UNSENT BIRTHDAY LETTER

TODAY is my late wife’s birthday and I don’t know how I will observe her very special day. Two days before, my daughter suggested that we would celebrate by preparing the usual fare for a family occasion, a hearty snack of pancit bihon or canton, puto and lechon manok. “It doesn’t mean that Mom’s gone, we no longer celebrate for her?” she said in a sad voice. My sons wanted us to go to church on Sunday (I admit, since the death of my wife a few months back, I haven't attended a mass in church). Or visit her grave in Makati. 

But I thought of staying home and rather be left alone only for this day. I just wanted to meditate, and to reach her. Or, perhaps, to forget everything if I could. If only for today.

I can’t help but look back to those years we spent together, especially on special occasions like her birthday. Did I make her happy? Did we have special times together? I admit that I committed my share of some laxity to our relationship. It may be plain absent-mindedness on my part, or may be the lack of means and time. But I always love my wife. I always will. Now I understand what they have always been saying: “You only love the person more when he or she is gone.” 

But I have to work in the office today, and the kids have to go to school. And this morning I talked with them and had to explain that their Mom may not be around anymore and we might not be celebrating her birthday as we did before, but we know deep in our heart that we always remember her.

While browsing my file weeks after the burial in August I stumbled upon this letter I wrote for her during her birthday exactly seven years ago. It was purposely unsent because it was part of my journal then. I felt a sharp pang of regret for not giving her the chance to read it. Well, reading it now, it provides me a glimpse or a touching episode of our past together.

                                                          November 28, 2004 

Dear Rosalie,

It’s your 32nd birthday today, and it’s my 9th year to greet you personally in your most special day. Why, of course, in that span of time, we never had a special or I should say, extraordinary celebration, other than those warm kisses we would have early in the morning, watching movie and dining out together, and giving you simple gifts. I couldn’t think of a different or more special way beyond my means—no extravagant trip to Hong Kong or Boracay, no shopping spree in Glorietta or in Bangkok, no diamonds and golden bracelets, no song and dance numbers, no circus. But two days before, I thought of buying you this time a potted plant, perhaps a white rose or an orchid, or any ornamental plant that you can nurture every day. I thought also of giving you this potted plant along with a fashionable T-shirt or blouse, which I have never done in your previous birthdays. Remember last year, I gave you a Shoemart gift check worth P1,000 (now you may call that lack of creativity!)? And I let you—in fact, I accompanied you—buy the things you wanted with it. But the problem is, I don’t have extra money now to buy you some special gift. It’s two days short of the pay day, and I only got P20 and a loose change from the P2,000 I borrowed from my sister May, which I had used to pay for my application fee for the LAE [an entrance exam for freshmen at UP College of Law].

I didn’t have the time to go to a department store in EDSA or even in nearby Carriedo Street from my work because days before that, I had been cramming in my review for the entrance exam. And worse, the date of the examination coincides with your birthday today. So please understand why I have to be away from the special lunch you prepared for our visitors from Malate, Ate Tess and Nanay, and my brother Milton who came over from Sampaloc [Manila] to cook my favorite dish dinakdakan. So while you were eating then, I was wracking my rather rusty brain to solve a barrage of difficult questions from the exams, especially problem solving, and abstract and logical reasoning. But I have been thinking that an exam like this coinciding with your special day would, like the proper alignment of the stars, augur a better fortune for both of us.

I’m very sorry if I couldn’t give you a special present for this occasion. I’ll just make up soon, perhaps, this Christmas or on our wedding anniversary on December 30. Happy birthday, sweetheart!

                                                                      NEYO 

My wife didn’t reach her 39th birthday today. Knowing her condition then, I had been saving for a trip out of town, or to a place of her choice, for just the two of us. But it’s too late now. I already had spent the money I saved for our children’s needs. I had also stopped writing for my journal since middle of 2005, and now those loose pages had become part of a memento that could easily bring those fond memories of my life and that of my kids with her.

I passed the LAE, and enrolled at UP in June 2005 but had to transfer to another school after the first semester. I should have stopped after my short and dismal stint in the premier university, but it was my wife who urged me to continue my studies. Now I am into my last semester before I earned my law degree, but it’s very sad that my wife is no longer here to see me receive my diploma next year. But I know she would gladly wait that day, wherever she is right now. And having thought of this, when I say “Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!” I know she would gladly accept that in spite of my shortcomings. 

PASS YOUR POEM!

MAYBE nothing is normal to me these days. Maybe it’s about the pesky November rain, the last days of the wet season bordering on the much-awaited cool breeze of December, or the forthcoming Christmas celebration itself, with all its blaring music and commercial festivities, while I’m here missing my wife again. 
 

Lately I have been feeling really tired, trying to drive this icky depression that has been bothering me since August. Maybe in my previous life I was an African lovebird grieving for a lost mate. I would just stare blankly beyond my short beak, or would be looking for something that no longer exists. After a time I would say, “OK, that’s quite enough for me,” then you would hear a thud, and see me lifeless in my miserable cage. But this grieving lovebird in me has brood to think about, it wants to be a lawyer, and it is still dying to write its masterpiece.

