Only once

When I opened my email yesterday, I was stunned. I could not believe that a friend passed away. Dr. Placido Calimag, surgeon and husband to Dr. Minerva Patawaran-Calimag and father to 8 wonderful children had a massive heart attack right in the UST Hospital. They tried to revive him, but he was in asystole. He was brought to the cardiac catheterization laboratory, but in spite of all efforts, not even the best doctors present could bring him back.

I could not sleep the whole night. I was thinking about Jun and Ervie. It's always the people we leave behind that feels the loss... the pain... the loneliness... the void... the whys and why nots... the things that we've not finished doing or had said when someone we love was still alive...

We recall all the sayings on how "short life is", on "how well we should live life", on "taking care of our health", and so on and so forth. What most of us forget is we only live for today. Yesterday will always be a foregone conclusion. Tomorrow, well, we never will know will we?

There will always be stories from friends or celebrities or some unknown person on being given second chances in life. Either being saved from an accident, or having a heart attack and surviving it, or coming down with cancer and ending up as a cancer survivor. These are all anecdotal experiences. Stories of hope amidst hopelessness. Yet the majority of us who go through grief do not share the "second chances" tales. The only story we can tell is how someone whom we love so dearly has left so soon...no goodbyes, no clues or signs, no tomorrows. How so much has been left undone or unsaid or will be missed.

I once asked a friend, if you had 24 hours to live, how would you spend it? Easy question, difficult answers. But that is what life is - too many things to do, too little time.

When my niece and nephew asked me why I decided to put up a public blog (they were not in favor of it because it was like exposing myself), I had one answer...I wanted to document my journey in life. That when I go, I will be remembered somehow and some of those whom I leave behind would probably get to read my thoughts, my opinions, my craziness, my weird life...and yes, my heartaches and pains.

You gotta admit that at the end of our journey in life, we travel this world, only once.


[Photo from FotoSearch Free Photography]