Maj Guanzon

Goodbye, Version B.

The unread eulogy, because I was a sissy that way. I know she would have wanted me to speak at her funeral, but I know she will also understand why I was not able to do it. And that she also knew that I prefer to do it this way. Cos I am her favorite introvert like that.

October 25, 2011, Wednesday. Written for Maj Guanzon, with excerpts from my letter to her that I gave to her parents.

Dear Maj,

For the past few days, the highlight of my day has been going to your wake. Seeing your face, no matter how still and unmoving, talking to your mom and dad in brave efforts to comfort them, meeting your friends, and being around people who have known and loved you. That was my greatest comfort and my link to sanity. Now that too will end, because people are meant to move on, and because you also need to rest, both soul and physical body.

At your wake I had a clear understanding that there is still so much of you I do not know, excerpts of you that I have gathered from people who’ve known you for years, something I expected of course, since we’ve known each other not even a year. But in a way, I have not felt envy or regret, because you have shared with me a part of you that is uniquely ours, and that is something I will cherish. The only emotion in high relief now is a deep sadness that our friendship, and your life, had to have such an early end.

My only consolation is this: that one time you’ve told me, just recently, that you are happy now with how things are with your family, with work, with me and Rob and with your friends in school. I am taking it now as your sweet goodbye, when you said you were very happy things were going well for me, because I deserved it. That text had a hint of an end, and it felt a bit sad even then. Now I am taking it and sealing it inside my heart, with a piece of your beautiful soul, where I will keep them all for as long as I live, maybe even longer than that. I have told you and shown you how much I love you, in every little way I can, in words and in action, in the little gifts I got you to the little gestures and favors, even when unasked, that I have made. We got very close, very fast, and gone through more drama together than I have ever gone through with friends I have known longer. I guess God designed our friendship that way, fast-paced because we have a closer deadline.

In you I have found an intellectual superior, a generous sister, a protective friend, always proud and always encouraging, the only person to understand things about me that even I did not know. In you I have found real comfort and real friendship. No matter how awesome you are, genius and a protégé in your own right, you were humble and you treated me as an equal. I will always try to see the best in me that you always seem to see, because I owe you that among other things. I will try to live by your strict moral code, because you have been training me with it because I know you care, and because I make you worry. I will try to get through each day without your ‘good night/good morning hun’ texts to jolt me out of bed, without the rest of your texts and our exchanges that brighten my day in a way only you can, without the YM and FB chat/comment sessions that last until morning. I will live with this pain until it numbs a little and becomes bearable, because I do not want to use my time-tested effective technique of not thinking about the things that hurt me. Because if I do not think of you I might forget you, and that is the last thing in the world I will do. Until the last of my days I will think of you.

I love you in a way only you will understand. Pray for your family and your friends, for my mom too, if you may, from that beautiful place where you are, and give God a kiss in a cheek for welcoming you home. I miss you mare, my Batman, my hun.

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