A wonderful life!
These days nothing gives me greater pleasure than lunching with people who are more or less my age. We pass the time. We eat a lot and enjoy it, not worrying about getting fat. We drink red wine, get somewhat shocked when someone one generation down insists on putting ice cubes in her wine. We talk about old friends we shared, feel sad over their disasters, happy at their recoveries. We empathize, feel for each other, yes, that is finally what we have learned how to do.
Recently I had the pleasure of lunching with a group of friends – old, older, oldest. That’s not a question of their age but how long they have been my friends. My oldest friend in that group was Joe. I met him when I was a young bride with a daughter who was a little over a year old and another one on the way. I was so ignorant and innocent then. I think he might have been the boss of my husband. That was in 1965. Forty seven years ago! That’s a long time for friendships and much has happened along the way but we have remained friends.
We talked about another mutual friend. I’ll call him R. “Do you see him?” I asked because R and I were also good friends. “I was trying to call him some time ago but couldn’t get through. I haven’t heard from him in a long time. I was wondering what had happened to him,” I said.
“He now lives in an old folks home. I visit him once a month,” Joe said.
“May I come with you? I would like to see him again. He helped me a lot when I needed help and it would be nice to see him again.”
“Sure,” Joe said. “I will call you.”
Maybe 10 days later, Joe did call. “Remember we were going to visit R? Well, no need for that. He died yesterday.” I felt terrible. I don’t think I was so sad because R had died, especially not since I learned that the experience of dying was like having a thousand Os, as another of my friends had said, making me think of death as one fabulous passage from this life to the next. There is a next life I am sure. I am also sure it’s not in an auditorium in the sky where you sit and watch God sitting on His throne forever, like the nuns taught us. The afterlife is a mystery that I am dying to explore. As I grow older I find life here on this earth getting more and more boring, running out of excitement.
I think I was saddened by R’s death because I couldn’t thank him for the help he gave me once even if it ended up exactly nowhere but for one brief shining moment it made me a star in my neighborhood. But he must be happier. Surely he is in a better place than an old folks home.
I planned to go to the mass for R but on that evening itself, it completely slipped my mind. I came home from work, did the usual things I like to do, all the time suspecting that there was something else I had to do. What was it? What else did I have to do? My driver went home and just as I was settling down to a quiet dinner, I remembered. The mass for R! Now I had missed it! Never mind, I finally thought. He knows I am grateful to him. He knows that and it makes him smile.
Another week passed. I got text from my son. Did I know that M died? If I had gone to Ateneo high school, M would have been my classmate. Didn’t I just see him at a reunion recently? He is exactly my age. Maybe that means I should be getting genuinely ready to die too.
Then I remembered. When I had a stroke in 2003, I woke up one noontime alone in my hospital room and heard a male voice say, “Tweetums, you will live to be 69.” Never mind what I thought then but my next birthday is my 68th, meaning the end of my 68th year on earth and the beginning of my 69th year. So maybe it’s time to start packing, start getting ready for the trip, and looking forward to unraveling the next mystery.
Maybe. This should be fun. It means I should start seeing all my friends and thanking them for their kindness, for turning my life into the rollicking, frolicking ball that it was. Without question I have had a most wonderful life!
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