Saturday, December 27, 2003

M.'s dad died in a freak motorcycle accident on a dangerous curve near Guihulngan town. The details are too painful to put down the way it is difficult to look through the coffin glass at his heavily made-up face barely concealing scars. I last saw this good man, a teacher, instructing M. how to ride his new black motorcycle around the compound. He was asking me how I teach world literature. I said, "Blindly," and he laughed. That was the thing about M.'s dad: he liked me.



But how I hated that mechanical black contraption the first time I laid eyes on it, which surprised me: I've never hated a machine before, but there it was --- a slow dread that crept. That last day we saw his dad, M. went around the compound riding the thing and I was so inexplicably mad at him I wouldn't even talk to him. All I knew was I know of so many friends who've died on this thing. Then there it was, my fear somehow confirmed, if only for a bit: M. crashed the thing against the metal gate of the compound, forgetting the brakes momentarily. The metals clanged and scraped. He smiled nervously. I fumed.



We received the message from a frantic Love, M.'s sister, while we were Christmas vacationing in Bacolod. Didn't even get to spend more than 24 hours there, and then we had to come back at once.



But M.'s brave and collected.



Gad Fabillar's remains lie at state in the Garden of Saints funeral park. On Monday, he will be transferred to Jimalalud where he's from, and where he will be buried within 15 days.



This is a weird Christmas.



Tomorrow, I'm leaving for three days in Manila to chaperone my mom for an important rendezvous. When I come back, I should have lots of stories to blog about. Like how I got a Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 28, and in the middle of the Ms. Bayawan beauty pageant, too. Or how a Dalmatian got stolen in front of our eyes, and we didn't even know it. Or how my locks rusted. Or how we lived in a pension house where the favorite ghost is a suicide. Or how we ate lechon for every meal for four whole days, and smelled porkish by the time our sojourn ended. Or how to have sex on a bus to Bacolod.



This is a weird Christmas. And it is not even over yet.
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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