Over scrumptious food, a get-together!

The invite came on short notice, a classmate is due to fly back home to America, and could we please meet up for lunch?

No further prodding needed, even if it was a Monday, the first workday of the week.

Most of us do work from home, the post pandemic arrangement for those with office jobs, and for the rest, mothers who have established their own businesses in their own abodes.

But that is not the story.

Our classmate’s sibling passed, and she had to come home for the wake and interment of a beloved. A grieving moment that came around Valentine season.

But before she set off for home, she also wanted to see us, her high school classmates. Thus, the invite…. Which I , for one, got pretty excited about.

I couldn’t narrate our stories here, for some are too hurting or too personal to tell. But I could vouch for the laughter that came with the tears, Do not ask me to explain. Sometimes, there’s joy amid sorrow, and what grieves the heart, once cried about, brings about a certain feeling of joy….

There is a Filipino saying that states ‘everything could be solved with food first…’ Thus we ate a lavish lunch with gusto.

Beed kare-kare, okoy, crispy pancit, grilled pusit, sinigang na hipon, sizzing tofu, pinakbet… plus cakes and kapeng barako.

Thank you, God, for another meeting with friends.

Pictures taken from classmates.

Hollowed Grounds

Drone footages showed eerie stretches of brown arid earth gouged out, most likely up to six feet under the grounds, for the long line of dead people from the ghastly aftermath of the Anatolian Fault quake. Seven days now.

History books show this fault is Asia Minor, the modern-day Turkey, which just June of last year, changed its name to Turkiye.

The tally of the dead corresponds to thirty-three thousand as of last official report, meaning the mass graves could go miles and miles …

No coffins. No caskets. Just black body bags. Or yellow. Or orange. Or even blue.

No loads of mourners. Just grave diggers with shovels. And heavy equipment: backhoes and bulldozers.

Every now and then, a lone crier comes. Or two. Or three, Grieving for their beloved.

For the most, entire families, relatives, and friends, have perished. No one to mourn.

No candles yet, Nor flowers. Nor incense. Or whatever the culture dictates customary to burying the dead. The dead should simply be buried.

Eventually, there will be tombstones or markers, or even grass perhaps, to remind the living of what had been.

It is something that springs from a verse once spoken by a Great Teacher: Let the dead past bury the dead.

Life goes on. The living will find ways to thrive amid adversities.

The Turks, and the Syrians also, are of inviolable stock. The Syrians, though in strife for eleven years of civil war, have the mighty Assyrians in their lineage.

Two musicians composed pieces in honor of the Turks: Beethoven and Mozart. Beethoven’s sonata is mellow. Mozart’s march is rhythmic, perky enough to tell the strength of its people.

May the Turks and the Syrians find a way to peace..

The Magnitudes of Desolation!

Three thousand four hundred and fifty tenement dwellings were toppled down by the powerful earthquakes and series of aftershocks in Turkey and Syria since Monday morning. The tally of the dead comes to a mind-boggling twelve thousand five hundred, and counting.

The tremors came while the victims were sound asleep. It was the dead of winter, the coldest and bitterest time of year. The world was astounded, and gathering their bearing after a brief initial shock, came to action and sent help: manpower, utility, food, canines, etcetera.

The rescue operations were heartbreaking, the rubbles were piled up massive, heavy to lift and muscle draining. Yet out of the devastation came a newborn baby, born of the quake, the mother dead. Another girl was pulled out, her ashen face searching for her mother who also perished underneath the stones.

We do our best to find reasons for being, as to why these already war-torn countries have to be the site of the strongest modern-day quakes.

Sometimes, though, we do not need answers. We only have to keep quiet and digest it all, just like how the rescuers asked everyone to cease creating noises, so they could hear the plea for help of any survivor.

Yes, in silence we pray. Just pray.

Lord, have mercy.

Pre-Valentine Blues

That is correct, February, the commercially-designated love month could be disconcerting to many a single ladies. Not me, of course, I mean the young ones. Overheard two lady doctors chatting…

Doc Ces: Titanic will be showing on IMax, let’s reserve tickets…

Doc Pat: Okay, but that would mean we’d be in the company of lovers…

Doc Ces: Why?

Doc Pat: It’s Valentine’s!

Doc Ces: I haven’t seen Titanic yet but I don’t like watching with lovey-dovies!

Doc Pat: I have a copy.

Doc Ces: Send me. Will watch it on my laptop.

Doc Pat: Hokay!

Poof!

Dear St. Valentine, if only you know how your kindness in loving others had been marketed for romantic purposes… and how many could feel so left out.

To all the single ladies, and gentlemen, don’t feel so depressed, just have a bowl of steamy hot ‘laksa.’ a Singaporean equivalent to hot pot or seafood soup. Filling for the heart and the soul. Ha ha.