My cat Mimi needs a facelift. She is now 77 years old by cat years (11 x 7). I didn’t realize till today that cats, too, show signs of aging. The hair sticking out of Mimi’s ears have turned white, also faded about her whiskers and ears.
She now prefers to stick to home, sitting on the windowsill beside my bed and gazing at me, wondering why I’m getting so old.
Notes I found scribbled in my many scratch notebooks: “You are invited to a super-secret party—a rehearsal for a wake. Do not bring wife/husband or companion, come by yourself. And don’t talk about it or you’ll find yourself disinvited.
“Strictly 12 guests only, parang Last Supper. Wendy has made a Chinese paper house to be set aflame. We start with raucous music, but later, quieting for meditation solemn, because the corpse is your hostess. If you find it too weird, please don’t come.”
This was dated 2011, and I’m still alive. It began when my BFF Manny Chaves brought a tape from the ’80s. The singer damaged her vocal cords from booze and drugs. But she could still sing up a storm, and so she reinvented herself as a boozed-up singer with a cracked voice—to great success.
You be sure you play that at my wake, Manny. You kidding! he said. Your children will ban me from your compound forever. So why don’t we do it soon? I said. While I’m on my own two feet? Great! said Manny, my forever collaborator. When? Soon! I said.
(I know I already wrote a long piece on this, sorry.)
No sad songs
Next entry was Christina Rossetti’s “When I Am Dead, Dearest,” a classic poem later set to music.
When I am dead, my dearest
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head
Nor shady cypress tree
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet
And if thou wilt, remember
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows
I shall not feel the rain
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set
Haply I may remember
And haply may forget.
When my father died, my rich rough corpulent businessman uncle gazed at my father’s face in the coffin for a long time. Then he turned to me, I thought to give me words of comfort. Instead, he said, “Who put the makeup on your father? It’s very nice. Please ask for the name. I want to look like that when I die.” (I almost laughed out loud. I bit my lip from trying to keep from saying, “My dad was a handsome man!”)
Another, almost illegible entry of mine was an acceptance speech I was trying to compose for the Hildegard von Bingen award that St. Scholastica’s College was bestowing on me, which I was having a difficult time composing. Sr. Mary John Manazan, the school’s prioress, thought I deserved it. (I don’t know if she was referring to the honor or the difficulty I was having trying to compose a speech, hehe.) Here is the scratch.
Kinausap ko si Hildegard Von Bingen, sabi niya, Tokaya, makibaka, ’wag matakot! Ka Hildegard, isinulat ko: Malalim ang kaligayahan ko na napasaakin ang napakalalim na karangalang ito dahil mababaw lang ako. Ayan, wala akong ispits, kundi sugod mga Escolasticans, mga kapatid, tenk yu. (I don’t remember if I was ever able to do a more decent rewrite; anyway, it’s water under the bridge. I love it, Mary John!)
Next entries are fragments: Stop rejecting life as it is. Or remembering bitternesses and resentments and hurts. They’re samskara, baggage.
Life is a work of transformation in funny ways. It gives you a steak when you want a vegetable salad. You attract the person you have to work with in this lifetime, but he’s the most impossible to understand. It’s all about the acceptance of the imperfection of life (sigh).
The world today is never the same again tomorrow.