The Weekly Weirdness

Rest in Peace

I'm a Roman Catholic and majority of my Sundays for the 28 years in my life, I attend mass on an old church nearby. Like old churches in the Philippines, some hot shot families have their bodies burried in the church --- I can tell. I see them in our church floors ever since I was a kid.

But what's really eye catching for me were the letters RIP in each and every one of them. "Rest in Peace"... why? Are they in some kind of war?... that's what I have in mind back then. But of course, I grew up learning about unrest souls of the departed. But who really needs the resting? The departed or the ones they've left behind?

A sweet cheerful friend and colleague of mine had just joined the list of the departed ones last Thursday. I've actually last encountered her still around making pleasant smiles and cracking jokes Friday at the office before that senseless gunshot made her stay at CCU (Critical Condition Unit) at a hospital. The firing was Saturday, around 2:30 am. She was shot on a reason that only the shooter carries. In fact, I can't believe people will have a reason to shoot a young lady riding on her van on her way home from a weekend night out. I went on with my personal life believing everything is the same way as they should be that weekend only to learn that she is in this condition at the start of the working week. The sudden and shocking impact on mehas let my tear drop on the news. No one can actually tell how much it mean to me seeing her everyday. Now, I have to accept the fact that she's out of my daily life.

I've used the word "live" like it was a word taken for granted especially by me as I mention it on my daily prayers, a part of a song, a line on a fiction I'm writting, a script I hear over and over in the many movies that I watch. In fact, I see departures, deaths, goodbyes so often in the movies over and over and cried along with the actors over and over. Then the word "live" passes by me like it wasn't there before those goodbyes and in some cases, that word actually existed even after the goodbyes. So it was until now that I've taken a closer look of the word goodbye. I've had nights that I've denied to myself that there can't be a goodbye... not that soon. I've pretended that there isn't some kind of departure that happened by trying to move on... trying to live.

Until now.

It just came to me --- living is only possible if you know how to say goodbye. Like I live today because I said goodbye to yesterday. I live to see my workplace because I've learned to say goodbye to a college life. That I think I must learn to say goodbye to a workplace with air filled with her laughter in order to live the days without them.

She has rested, that's for sure. The worryful world is already taken away from her. The question of her finding peace there is a question only God knows how to answer. We can only pray she has it or will very soon get it. To me, peace is close. I'm not sure if I've already had it in me. I've got to believe that I've already said goodbye to live with the peace I hope to achieve.

posted by Maecey @ 7/01/2006 10:06:00 PM