I do not know what brought it on, but today I remembered a boy named Jonel. The last time I saw Jonel, I was 10 years old. He was a childhood friend, a classmate of my younger sister actually. He was a big boy for his age. He was popular, and we liked to play with him- we also liked to play with him. He had a sweet nature, and our rambunctious ways may have brought a lot of stress for him, but he would come over and continue to play games with us, even if at times he was the game.
Jonel died suddenly. One day we were playing with him. One day he complained he had a headache. Then suddenly we heard he died. He had meningitis. I think Jonel was the first boy I knew who died – the first person I knew personally who died, in fact. When we heard that he died- we couldn’t believe it. Wasn’t it just a few days ago that he was at our house? My siblings and myself went to his house which was just about 50 meters from where we live. We stood at the gate of his house. It was closed. The house seemed empty, desolate – somehow unreal. We waited for a few minutes, and wondered if he really was dead, but no one was about. In our childhood hopes, we shrugged off the news to be false. But in the evening, our family went to his wake. The air was perfumed by sweet-smelling flowers that I will forever associate with that night. The heat of the 100-watt bulbs around his casket was palpable. There he was-pale, a little frown on his lips –there he was – Jonel, but not Jonel. The reality of his death cannot be denied. I felt a crushing pain that came so suddenly, so surprisingly that I felt bewildered.
I remember him now- for what reason I do not know. But this is what came to me as I remembered that boy from long ago: there is oddness to life and a sense of randomness that confound. What maybe real can feel surreal, and what might be sepia-colored memories can be as in-the-moment as the space and time you now occupy. And in that moment where loss is the inevitable turn of events we let go with ease, knowing that nothing of consequence actually gets away from us.
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