Passing on

He held his father’s hand when he died. That much the late former congressman Ysmael Bukad remembers.

He recalled how his father’s bony fingers gripped his right hand suddenly with unexpected strength. He was wasted into bare bones after what seemed like years in a hospital. He was so weak he could not  turn in his bed by himself. In time, he lost even the desire to. And they had to do it for him at regular intervals. But at the moment of his death, it seemed to Bukad as if his father willed into his right hand the last measure of strength, his last resource of power.

He felt the tightness of his grip until it hurt, bone digging into his hand, and then the slow release. Force falling down to zero in the smooth downward curve of a hyperbola. The slowest of goodbyes. And then his father was dead.

And when Bukad arrived here, his father was the first to meet him. And he was not a frail ghost of a man. He was what he remembered him to be when he was a healthy rather vain middle-aged father and he was only another strange boy in his large brood. His hair was sleek with Tanchu Tique and swept backwards smooth until it shined, like a brand new car. All of him shined as well down to his pointed dancing shoes, two-toned, of course. And he was happier than he had ever remembered him in life. Still effusive and loud in his pride for all his children.

It embarrassed him, this absolute lack of restraint. But he could only smile and take it as he took it when they were both alive. He smiled.

When he himself died, he was happy to see Heaven was everything his mother always said it would be. It was a movie theater. He came out literally from the screen into a big crowd clapping their hands for him. She now stood there behind his father and smiled as she always did. She could tolerate only the shortest moments of intimate eye contact. And as in times past, she took Bukad’s gaze only long enough for her eyes to say, “I told you so.” And then she looked away, still smiling. And at that moment, Bukad remembered how it felt to nestle into her vastness. He wondered if he could be a child here, once again. He recalled a vision of stone reliefs often embellishing the walls of colonial churches, how souls were often represented by figures of little children.

Heaven is a place of theaters where the dead watch the world of the living transpire. They watch the consequences of their lives, the people and world they left behind. They can do nothing except to pray if they are so inclined. Those who delude themselves in life come face to face finally with truth, here, in this eternal place. And it can either make them very happy or very sad. These emotions are elemental. As you may imagine, they can make this place either an eternal prison of regret and suffering or they can make this place the opposite of all that. Heaven and Hell are only the same place. It is only a place of eternal remembering.

But it is a wonderful place. Here, death is waited for and celebrated. It is the biggest crowd drawer. In this place, it is up to people to decide which theater to spend time in. There are theaters to show life from any living person’s view. But more often than not, you would rather look through the eyes of someone you love or loved when you were alive. If what you see is enjoyable then you can enjoy endless time. But you have the choice to walk away anytime you like. And it is the practice here to move from theater to theater. And there are stars. The big crowd drawers, the heroes of real life.

And there are themes as well. Death is one of them. As in life, death is still a gathering ritual. Relatives, friends, even small acquaintances come. And it becomes a big party of familiar people waiting for the new arrival. They view the last moments of a person’s life at the other side of the screen. They watch for small nuances of inevitable fear and doubt, and then a moment of faith before the final surrender and release.

Life, like a hyperbolic curve moves ever closer to zero but never gets there. Instead, it rises once again, here, at the other side, in a place where you walk into a screen of light and then enter and fall into the arms of all who ever preceded you into this place, as with this woman now falling into the embrace of her waiting lover. It is as his mother always said, Bukad thought to himself, as he joined the rest of the theater in a welcoming applause.