Tomorrow isn't just another day

I have this idea of facing death on a death bed. Sunbeams tracing their way through half-closed curtains. Somehow I can see the mahogany trees, their leaves a variety of yellow, orange and peach hues. It is summer and the tropical trees shed leaves to remedy water loss due to transpiration. Habagat whispers through my ears the days of beaches, mountain climbing, forest trekking, birdwatching, and afternoon book readings. By then, I don't really care who holds my left hand... a graying old man whose name i won't remember, a patient lady trying to keep a straight face that reminds me much of myself, or my mother preserved in her youth trying to reassure me that everything is alright just in case i am alone in the death room.

All my past flash before my eyes, like a slide show in sepia on a yellow-painted wall. If I'd been brave enough, it includes, surely, a memory of me in some lacy, white dress limping with the high heels i ended up throwing into a wide white lotus pond. If not, it includes a memory of me raising a fist against the world at the top of Mt. Everest. Any of the two will make me spend the last of my energies laughing.

As I expected, there is some degree of difficulty in breathing but youth spent on trails and tracks pay off. I am singing if i have the luxury of an audience. If not, then earphones are plugged to both my ears and the greatest country hits blasts from them; in my mind, I am young again singing like the whole world is entirely mine.

After the last song, in my repertoire or my playlist, I then close my eyes and pray with someone, or get prayed over, or pray all by myself. Thanking my Creator for the entire hundred years, for the many souls who changed mine, for the whole package of genes and experiences that made me who i am. I am sorry too. For the wrong things i did but most of all for the right things i didn't. And commiting my spirit unto Him, I look out the window and watch for the nth time, all the mahogany leaves falling.

Somehow in a fraction of a second, I prove that the Angel of Death isn't the eerie, black creature, with a sickle in one hand that the comics taught us. Rather, it is beautiful and so beautiful that the concept of the word can't apply. Of course, I regret not being able to tell the world this discovery but then I refuse to take a step back and away from it. It feels like all the light this universe can ever have spilled into the room, sharp but unbelievably not blinding. And so death comes not when I stopped breathing earth air but when I start taking in a different, pollution-free air, exist in a different undefined state, and see with another eyes. All senses restored and working but in a different level and for another purpose.

Well, that was my idea until yesterday, March 8,2010. I saw death in the form of a dumptruck while the motocycle i was riding skidded towards and then under it. I am only twenty four which would mean my flashback couldv'e been shorter. Yet, everything seemed so fast I almost have no time to breathe. Everything seemed to be in a dark surprise I don't have the time to pray. God's grace is just so great that even when we didn't have the time to call Him, He is there. He's been nowhere else but there that is why i'm still here.

These past days, I was so stressed I can't even send a text message to my family. I was so tired, I don't want to travel home. I was a coward doing things, I didn't even try. If the details of that event slightly changed...Thank God He has put everything in place.

Now, I have this idea. Certainly, tomorrow isn't just another day.