When you are down and out, something always turns up-and it is usually the noses of your friends.

Orson Welles (1915 – 1985)

U.S. actor, director, producer, and writer, The New York Times.

My friend Karen came to see me the other day. It was the best thing that has happened to me for awhile now. After the banking fiasco, I have decided to treat the children and myself to an overnight trip to the city. I made the arrangements while waiting for the girls to get back from school and when we were on our way out of the house, my cellphone rang and Karen, my dearest friend from way back and she told me she was in town. What a coincidence! I told her my children and I were on our way out to the city for a night out but will be back tomorrow after our monthly trip to Makro. We made our date– we will meet in the hotel few hours before her flight out back to Manila.

Karen… A breath of fresh air. I love this person so much. She has been there when I needed a friend the most. Cherryl and Karen– both my dearest friends. Our friendship has been tested through times. Tried and tested. Even when my family has moved abroad, they have been there.

Karen went to visit me when I needed someone the most. She saw me at my worst and she was there to give me a hand and she listened to my woes. You know how it feels like? I feel lighter after speaking to her. She reassures me like no one can. Karen is my speaker in the event I get stalled up in the pearly gates of heaven, no doubt.

Cherryl was also there to lend a helping hand when I needed it the most. I didn’t even have to say anything, and she’d be there to lend a hand or two. Perhaps one of the people who has known me well since we have known each other since we were in primary school. We were never really friends back then, but when I got married and through a stroke of luck, we discovered how alike we are and how much we jive. Her mature views and thoughtfulness rank true and I never doubted her friendship ever since we became close.

Now that we are all are far from each other and we do not get to communicate as often as before in Manila, I look back with wistfulness and wish I would be able to cultivate the same degree of friends here and also continue to nurture the friendship that I have with both Karen and Che.

Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence sweeteneth it.

James Howell (1594? – 1666)

English writer, Familiar Letters of James Howell (W. H. Bennett (ed.)

We actually choose our life and how we deal with friends or other relations we have in this lifetime. To me, the tribulations and twist of fate that has brought the demise of my marriage has strangely strengthen and tested my relationship with my friends. Not only had I proven that true friends shall never leave you in the dumps, and like Orson Welles said above, I welcome my friends’ noses anytime..

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Absence, Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

When my mother died, I went blank When my brother died, my world stopped.

Death has a strange way of putting our own lives in perspective. In my lifetime, I had 2 close friends who died when I was under 12 years old and 2 family members. My brother died when I was 25. My mother died when I was 31.

Mylene and Roxanne died when I was in elementary school. Both died of some disease that we more or less knew they were going to die, like my mother. My mother had some heart disease, and she has been having those tiny strokes for 2 years prior to her death last year. My brother died unexpectedly. He was a robust man. He traveled to Manila, took a plane, attended to a meeting, felt headache and couldn’t breathe, went to Makati Med for a check up after officemates insisted, next day, he died. Myocardial infarction. He died at the age of 42.

My mother died at the age of 54. She died the day of my son’s birthday and the day we arrived in Manila from abroad. The day my mother died was bittersweet for me. My children and I were in Bangkok safely, and looking forward to coming home. I only heard of my mother’s death 2 days after. My world paused, and I had to know what my priorities were that time and I moved.

When people close to me died, I realized that they are gone. I speak of my brother with happiness and pride at all times. His memories are still alive but those are all but memories. My mother left a huge mark on my life and her existence had formed me as a person more than my father had. I am more my mother than anybody else. Living with my father now and realizing how much my mother had given to our lives and her relationship with my father made me understand the real meaning of companionship and dedication of couples to each other and the vow they took decades ago. But this entry is not about that. This is about memories that we allow ourselves to be immersed in and how we allow the memories of the dead interplay with our current lives. Their lives cease to exist, but their memories lingers as long as we allow them to be.