Maybe nothing is normal when I started writing snippet of verses in my depressed mode, rather than when I am inspired. When nothing seems normal to me, as I’ve written in a previous blog, I would just write naturally. 

During a boring class, for instance, or when the professor doesn’t mind at all what his or her students are thinking on their seats, or doesn’t even mind I was present in class, writing down anything that would come to my mind in order to beat that unwanted tediousness is as normal as yawning for me. I could also doodle lines and figures on my notes, or draw a figure playfully, sometimes using the person in front of me as a model, or I draw my hands, my toes, my knees or my shoes, while thinking when will I buy another pair, or I just sketch a semi-abstract portrait of my teacher with all the distinguishable facial expressions. 

But what is palpably not normal to me these days is allowing my self to write a verse while taking an exam. 

Who could imagine that I had a chance to do it with gusto? Of course, you may say, it depends on the kind of exam. Was it a breeze, or a very short one and the time given to answer was disproportionately long, that I had the luxury of time to wait for the first person to submit his or her paper before I submit mine? Was it a hurdle, or the questions required answers outside those things that I had read about, so I stumbled and fell, and never wanted to rise up again but remained to be awake for the rest of the hour, and then ensconced myself on my seat in blissful ignorance? Or was I really feeling low and suicidal, that a Muse crept in daintily with a magical balm, soothing my mood and shutting me off my world?

I could use the last two situations to justify my act.

It was not an ordinary exam though, and unannounced. It was a graded quiz for a major (bar) subject in law school. I wasn't able to read my textbook nor had the chance to peruse my notes and reviewers. A justification, however, is in order: I worked that day until 5 p.m. in the office, though usually when I have an evening class such as this one, I logged out from work as early as 3 p.m. to have extra time to refresh for the subject. A night before that and during a break in the office, I worked on my article for a regional literary magazine, where I am a regular contributor, in order to meet the deadline late in the afternoon. Besides, I expect my professor would lecture that day. Our class could no longer afford for recitation or oral test, as we were already pressed for time to complete the coverage for the subject. We only had two meetings left before the final exams, so perhaps, I thought, the professor would just give us pointers or explain some key points for the remaining topics we were about to discuss.

So I came to the class prepared to listen and take down notes, but not to take any exam. And when the assigned proctor entered our room and told our class to immediately prepare for a long quiz, I was absolutely staggered. All of us nine in the class could not do anything but to listen to the instructions, got the questions, and started to answer them in utter discomfort. Better than walking it off though.

I was able to answer three of the five questions, though I wasn’t so sure if my answers would satisfy our absent professor. The last two questions were an ordeal. I could only guess the answers. Just use your common sense or at least be sensible with your guesses, I remember this advice from a classmate. Yet I have very little explanations for my guesses. So what would you expect for me to do while waiting for that appalling signal “Time’s up! Finished or not finished, pass your paper”? But no one was submitting his or her paper yet, and we still have one full 30 minutes to finish the exam.

So I tried to listen to the ticking of the wall clock, then I stared at the clock face with fibrous web bothering its rim. Suddenly I thought about spider webs, and I remembered Spider-man hanging upside down while his lady love kept on smacking at his exposed lips, but then I remembered my wife snuggled beside me while watching the scene together in a movie house. Then I thought of another movie, but another memorable scene would lead to a haunting episode with my late wife in a movie house again. I thought of doing a 10-count jumping jack, or to smash the head of the lizard on the ceiling. I suddenly crave for r.e.m. or U2 songs. I thought of so many things. Yet I was tied to my seat with the half-empty answer sheet staring at me. 

Then I thought of capturing bits of this somewhat muddled emotion, put it in a bottle and smashed it against the wall for the proctor to see. But he wouldn’t care at all, as he was now smugly seated in the front row, his back toward us, talking in murmurs with his girlfriend whom he brought along for his task. OK, I thought. I started to push my pen across the lines on the sheet in front of me. It started with a single line of an uninhibited thought, and then followed by another line and another line to integrate another short disarray of images, and more ensuing lines. You may call the lines shallow, but their instantaneous release was very helpful. Ah, verse writing seems so easy to write when I’m bored and distressed.  And such ease paves the unhampered way to flex my lethargic verbal muscles.

So here’s the evidence of a random, wayward thoughts from an unlikely place:

As transcribed below:

air exhaled gone before

it dispersed in a mist

but tears don’t dry up easily

in the absence of heat

now searching for the element  

in a space beyond the cloud

hovering this misty morn

blocking up the grayness

of the sun.

if only I could

reverse the direction

of the wind

and bring you back,

to the meadows of our dreams

where the sun is yellow

and the air we inhaled

is tangible, in flesh.

The result of the exam was a disaster. Except for one or two of my classmates, everyone got a failure grade. Later at the end of the semester, only three out of nine in the class passed the subject. Obviously I flunked it, and I enrolled it again this semester, which at present is the only and last remaining subject that I have enrolled before I graduate from law school this coming March. 

So, while the three passers were rejoicing and those who failed were contemplating on their fate for having another semester of long lectures, tough recitations and quizzes, some may be unannounced, I have this souvenir of a poem to talk about, and to justify pro hac vice my abnormal act.