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EVERLASTING (Part3)
(Short Story / 3rd of 5 Parts)
He admitted being so stupid for feeling how he felt because my grandmother was so young at that time, almost half his age. He admitted to being inappropriate because he was already married then.
“Ahh, those were why you did not love him in return, you were half his age, and he’s married?” Right Grandma? I inquired.
“Just keep on reading, will you!” was Grandma’s response.
I expected she would finally tell me directly how she felt about her adorer. It was again a futile attempt. I just continued reading.
—–
“I have laughed off Francis Bacon’s thesis about love. He said that love is similar to the stage. It is filled with tragedy, comedy, mischief, and fury. I thought it was a shallow analogy. But now here I am, sounding like an actor in a play delivering a soliloquy. And I am not sure when this will end… when I end talking to myself. “
“This is a comedy. I made myself my own laughingstock. And I am almost certain you are laughing now at my stupidity.”
—–
I paused reading again and asked my grandma, “Did you consider all these kinds of stuff stupidity, grandma?”
“Never! Why should I?” was her curt reply.
When I continued, I suddenly laughed (and my grandma was amused) when I read that portion of the adorer’s blog where he admitted he was crazy thinking of grandma almost every moment. The following lines are similar to the content of my video message to a pretty classmate I was wooing at that time. The next were the words I told that lady, “I think of you almost every moment…before sleeping at night, I would think of you. I would see you in my dreams, and when I woke up, the image of your pretty smiling face would greet me. You seemed to have established omnipresence in my consciousness. Your image is present in the books I read, in the movies I watch, in the sky, in the trees, EVERYWHERE!
Then I continued reading the blogs…
—–
” I have disagreed with Bacon when he posited that ‘it is impossible to love and to be wise.’ It is equivalent to saying that love makes a person crazy. I disagreed, but here I am swirling around my own disagreement.”
“Funny, but I considered kinds of stuff like these childish. I hate being dramatic. But it’s exactly what I have become.”
“What have you done to me? Most of my working hours were spent daydreaming about you. The first time that something like this happened to me. I never paid so much attention to a lady, and never had I almost begged to be given attention in return. There were women I dated who were as pretty and charming as you are but more sophisticated and schooled. But none of them charmed me the way you did. None of those beautiful and successful women made me feel and act so strangely this way. It was only you – a youngster – someone who has yet to prove her worth. You rendered my training in Philosophy worthless, for in matters about you, I have become illogical.”
“Yeah, I hate to admit it, but what happened is plain stupidity. This should not be, but I am so helpless. People at a certain stage in their lives commit stupid acts and say stupid things they may regret. Is this my turn?”
—–
“Gosh, Grandma, are you sure you are not a witch? I would like to think that you gave this man some potion.”
My grandma just gave me a smile and a loving nudge on my nape in response. “I would say that he had really gone crazy over you. How did he cope? I hope that your most ardent adorer did nothing stupid.”
Grandma smiled and said, “He is a decent man! He did nothing wrong! I did not know about his feelings, his predicaments, or the pain I caused him. He kept those to himself for a long time! Everything seemed normal when we talked personally, on the phone, or exchanged text messages! Okay, just read on.”
Read on. I did. I passed by entries that vividly elucidated the man’s emotional struggles, the predicament I hoped I would never be able to undergo.
—–
“That night, I went to the riverbank where I would have my reflections every time I would be emotionally burdened. Falling in love was supposed to be a wonderful feeling, but why it has become an emotional struggle for me. It has brought me more sadness than joy.
No, the sadness was not a product of guilt for falling in love with another woman when I had already tied the knot with another one. Not even for falling in love with someone so young. The moral purists may disagree, but falling in love is never wrong. Falling in love per se is not a sin. The subsequent acts committed to pursuing the feeling would determine whether it’s sinful. Ahh, I am clearly trying to justify my stupidity.”
—–
Falling in love is a beautiful experience, but the adorer’s seemingly hopeless struggle to shrug off the feeling prevents him from experiencing the joy of falling in love. He said that he tried so hard to suppress the emotion. But to no avail. The adorer admitted having his ways with women. He knew how to make women fall in love but never tried any trick on my grandmother.
The adorer wished that he could circumvent the existing moral standards so he would not suffer from his ethical dilemma or that he could have been born in a culture that would not give him such prohibitions.
—–
“I know I can love you but never have you. I can love you, for nobody has the right to prevent me from feeling what I have felt for you. As hard as I did, I could not restrain my heart from falling in love with you.
But I can never have you for obvious reasons. That I needed to accept wholeheartedly my love for you is a love that was never meant to be.
It was also pride, not guilt, preventing me from experiencing the joy of falling in love. I found it hard to accept that a young woman like you could put me on an emotional leash. But that also is a reality I have to accept. I gladly put in your hands that emotional leash. Make me happy, make me sad. Do as you wish!
Could this be my karma? I used to be the one who held the handle of the emotional leash.”
—–
I sympathized deeply with the man for all the emotional struggles he underwent because of his love for Grandma. What could be more painful than finally finding true love in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and under the wrong circumstances? What a crazy fate! This stuff, I thought, I would only read in stories and watch in movies.
