YOUNG VOICE
Closure
Several years from now, I wish when we bump into each other, we can pause for some ten seconds, smile, and dare to ask how each of our families is doing. That, my dear friend, is how it will be when there’s closure
THE anesthesia has worn off. You can now wiggle your toes and feel the blood pressure cuff tightening around your arm. The doctor ordered you can leave the recovery room in an hour. Though your incision is starting to feel like a pin cushion, you do not mind. The surgery is over and any moment soon you’ll be wheeled into your room where your family is eager to meet you.
But, have you heard of postoperative complications? There’s infection, bleeding, evisceration and dehiscence where you’ll be surprised to see visceral organs popping out from the suture site. Yes, these do happen, imperfections in wound closure, either because the surgeon wasn’t much of a dressmaker in his past life or you might have done some gymnastic routines just a day after the operation.
Closure, it needs to be sealed tight, closed and secured.
Closure is a concern not for surgeons alone. Every day we get a chance to open doors, undo windows, open locks and even zippers. But, alongside our opportunity to open is the duty to close. To close, not just to satisfy the nature of the opposites, but to serve certain purposes. We close open doors to keep troublemakers out while we take our beauty sleep. We close open windows when the climate is awfully chilly to keep ourselves warm and from taking an unexpected trip to Antarctica. We close open locks to secure our week’s allowance inside bolted lockers. We close our open zippers to spare ourselves from a lifetime of mockery and humiliation.
Without closure there can be no certainty, we leave ourselves hanging and this becomes one of the worse tortures to our earthly lives. If you ask me, I’d rather be disappointed and depressed than unsure and indecisive. At least I know that I have to cry.
I have my own ongoing quest for closure. It has been trailing me since high school and although it may seem a petty teenage dilemma, it still bugs me.
When I was in high school, somebody promised that he will wait because I told him I have to graduate first before I can even consider the idea of being in-love. What a pathetic loser I had been, easily swayed by fictional romance thinking that a typical handsome basketball-playing ‘crush ng bayan’ can truly wait for the typical average-looking nerd like me. But since there were a lot of girls who liked him just as much, they told me stories that he was already seeing someone else, someone pretty. I was driven by furious angst, and confronted him that he made a promise and he should just live a happy life with his new girl. Irrational move, I know. But I’m in high school. It’s instinct.
Of course, he tried to explain but he never pushed through. He gradually stopped texting. He gradually stopped seeing me. Then, what was like a tetanus-rich dagger came piercing my teenage heart. I found out he really has a girlfriend via Friendster. From then on, we never communicated. We often nearly bump into each other, but we pretend as if we’re strangers.
I do not know if I still like him or not, but at this point I just need closure. I need to know if he’s angry and he needs to know I was really hurt then but now I’m down with it. In all modesty my dear readers, I tried to patch things up. I tried in order to clarify. But, he’s not willing to pull the other end of the rope, I guess.
I hate myself going the other way because he’s approaching, I hate myself posting read-between-the-line statuses in Facebook whenever he’s online. You see, petty and tiny as this may appear, it affects my system.
Businessmen don’t take further action until the deal is closed. Whenever there is still an issue, you tend to become decremented to move forward, to move on. Someone or something is taking you aback and it is not a pretty feeling. So I suggest all you people who still have your own loose sutures, to settle them now. Don’t wait until chances execute their own closure. You might regret it for life. A cold war with an ex-best friend, a disagreement with a sibling whom you haven’t greeted for several years, you liabilities, your debts, your unfinished business; all of these require closure. All of these, without settling might keep us waking in the middle of the night, wishing that they could have been done, they could have been closed.
To the person I am referring to, you know who you are. You might dislike me sbut I wanted a life of peace and I apologize. Several years from now, I wish when we meet each other along the sidewalks, I will tell my daughter to greet you Hello and that he is a good friend of her mom. Several years from now, I wish when we bump into each other, we can pause for some ten seconds, smile, and dare to ask how each of our families is doing. That, my dear friend, is how it will be when there’s closure.
Even a carton of milk instructs to close the lid once opened to keep it fresh.
Seek for closure.
(Reactions to reylangarcia@yahoo.com)
