons and medals. I was always first in my class and that alone made her so proud.

I was in first year high school when she passed away. On the morning she died, I visited her before heading for school. It was my daily ritual. She was preparing to go to the hospital because of the extreme pain in her heart. I knew she suffered a lot days before that but didn't know that the pain became unbearable for her. She told me that she wanted the doctor to take the pain away and asked what I wanted as pasalubong when they return in the afternoon. I just asked for money. Right after she arrived at the hospital, she had a massive heart attack. A few hours after that, she died.

I was not immediately informed about her death because I was in school. When I went home later that day, people gathered in their house. There were our neighbors, and our relatives, most of them were crying. When I saw my grandfather, I broke down to tears and ran to him. Your lola is gone, was all he told me and he placed his head on his palms. I could not contain the grief so I locked myself in the CR to mourn. At fourteen, I already understood how it is to lose a loved one but didn't know how it feels until that moment. She didn't even say goodbye before deleting a big and important chunk of my life. It was my first heartbreak and my heart shattered for her. She was very closed to me that it took me years to get over her death. I still mourned for her even when I was already in college. A red rose reminds me of her because she liked the scent of it. My Kom II compositions were all about her. She was always mentioned in letters from and to home. She was hard to get over with. It was my longest heartbreak and it made me fear death.

My roommate thanked me for lending her a sum for her plane tickets. Don't worry about it, you need it, I smiled and went back to my bed. After she packed her things, she headed to the airport.

Alone in the room, I thought of these lines from a popular movie, City of Angels:


I believe there's a place where the restless souls wander, burdened by the weight of their own sadness. They wait for a chance to set the wrong things right. Only then can they be reunited with the ones they love. Sometimes, a crow shows them the way, because sometimes, love is stonger than death.


I hope she'd be able to say goodbye to her.