In one blog entry, he mentioned how sad he became one night when he heard the song “Please Don’t Ask Me.” I sympathized so profoundly when he said that the line in the song that hit him the hardest was… “It only hurts the more I pretend that we could ever be more than friends.”
Several other blog entries dealt with how wholeheartedly my grandma’s adorer accepted the realities that confronted him – the truth that only a youngster like my grandma then would drive him nuts – the reality that he could love my grandma, but he could never have her – the reality that they could never be more than friends.
Then I noticed that sadness gradually disappeared in the landscape of Peeker’s next blogs as weeks passed after he met Grandma.
EVERLASTING (Part 1)
(Short Story / 1st of 5 Parts)
It was halfway through the century, my grandma’s 60th birthday. My parents were making sure that it would be a very memorable celebration. The services of a caterer and an event coordinator were acquired to ensure that the nitty-gritty details of the affair would be taken care of.
Our family compound was bustling with so much activity. People were all over. Most were in our sprawling front yard pitching tents, positioning tables and chairs, and decorating a makeshift stage. A few were in the lounge and the terrace for curtains and decorations, while others were in the kitchen cooking. In the backyard, the butchers worked on pig and cow carcasses, making the place messy and smelly. Thanks for the pig being roasted in an adjacent vacant lot. Its delectable aroma countered the nauseating smell of blood and uncooked meat.
It was not, however, with the big celebration that I was excited about but rather with my grandma’s promise that she would show me the blogs posted by one of the many men who fell crazy for her when she was still young. How did blogs look like when my grandma was still young? But more than that was the curiosity developed by my grandma’s constant mention of the man who she never thought would profess so much affection for her, more than the appreciation showered to her by anyone. But whenever I would ask if she also loved the man, my grandma would only smile but refuse to answer. No matter how adamant I would be in pressing for an answer, she would just stare at me and smile. And when I asked why she did not marry the man, she retorted, “Better if you just read later what he wrote for me in his blogs!” How frustrated I would be if she stated the same line for whatever questions I asked about her mysterious adorer.
She told me about the man and his blogs five years ago, after my grandpa died. Grandma said that Grandpa did not know about it. And since then, my curiosity about the man and his blogs has grown enormously. My grandma promised to finally show me what her mysterious adorer wrote about her in his blogs only when she turned 60, and that was that night. Five years of waiting would be over.
Like most blogs, the adorer’s blogs were purely personal, not interconnected or socially networked in the blogosphere. Those blogs were even classified as “private”; thus, they could not be read by anyone but the blogger himself. That was according to my grandma. But before that man left to pursue a career overseas, so my grandma could access his blogs, he left her a note containing the blog’s account name, the corresponding password, and a short message. Grandma kept that note carefully. She mounted it on a cardboard and carefully wrapped it with a plastic cover. She gave me a glimpse of it after my grandpa’s death but did not allow me to read the message. I tried to sneak into her room several times and wanted to find it, but Grandma was so clever. She kept it so tightly that, presumably, even my grandfather did not see it.
Nothing seemed to interest me that night, but when Grandma finally revealed everything to me. Not even the seemingly endless stream of food and drinks and the presence of relatives and friends would distract me from wanting to know more about my grandma’s adorer. I wished the celebration would be finished early, if not abruptly ended.
Anxiously that I waited until the last of the visitors went out. It was almost midnight when the caterers left, hauling their materials and equipment with them. Even my dead-tired parents proceeded to the bedroom and took their well-deserved rest.
My most awaited moment came. I proceeded to the gate, but an old car stopped before I could close it. That old car looked familiar, for many times that I have seen it in the past. It was a Mercedes Benz car. It would always roll off slowly whenever it passed by our house. It was for the first time that it made a stop. It was my intention not to mind whoever was in the car, fearing that the one driving may be a visitor who would require the attention of my grandma, thereby unnecessarily prolonging my agony of waiting for the realization of grandma’s promise.
To my surprise, the driver disembarked and walked towards the gate. I tried to walk away, pretending not to have seen him. But much to my chagrin, he called me out.
“Hey, young man. May I have a moment with you?”
With a heavy heart, I approached him. The driver was an old man. It’s hard to determine his age. I wasn’t good at that, but I think he’s older than my grandmother. However, he looked trim and healthy. His shoulders were broad, and his biceps and chest muscles were well-defined. His physique suggests that he could have worked out regularly when he was young, or he might still be doing it. I have been seeing a lot of senior citizens in the gym where I go once in a while.
“Good evening, hijo,” he said, “please give this to your grandma. My apologies for the bother!”
“No worries, sir! You are welcome! I replied.” It was an old-fashioned birthday card that the old man handed me. I didn’t realize that such stuff still exists.
“Thank you. Good night!” said the old man. He gave me a tap on the shoulder, went back to his car then rolled off slowly. As I closed the gate, I noticed the car parked on a nearby roadside under a bright light post in front of a newly-built bungalow.
When finally, nothing stood between me and the fulfillment of my grandma’s promise, excitedly that I searched for her. Grandma was nowhere to be found, not in the garden or the living room. I suspected she could be in her bedroom dozing off already, for indeed, it was a tiring birthday celebration she had had.
M.A.D. LIGAYA
M.A.D. L I G A Y A 