The Final Journey

CEBU, Philippines - Helen was always afraid of travelling to faraway places.

She had a phobia of being on a boat or plane. These modes of transportation conjured up horrible thoughts in her mind.

But the economic hurdles at home forced Helen to look for better opportunities abroad. She was a nurse, and got a job in the Middle East. The many hours of air travel to the foreign country was a terrible experience for her, and she dreaded going through it all again.

For ten years, Helen never once came home. She would only communicate with her husband and three growing children through Skype. It was not enough, she knew, and with the good pay she was getting, she could very well afford the airfares home and back to work abroad.

But, again, she had a terrible phobia of long-distance travel, especially by plane or boat. She would think up horrible situations – the plane would crash, the boat would sink, or terrorists would be on the trip. Her feelings of fear were so strong that these prevailed over her desire to be with her family on certain occasions.

One afternoon, in the faraway country where Helen worked, she was on her way to the airport. She was finally going home for Christmas a few weeks away. But, unfortunately, she found herself driving in an unfamiliar territory. She very seldom left the city and was not very knowledgeable about the suburbs.

There was no doubt that she lost her way. To her great annoyance, she was in a dusty, decrepit slum area only about a mile away from the elegant and sophisticated environment she had left just minutes before. She hesitated to get out of the car to ask for directions from the two or three people she could see by the roadside. They looked suspicious to her.

After a few minutes, she was getting impatient and decided to get out of the car to approach the old man drying bricks in a small clearing nearby. The bricks were made of mud and hay, a very old method of producing such construction material. Helen thought that the area was left behind by modern progress.

Then she heard a faint sound of people singing. It came from beyond the row of dilapidated brick buildings a few meters away from the road. It seemed like there was some religious ceremony going on. She took a few more cautious steps towards the old man. As she got near him, the old man looked up from under his wide-brimmed palm hat and smiled. 

Helen felt safe; the expression on the man’s face was reassuring. In Arabic, a language she had since learned to speak a bit, she asked which way was the airport. The man sympathetically pointed to the opposite direction. Helen figured out that going back would take her almost an hour of road trip, but she would still be on time to catch her flight.

Just as she was thanking the old man, she heard a tolling of the bells, from where she earlier heard ceremonial singing. She turned back to the old man, who was smiling bigger. He said it was the Lord’s Day, and volunteered to explain that he himself had already attended the service early in the morning so he could still catch the sun to dry his bricks.  He sought to be with God first, he said. Drying bricks was not work, he added; work was in making the bricks. One should not work on the Lord’s Day.

Shortly, people began to emerge from behind the row of dilapidated brick buildings. Men and women, boys and girls, young and old, their faces seemed to be beaming with joy and grace for having made holy the Lord’s Day. It was a moving sight to Helen.

She reflected on her own spiritual state. It dawned on her that her faith in God had since paled in the face of life hurdles. God had simply become mere religion to her. She had not even discussed spirituality with her kids. She only wanted to take care of their material needs.

Then, Helen thought, perhaps this was the root cause of her phobia for travelling, this lack of God in her life. She feared making long journeys, because it might take her to another realm – and she knew she was not ready. She always felt – although perhaps subconsciously – that she was not ready to meet with God.

All the more horrified with what she had come to realize, Helen thanked the old man for the information and headed back to the car. She took a deep breath, started the car, and headed back.

Helen was in tears when she related her strange experience to me, a few minutes before she went aboard her flight home. She said, between sobs, how she was not afraid of flying anymore. I remarked, “That’s very good to know, Mama.”

That was the last time I heard my mother’s voice. Her plane went missing half an hour into the flight. Authorities said it was purely an accident, others believed it was the work of terrorists.

Sadly, whatever explanation will not possibly bring back my mother. But we in the family console ourselves with the hope that she had successfully made the final journey – to meet the God that she had mostly taken for granted while still in this life. And we that she left behind will try the best we can to make sure we won’t lose our own ways with God. Orestes Nuez   (FREEMAN)