First of November

If my words come riding a strange, and, rhythmic saddle, blame it to the radio FM station from Boston, USA through Internet radio. I am listening to Mr George Devlin's program while he plays retro-songs. I am attaching his picture below just to show the guy:

His voice seem implacable to his face. His voice is soft and effeminate, but his looks are more of a strict policeman. Physical features and voices of a man seldom fit. A body maybe diminutive, but his voice can command armies to destroy nations. Come to think of it, voice is the closest thing that can embody a soul. What in a voice that capture the desire of a soul? Or retrograded, what in soul's true desire translated in our voice?

The first voice or the sound that we uttered in entering this world was a cry. Not an indelible word, nor a laugh. But a crying sound. Did our cries a translation of soul's desire for freedom from the confines of the uterus, or a conscious complaint that life here on earth will be uncertain and bitter ? And when we die, our cries become more sophisticated; with words that become indelible as our 'last words'. In death, one can argue the same thing: cry-freedom from the confines of the body, or a conscious shout that after-life can be uncertain and possibly bitter.

The first of November is the day to remember our dead. Stationed far from my dead love-ones, I honor them by remembering. And in my mind, I remember their lives by replaying and listening to the conversations, and, laughters we had. Of those who died, my mother's lost is the most poignant.

My mother died nine years ago and I remember her as if she died yesterday. Time whittling effect to the memories of my mother is un-niched. And with it, her lost is un-diminished.

The last living memory of her was the moment when the family decided to pull-out the life-support-system, after months in the intensive-care-unit. Her last days were voiceless. It would been better if she could talked, but the plastic-tube inside her mouth prevented her from talking. We conversed only through body-gestures. She tried writing and drawing symbols, but her plumped hands, affected by medicines, prevented these. Weeks before I had no idea that she would die. But my sister, seem to know the impending end. She was secretly praying for her soul by reading a prayer-lette for the souls in purgatory.

After putting off the life support, we circled around her bed and prayed the rosary. At that time, death was better than seeing her suffer. She died after we completed the rosary, nearing 6 pm of September 28, 1999. I heard my father, with silent sigh, 'She died without saying goodbye...'

Through the years, letting her go, without hearing even a faint sound of her voice, is the real bitter pain. A silent death is like a soul-less death. Voices are conduit to our soul. And soul's desire to be heard to affirm existence, no matter how fleeting, is a spike to eternity.

Start: 1 November 2008 Saturday 11:23am
End: 1 November 2008 Saturday 02:09pm
@home Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental, Philippines