STORYTELLER
Romanticizing with death
"The death of my dear, friend Basinette Noderama gave birth to this column."
(Basinette was a columnist/writer of The Guardian, her life is a mystery to me and to many others, she died last Wednesday from cancer. Today there will be a necrological service for her at the Aglipayan Church in Lapaz and the next morning she will be cremated in Bacolod City, her ashes will be returned home.)
A date with death
"I have an appointment with death and I don't want to be late." She wrote us a letter when she was in Manila last 1996. That was the last we heard of her.
A day before she left for Manila she took me to her boarding house at Lapuz. She gathered all her books about journalism, including the Merriam Webster Dictionary and Roget Thesaurus put it in a large plastic bag and handed it to me. She was squandering in her closet among the brightly colored clothes and I was behind her catching every dress she threw, she said "take this it's yours, it will look good on you." Among them is a red executive suit. She then scratched her head trying to figure out what else she could give. And from the hanger covered in plastic she unveiled a blue cocktail dress with ruffles and glittering sequence and gave it to me. She told me "Jyh Ming, one day when you'll become a journalist, you need this kind of clothes for cocktails and functions, Ok? Wear it." (She's worried about my ethnic style of dressing, considers it primitive and inappropriate, which holds true..) I gave her a hug, and she cried on my shoulders.
After a year I was hired as a writer in Panay News.
When I learned that she passed away last Wednesday I felt sad, but deep inside I am consoled that finally, death did not stood her up. She was punctual and death was 12 years late. She waited for it. She longed for it. She wished for it. Who is brave enough to make an appointment with death? She's the only one I knew. And I think I am the only person who understood her intimacy with death. Most people think she's crazy. I may be crazy too.
Cancelled date
I thought she died.. Somewhere in the year 1999 I nearly jumped on the couch when I saw her on TV holding Gina Lopez's (Bantay Bata 163 founder) two kids aboard a big float parading in Jaro Plaza. She was alive. She survived the illness I knew so little about, all she told me was she has some tumor in her ovaries. Having felt the comfort and friendliness of her home province again, she left the Lopez's household and went back to the media as a writer and columnist. By that time I was already out of circulation for almost 3 years. I saw her from time to time when I went to the Guardian to contribute some articles.
Colorful life
By wanting death, she lived a colorful and dramatic life. She had been a nun, when she learned of her illness she left the convent partly because she doesn't want to be a burden to the institution and partly to celebrate her life outside. She's been a ghost writer. She went back to school, and that's the time we met in the University of Iloilo .
She always goes to a studio for picture taking, with her flowery dress and with a fashionable hat to go with it and her favorite red shoes. She savored every moment thinking it would be her last. Her life, she filled it with friends, parties, vacations, press conferences, interviews, and writing (not to mention depression and chronic allergies, but she always finds her way back.)
Everybody knows she was a brilliant writer. She was intelligent and gutsy. For me she was more than that. She was an artist! She was misunderstood like Mozart, Van Gogh or Virginia Woolf to cite a few by thinking ahead of their time.
Mozart had a date with death in his Black Sonata, Van Gogh and Virginia Woolf suffered depression and took their lives and Basinette chose to live and yearn for death until it took her. She knew exactly where she's going. Her life is only a deja vu of what she already perceived except the part when her parents separated. She was unprepared and devastated. Since then the feeling of dying or wanting to die consumed her.
Happy Ending
"I will not say goodbye, see you later." Those are her last words. I was not there. But when I was told she said it, I felt a lump on my throat but instead of crying, I smiled. To accept death in such open arms is unbelievable! She realized that the body is only a vessel it can be emptied anytime and the soul journeys to an unknown world where we are all destined to go and reunite someday. (She also requested that no black dress, no offering of flowers, and no boring necrological speeches on her wake and she wished to be cremated.) Each of her friends have different perceptions about her, she was multi faceted. But we have a unique understanding I'm not sure if she really wanted to die, or did she fight to live but long time ago, she told me she's prepared and have been waiting. And I want to believe that she did patiently wait smiling like she's waiting for a lover's calling.
Writer's grief
I grieve because I was not there for you when you are in the hospital. I grieve for not having spent time with you. I grieve because I never told you I understand you, that you are not weird for romanticizing with death, because I do too. I just don't have enough courage to accept it's reality but only thought of it as an escape for my miserable state in a certain moment. And I admire your courage.
I grieve because I never read the books you have given me and the two dictionaries. I did not wear that blue cocktail dress or that red suit. That's why I'm still struggling to be a writer.
Last night, I was there, standing beside a white casket, looking at you, but not feeling you. Now I am here writing, cross sitting in my bed, I cannot see you but I can feel you.
Thank you
I have written 7 articles for my column BABAYE, yet to be published. It's been a month now but something compelled me not to let it out, not yet. My first article was about you about her, Basinette the last time I saw you.
"The smoke created an enigmatic effect in the dark corner where she sat, I approached her. It shocked me to recognize she was my friend back in college. She was chubby and all smiles before, now she's frail and dry like life is coming out of her. She has cervical cancer. She was hanging out for a while trying to enjoy life to prepare for her chemo therapy session the next day. Smoking while in "chemo"? She was like my mother. My mother survived the 6 sessions chemo-ordeal alone, she claimed the cigarette helped ease the effects of her body's response to the doses, my friend say's so too."
I could have told her to stop smoking like I keep on insisting towards my mother. But I did not. I just listened to her fears as she lights one cigarette to another. Her eyes they are full of insecurities, failures and most of all loneliness. Two lonely eyes staring at me for answers. How could I say "stop smoking?" I let her be, I let my mother be. Never again have I argued against her smoking.
And yesterday when I knew you've left, I found the strength to have my column published and indeed the first issue was about you. But I changed the title into STORYTELLER having realized I am not a female activist but a storyteller like you. Thank you.