Scheduling Spontaneity

My last entry for 2005 was about losing a loved one. Call it coincidence but my first entry for 2006 is still about death. Doomsayers may point their fingers and wag them in front of my eyes, saying it's a bad omen but I choose not to look at it that way. It is nothing to be scared of because all people die, no exceptions...er...a correction is on the way...excluding Enoch and Elijah. When people die, it is a moment of both joy and sorrow when past, present and future all come together and settle on a person's heart much like a snowflake which, eventually, melts and becomes nothing more than a mere memory whose bittersweet sting could still be felt from time to time.. Besides what could be more dramatic than starting the year with an entry on a fusion between exit and entrance, between departing and arriving, between a place we call home and a place meant to be home.

That was what I felt like two nights ago when I received a message from Em. I was reviewing for an upcoming exam when her message came. She said that Kuya Elbert had died on New Year's Day. This actually elicited a rather late response from me. I racked my lethargic brain cells in a desperate bid to jolt them awake, trying to remember who Kuya Elbert was. In almost an instant a face flashed in my mind: a small, rather thin man in his 30s or 40s with slightly dark skin who sported a "semi-kal" haircut (if you could call it that) and usually paired his oversized white collared shirt with a bright smile on his face. I snapped my fingers in excitement. Yes! He was the guy in the Nat Sci laboratory who assisted the profs in the usual experiments like pithing huge frogs for dissection. In my freshman year in college, I saw a lot of him. On our dissection exam, he stood quietly in one corner, chuckling at how our knees wobbled like jelly as we observed one dead frog after another. He later on successfully suppressed his laughter when a classmate of ours let out a horror-movie scream and almost ran to the door when one frog, who wanted to say goodbye to the world with a bang, tried to jump at her with its stomach flapping open like butterfly wings. I remembered him! When I would drop by the lab in between classes to check out the bacteria I was trying to culture, I would seem him through the glass panel on the door, hovering about our test tubes like a bee among flowers. One he brought his son, who was about four, to work where I had a few rounds of tickling with him before I sallied forth into Lit class.

Then the very memories of Kuya Elbert which made me laugh slowly caused my smile to disappear. He was gone, just like that. Em later told me her brother said he died because of complications arising from sleep apnea which a layman would simply label as "bangungot." All sorts of thoughts ran around my head. Did anyone care that he died? I mean, if two years ago most students did not even shrug a shoulder when informed that our old Asian Art teacher had died, how about a lab assistant who usually stood a foot lower than most students? Did anyone ever remember how he could be relied upon to make sure that our ongoing experiments in the lab would always been in the same state as we left them? Did he die happy? Did anyone ever remember he would crack jokes so as to counter the nervousness that filled the air whenever we lined up outside the door before an exam? Did anybody stop to think about his son and how he had now become an orphan? Did anybody regard him not just as a lab assistant but as a friend?

My thoughts slowly drifted to me. Did I ever show Kuya Elbert his gestures were appreciated? Yes. Did I do enough or was it of lack? I thought harder. It may have seemed enough in my opinion but did he look at it in the same way? Was it enough for the trouble we were putting him through, frog legs and all? Come to think of it, I never saw him after graduation or when I finally started with my major.

People like Kuya Elbert have given us a little push when the road gets a little rough and they do so in their own little way. It may seem like a completely simple gesture for others but it meant a lot to us freshmen still reeling from bewilderment. Come to think of it, the world has become like a massive network of feelings with people affecting each other through their actions, much like "Pay It Forward" with more Haley Joel Osments and greater spontaneity. It's like what my favorite Mando-Pop artist Wang Lee Hom wrote upon learning of the suicide of his friend Leslie Cheung, a pillar of the Hong Kong movie industry who starred in Farewell, My Concubine.

"We are all twisted and sick, misunderstood and in pain. Yet we live for those moments of parting clouds and warm smiles.I believe that each encounter with another human being is a chance to create these moments, and am more convinced today than ever, that "breaking the ice" and disarming our fellow human beings of their fears and isolation is the key to letting us live in harmony.We should all be able to be ourselves, and connected at the same time."

In reality, the world is so small and I believe there are no broken links and dead URLs. Leslie Cheung's star status was a vehicle for him to reach out to people. But normal people like us are given that opportunity too - in work, in school, at home, in the grocery store, even while queuing up at the ATM machine. Perhaps if we all think of ourselves as part of a worlwide reality-base telenovela, then we might start believing that things don't just happen. They are meant to happen, just like the everyday sunrise and sunset and the moon going from full to gibbous to half to quarter to crescent to nada. Just like the astronomic schedule Haley's Comet religiously keeps. Just like birds flying South for the winter.

Actually, just like the new year.