Birthdays

My grandmother has taken the gradual descent to senility, the results of which are some mental regressions, including slight deafness, at times inability to communicate, and memory loss. It's as though she's aged exponentially faster since suffering a stroke three years ago than in the 64 years of her life prior. And this worries and saddens me. Though unlike the conventional Christian-based philosophies adopted by your typical Filipino, I don't believe that this is the work of some Divine Being, a minor detail in His Grand Plan, or even that this happens for some inexplicable Reason that we force and deceive ourselves to accept. It only is what it is, the silent progression of the later stages of all life; the cold and brutal truth of nature.

Tomorrow I will be spending a good portion of my day at Tri-City Medical Center, as I did today, to tend to my grandmother's appointments. Then I'll catch the new Harry Potter flick, since I never got into the books, and damned if I ever will, so I just watch the movies, and be entertained by how much these kids have grown. I'll probably have some tequila or wine, too, at some point. I know I'll definitely be having a beer.

But that's it. I just don't feel like making such a big fuss over a trifle so inconsequential. Maybe that's just a part of getting older. Each year adds and compiles to this breadth of experiences, though you don't always remember everything so consistently well. And I can imagine my youth as a companion in my travels. We've been on this road together for so long - hell, we've been together since the start. But this is where his journey ends and I must continue on without him. Like a passenger in a departing ferry, I wave goodbye, and he is smiling and waving back from the pier. And gradually his figure becomes smaller and smaller as this boat pulls apart our proximity into distance, until light can no longer bend and refract around the curves of the earth to reflect his image into my eyes, to send signals to my brain to let me know he's still there, smiling and waving. And when this image of our youth disappears into a singularity, all we have left is memory.

This is what frightens me most about my grandmother's condition. At her age, in this time of her life, she has little left to look forward to and a lot to look back on. But without memory, where does that leave her? At some point during our evolution we learned how to be conscious of ourselves and others beyond a strictly instinctual level, concerned only with survival and passing on our DNA. Now that those two basic needs can be met with little to no effort (at least comparatively), we are left with all this free time and space to fill our days with thoughts and activities that bear some relevance and significance in our quickly passing lives. You know, to make them more fulfilling. But what are we without these things, these experiences that have so unequivocally shaped and defined us?

In the days that have come approaching my birthday I have shared in reminiscence around the dining table with my grandparents. One anecdote we reminisced was the funeral of my great grandmother (my grandfather's mother). I had never known the cause of her death, only it happened suddenly, without warning, and that was it. She was there and then she was gone. I barely knew her. I was maybe five or six years old at the time and it is my earliest experience with human death, or at least the earliest one I can remember. The most terrifying thing I remember was this ritual chanting done by great aunts and other distant relatives, friends of the deceased. Kneeling and with rosaries in hand, they gathered around indoor altars enshrined by statues of Baby Jesus, portraits of the Virgin Mary, candles, figurines of saints, and other such supernatural Catholic paraphernalia. And they prayed, and chanted, and bowed in altering unison as though to attempt to communicate to otherworldly spirits, in order to ensure safe passage for my great grandmother.

I don't remember much of the actual burial, or if I ever even attended. But I do remember the ceremony. My grandfather stood solemnly by his mother's casket. The left half of his face seemed to be covered entirely in bandages. A few days earlier he rode his bike home in the dark. There was a pothole on the road that shouldn't have been there. He crashed and his pair of Ray Bands shattered and lacerated his face. Needless to say, he's lucky he didn't damage his eye. Recalling the story, he showed me that he still had the scars. That was a significant moment in my childhood, I think. It's certainly an unforgettable image, seeing him come home with his face covered in blood, his mother had just died. It was the first time I've seen a man, or anyone, really, that vulnerable. And a few days later during the funeral, the same man only stood quietly assuming the role of the eldest son, burying his mom.

On the subject of my birthday, especially when conversing with my grandparents, one memorable instance always inevitably pops up. The July 16, 1990 Luzon Earthquake. On that day, my third birthday, the very earth itself trembled in resounding upheaval as if to celebrate my life and all the glorious events that it would entail. Alas, disappointingly no event in my life since has matched or come close matching that moment of spontaneity, when nature tore a thunderous applause in praise of me. Selfish as I am to assess that it was for me. It certainly sets me apart and I'll take what I can get.

Tomorrow there'll be no earthquake, no party, no ritualistic traditions. Twenty-two is twenty-two. There is hardly anything worth mentioning about such an inconsequential number on such an inconsequential day. But at this stage in my life, even though I'm jobless and unproductive and "bumming out at my grandparents' place for awhile," and the job market looks bleak, and the economy in the shits, and my entire family is tens of thousands of dollars in debt, I'm glad I graduated. I'm glad there's a roof over my head. I'm glad for the abundant (almost excessively abundant) free time, to think, to read, to write, to ride bikes, and to ultimately waste. And I'm glad I'm still here.