October 18, 2004
Bembot
He’s our youngest. He just turned twenty five last October 15.It’s been ten years now. But July 28 is just like those other days that pass without making some imprints in my mind. Sometimes, it even passed unnoticed.
Not the 15th of October. It beckons and when it comes, I kiss it silently. Sometimes with a whisper. October is rhythmic, like Sting’s Fields of Gold. Its air is crisp and smells of unhusked rice. October is how I always remember him – not in July’s rainings and unsettling wind. In my sleep, it’s always October when I see him.
Sometimes, I would imagine how he would look like now. He must be towering over us. The last time I saw him, he was just short of three inches to scale six feet. And he was just fourteen then.
He once told us that he wanted to be a basketball player. So he was very much problematic when the doctor decided to cut his left leg. He had to be shielded from the pain inside, albeit temporarily as we, but he, all know. He was also problematizing on the thought that the leg to be removed would already decompose while he’s still alive.
He also once dreamed of becoming doctor. He even suggested then that his eight elder siblings piggyback his schooling to medical school by setting aside a peso or two a day for his college fund. I suppose he just wants us all to feel the idea. He likes stories as well, but when he started to go to school, nothing fascinates him than the forthrightness of math and science. He first learned simple algebra in grade three when I gave him nightly lessons of what I learned of it in a grade six classroom.
I remember his simple, pure interest in knowing the unknown when before his operation, I saw under his pillow a drawing of his left foot. It was a skeletal drawing with arrows pointing on the tibia, fibula, femur and other parts. Maybe, he just wanted to understand what’s going on - what causes the pain - in order to be comforted.
I still wonder how he is right now. Perhaps, he would just answer me that when people are gone, they’re really gone and that I just have to be comforted with such idea. But I’m glad he left us memories to remember him forever.
eyed at 11:42 PM
5 Comments
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at 1:17 PM
K said... Stumbled and ended up here...I'm touched.
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at 10:04 PM
bananarit said...
it is unfortunate that i never got the chance to meet bembot. perhaps, since i'm only a year older than him and that he was such a smart person (from the stories i've heard about him), we might have become good friends. seems that we share some things in common. :)
to bembot, wherever you are, thank you for the memories. though i never experienced them firsthand, i have come to cherish them through those you have left behind.-
at 11:54 AM
ikabod said...
jeanette winterson
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at 8:58 PM
eyed said...
gusto mo si jeanette winterson? peram naman ng book - pramis, babasahin ko (di gaya ng iba jan) :) excerpts lang nababasa ko sa mga sinulat nya e, gaya nitong sa "written on the body":
"What then kills love? Only this: Neglect. Not to see you when you stand before me. Not to think of you in the little things. Not to make the road wide for you, the table spread for you. To choose you out of habit not desire, to pass the flower seller without a thought. To leave the dishes unwashed, the bed unmade, to ignore you in the mornings, to make use of you at night. To crave another while pecking your cheek. To say your name without hearing it, to assume it's mine to call."
:)-
at 7:32 PM
ikabod said...
tanong mo si len kung natapos na niya 'written on the body', nung umalis ako manila nung nov 10 binabasa pa rin niya yon eh.