These fragile bones are wearing thin
You feel like home, so let me in
--Ali Murray
He had wide dreams, the kinds that can take one places, see the world and live its long forgotten awe. She knew promising years awaited him, while every day was a life waiting to happen for her. She relished all the moments Life left over lilting somewhere in the midst of sameness, even when its order was abridged to chaos. Long before they had grasped how memory splinters even without the intent to forget, they believed in something.
He arrived home one evening in Quezon City during the summer of 1999. It was a long way from his flat in Palo Alto, from the stony halls and wide classrooms of Stanford, its broad fields and icy mist, as if jeepneys were once just imaginary objects in his restless dreams. He saw one again and was disappointed by how pale it really was compared to his memory, or did this colorful mode of transportation lose its vigor? Like how I’m so easily parched by the heat now, he thought. It had only been five years but already he felt displaced; five years since he had spoken to her, seen her. He had often wondered what kind of life she chose. Was it as peaceful and light as she had always said she wanted? The simple: a supportive man, a white house in a green neighborhood, bright and curious children playing in the yard, a gentle orange cat sleeping on the porch. Thinking of this made him feel comfort in cliché.
Her eyes grew bright every time he would pass by their gate to say kamusta, and ask her if she’d like to go for a walk. Those sleepy eyes lit like the amber lamps at night which lined the stretch of their street. She had always looked forward to those afternoons. They would walk aimless to find themselves having fishballs and Coke for mirienda or even sweet taho just before sundown. It didn’t take too long before they started holding hands and exchanging furtive kisses by the time he would walk her back home. That was how things were as far as he could remember. They were together for what seemed like a very long time.
His memory was selective and he would rather not deal with things he chose to forget. How the memory of their trysts didn’t lose sharpness baffled him. He had long decided to let go of excesses, at least most of it, but not her. He mumbled to himself, could I be forgetting too late? He was struggling to remember.
One afternoon in 1994, after waiting an hour for her to come out, she came to see him with stony eyes, her face pale, almost blank. She seemed very tired. He asked how she was doing and what kept her long. She smiled with a faint hint of life and told him she was happy to see him, but that she could not go out, that she had chores to do. Upon hearing this, he felt weakening sadness. He was leaving the following morning and she had known for months about his departure. He held his sweaty hand through the gate’s gap for her. She placed her trembling bruised hand on his. He didn’t know it would be the last time.
In 1993, her eleven year old cat Aisha died. It was crushed by a tricycle in front of the sari-sari store three blocks away from their house. He saw how the lithe feline was pinned to the side-walk as the tricycle’s right wheel caught its neck. The rumbling motor went by so fast. After four days, his heart skipped a beat when he finally found Aisha that afternoon, only to break—the news raw on his eyes, he ran stupefied on the way to her house. She saw him but she had to turn. She was too delicate to see his face pale with loss.
People aren’t meant to remember memories that were never made. He could not remember things that were untold. But he was told the day he came home that she no longer lived in the old house. He decided to visit her three days after New Year’s celebration in 2000. He drove by himself to Loyola. By then, he knew he would again be going away indefinitely. He will soon fail to distinguish actual memories of her from the dreams his mind would create.
One evening in 1994, the family doctor said she needed more serious treatment. A lot of rest was necessary so she could recover from the bruises and lesions which didn’t seem to heal. Long before that point, she knew early on that he would go. He was not the kind of person who was meant to stay in one place. She didn’t try to make him. She couldn’t ask such a thing. She was not staying long either, she couldn’t anymore. By then, he was to leave indefinitely.
Like his memory, her fragile bones could not keep her vital elements together. He will try to remember but fail to recall every detail he so longed to recover. Nevertheless, he knows she’s alive inside somewhere. He resigned to this verity: Whatever we lose within ourselves, we’re bound to take to our graves. He thinks of this while removing the wilted flowers from her stone. That afternoon in January 2000, he brought her roses for the first time.
