There Was No Goodbye....

You would have been one the smartest Gomez from our clan.  No doubt about it.  Tatay and Nanay would always take pride of your unusually large Cerebrum.  In our conscious thoughts and even I as a 5-year-old, knew you were going places…farther than any of us ever can.  Indeed you had gone so far…and a little too early too, I guess.  You must have liked it there so much that you decided to stay longer.

Just before we could celebrate your 2^nd birthday, you went.

It could have been me.  It could have been your Kuya.  We were so ill, too, that time you know.  But He chose you to go.  You must be a very special one to deserve a room up there so early.  As sharp as my mind can go backwards, I am still in a haze when I reach that moment when I had touched you for the last time.  It was not until I was in college when I realized how you went.  It took me years to have the courage to ask Nanay how.  You were just seated on the sofa, though a bit sick, appeared upbeat and you just said “Tatay…” in your usual tiny and endearing voice, just before…just as you bowed down.

I’m sure I was not around that time.  I’m sure I didn’t know I lost someone when you left.  I was just surprised one day years after that I’ve been missing you too long and yet I don’t remember you saying goodbye. 

I was just a doting 5 year old Ate who still did not know anything about mortality.

All I remember is the crisp detail of me in a room just with you lying on the big bed.  I went up to you, trying to wake you up, murmured something…maybe I was telling you a secret about your Kuya…you know how he can be such a cry baby sometimes.  You were still so deep in your sleep I guess, so I left the bed to let you rest some more.

Then I heard the door opened wide with people rushing to you…some crying…some saying words I don’t understand.  And other people started crowding the compound.  That was the last time I saw you.

I think you knew how much I hate it when people leave.  You did not want Ate to be crying and spend her growing years with a loss in her heart.  It’s just that if I knew, maybe I was less puzzled at the sights of Nanay’s breakdowns she tried to hide all through those years.  I‘m sure your “makulit” Kuya had endlessly asked me, too, about you.  He missed you, too, you know.

But…as the smarter one that you are, you knew better than any of us.  And He, as He always do, let things unfold by itself in their own time.  You gave me 8 more little brothers and sisters to love and “torture with care” on.  You were already up there long before they were born but you are never loved less.  You have always been alive.

How is it right up there, little sister?  I’m sure, everything is just perfect.  Worry not about us here.  Your memories have been one of the stronger buoys; letting the better us go afloat against the tides.

I still miss you, you know.

I will see you one day, though.

Ate loves you….