Dear Friend

Didn't we just celebrate our 11th year anniversary in the corporate world? Well, Mich and I did. As for you, you've already shunned that life to focus on building your business portfolio this year. Happy Anniversary, anyway.

Of the 10 years, we had celebrated the first five anniversaries together in the same IT company that had hired us - Mich and me, straight from the university and you, right after you've finished the board exam. I had moved to Singapore before our would-be sixth anniversary and not long after, Mich herself moved to a bank. 

Team E through the years

We, Team E, had always celebrated April 12th as our anniversary - even if Karon started in the company about two weeks before we did and Jane got hired almost a month after the three of us. And while I will always remember that 12th of April, I cannot remember, off the top of my head, my anniversary dates in the next two companies that I've worked for (the last one, I am still working for). I guess I can never forget the day life slapped me on the face with the reality of adulthood, huh? :)

But there is one other day that I will also never forget - that day when death slapped me on the face with the reality of the precariousness of life.

It was early evening of June 21, Fathers' Day. I was working on my blog entry about my Bohol trip. Mich sent a message to our university dormmates' Facebook (FB) chat group: "Guys, may nakakaalam ba ano nangyari kay Francis? Bakit may mga nag-po-post sa wall niya na 'rest in peace'?" Immediately, I checked your FB wall and indeed, there were RIP posts. My initial thought was: "Joke ba 'to?" Later that night, we would have come to know from secondhand information we had pieced together from the stories of our former officemates based in the Philippines that those wall posts were not some prank played on you. 

Oh, how I still wish that was all a joke! A bad joke, yes. But at least if it were just a joke, we would eventually be able to put it all behind us and we'd still have you.

What most of us cannot comprehend and certainly, will take time to accept was how such an aggression could have been committed against you, who is probably the least aggressive person we know. Taking your money would have been forgivable. Taking your life, on the other hand, was nothing else but pure evil. What we all want most is for justice to be served immediately and for that criminal (or those criminals) to get what he/she/they deserved.

But what do such beings (I can't even call them "humans"; the term doesn't seem appropriate.) deserve really? Reclusión perpetua? Lethal injection? I don't know, Francis, I don't know. Tell me - What would God do to them?

That was rhetorical, of course. Wag ka naman magpakita sa akin para sagutin ang tanong ko, 'no!

That thought made me smile to myself. Twisted, right? Yet that night I learned of your death, in spite of the splitting headache I got from the stress of trying to scrounge for whatever information I could find about what happened, I did fall asleep smiling as I remembered things and anecdotes that made you, you.

A costume he himself had sewn

The corniest jokes you execute at the most opportune time. The most outrageous costumes that you wear in our Christmas parties: Peter Pan in a white thermal jumpsuit, Rameses of "The Ten Commandments" and the superhero of home repairs, Handy Man. The most hilarious situations that you get yourself into - the most memorable of which was that moment when a tricycle driver had mistaken the rubbers on your braces for vampire fangs and had adamantly refused to take you in as a passenger. The loyalty to only one IT company throughout those 10 years because you believed that "If things can be worked out, leaving is not an option." 

In my prayers, I had talked to you, too. I had told you that I would have wanted my father to visit and extend our condolences to your family. That was the least I could have done since I couldn't make it to the wake myself. But I couldn't even request Tatay for that because asking him would mean having to tell him, and my mother, the horrific circumstance by which you had died. I couldn't bear to tell them about you - I didn't want my aged parents to be any more stressed and paranoid for the safety of their children than they already are. I'm sorry, Francis.

The days that followed the news of your death were busy days for me. I became some sort of a one-woman contact center for our friends from different parts of the globe. Whether it's re-telling the news to our former university dormmates and ex-officemates, collecting donations for your family or posting our #throwback photos and memories in Facebook and Instagram - I welcomed anything that distracted me from confronting my feelings about your death. I didn't want to cry.  

Friend, are you mad at me for not wanting to cry? There are some other things I also didn't want to do. I didn't want to write this eulogy. I didn't want to see you in a coffin. Most of all, I didn't want to say goodbye.

And I never did.

June 4, 09:49 SGT
Francis: "Parang Pinas naman ata yung Brunei, same season ata sa Pinas"
Me: "Ah oks. So rainy siguro sa August."
Francis: "For you, it will always be sunny. :D"

Francis
1981 to 2015