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Ako'y sa'yo, ikaw ay akin,
Ganda mo sa paningin,
Ako ngayo'y nag-iisa,
Sana ay tabihan na
Distant guitar chords wake him. Looking over at the bedside, he dares to hope. Could it be? Of course not. Getting up on shaky legs, he paces to the open window. Filled with haphazardly placed clothes, cigarette butts, and the stench of whiskey, the lone plant, a lucky money tree starts to yellow. “Everything around me dies.” Eyes welling up again, the moon shines upon him.
“I wish I was there with you. I wish I could jump.”
A familiar lullaby coaxes him to comfort, “It’s a pleasure to be alive, darling. But with it, comes suffering.”
It’s her. Aleksander knows it’s her. Shutting his eyes closed, biting his tongue, these things keep him from screaming out. What a good thing they had, what terrible thing had they done in their past lives to deserve this?
-
In her final days, Alina did not want to eat anymore. Tied to the bed with tubes and wires and all sorts of medical equipment around her, he forlorn letting her out of his sight. Everything tasted like dust, everything she touched was sandpaper. Still, she smiles her sunny grin. Makes him laugh with her silly faces, clutching her bony hand as he sits by her bedside. Each time she coughs, or faints, or is injected with more cocktails of drugs, is another tiny death. As the swarm of nurses storm the room, Aleksander is frozen in the frenzy. The wild blaring of the ECG, its lines rising up and down frantically, Alina’s eyes are stuck open, as if in shock. Her throat closes in desperation, “Let me breathe, breathe, breathe.” She cannot. Aleksander could do nothing but watch his wife waste away, kneel and cry like a supplicant at her altar, and wish the sickness took him, every time.
After being forced out of Alina’s hospital room by his friends, looking upon him with pity.
“Go man, get some food. You look more dead than her.” A joke Alina picked up during her hospice time, even with all the shit she was dealing with, she was more concerned about him.
“I can’t. Please. What if she-“ He clutches their hands, pleading.
“Aleks. We will call you immediately, you know that. Please.” Now his sister caresses his tear-stricken face, and how could he say no to that?
Wandering aimlessly down the dark halls, he stumbles upon the chapel. His footsteps guide him in. It’s quaint, dark, and filled with candles. For the first time in decades, the scared boy looks up at the saints, and prays.
-
The years, or is it months? Days? He doesn’t know. Nor does he bother. The only thing he’s sure of is time passing in flashes. Moments when he comes back to reality and realizes, “Oh I’m at the grocery.” With no knowledge of how he got there or when or why, life is a series of broken pictures. To his defense, he tried. God, he tried. He tried to live life as he had before, before Alina, before her untimely passing, before all these boulders knocked him over. He tried to fulfill his wife’s last wish, to live happily. But how?
The worst part in loving someone so deeply is that we become so attached, intertwined, and conjoined, that when we lose this person, we also lose ourselves. It’s a cliché, but we lose our other half. Everyone says to be happy for the time spent with them, for even crossing paths with such an angel in your lifetime, but all you can feel is misery for their departure. It's just bittersweet. At least she died first, that way she doesn’t have to suffer in this world. He’ll gladly take the suffering for her.
Unless the world swallows him whole.
-
His friends put him in counseling. Dr Katz, like all of them, tried. But it seems after the first anniversary of her passing, his mind was further away than it already was. It was already on the other side.
“And today? Did you do something good for yourself, Aleksander?”
“I ate. I made the spaghetti and meatballs Alina used to make. She perfected it, you know? So juicy and flavorful. Mine tasted like dust.”
“Perhaps you are being too hard on yourself, Aleksander. I have tasted your pasta, it was good!” The doctor places her hands together, inching closer. She wants to save him, he realizes. She cares.
It is a shame he can’t care anymore.
He looks out the window, at the cars passing by the interstate, children playing around the telephone poles, rain droplets falling slowly off the trees. Life is beautiful, and amazing and fucked up. But it’s like the world's vibrancy was stripped away when she was placed inside the furnace. She burned all the technicolor away from the screen, turning the movie monotone and grey. He remembers her little stories about her day and her coworkers and people watchers in the park. He remembers waking up after one of their movie nights, and looking over at her side of the couch, with her cheek pressed against the sofa. She was so cute and lovely, just knowing she was there was enough to warm him up. Knowing she was waiting for him back home made him do an extra email. Hearing her laughter was a drug he could never quit.
He gets up from the therapist’s couch. Checks his watch, it’s almost 8 o’clock.
“I have to cut our meeting short, apologies Doctor.” He can barely glance at her. But she can see all of him. His once golden brown skin turned pallid and grey. as if with her death, she sucked the life out of him too. And he felt like it. A dead man walking. a soul without its other half, how can half a heart pump blood throughout his entire body?
“Are you sure, Aleksander? We still have 30 minutes left.” She also gets up, silently hiding her worry.
“I’m sure. Thank you, Doctor. See you in three days.” He gives a weak smile, barely getting his lips to form a curve.
And he leaves and closes the door softly. As the young doctor stares at that same door, she admonishes herself, again and again.
-
Everything is quiet. The moon is the only witness. The dogs are asleep, the cats turn a blind eye, people sleep at this witching hour. He expected more resistance, more will and resolve. From his brain. His morality. His heart. But no, it is only now that they give him solace, as he takes a deep breath before the plunge.
He failed. He knows that. In the end, nothing mattered. His failures don’t concern him. His body or his appearance is a fleeting thought, tucked away in the back of his cortexes. But no, his failure to Alina, his dearest wife. In her last wish, as she grips his hand weakly, rasping softly, “I want you to be happy. please, your happiness will let me be at peace.” He closes his eyes, traitor tears falling no matter how hard he tries to stop them, because fuck, he couldn’t even achieve that.
He takes one last look at their shared place, and it is true what they say, your entire life flashes before your eyes. Before your last blink. Gripping the terrace handles firmly, he pulls himself to the edge. To his surprise, a smile, genuine this time, paints his face. “I will see her again.” Then he lets every muscle in his body go lax, as he falls, he thinks of only one thing: bliss. To any person with a spiritual eye, it seems that they can see a small, warm, woman figure hugging him as he goes down.
-
It’s a town tragedy, a blossoming, young, respectable couple dying. A year after the other. But in the clouds above, two figures reunite, kissing and hugging and spinning in utter happiness. If only they could see that, who would call it a tragedy?