Aenigma

Death of a Pragmatist

FEBRUARY 29

6:47 AM Mother said that if you repeated something so many times it would begin to lose its meaning. I knew I said it a thousand times and now a thousand one, but I'm going to repeat it over and over inside my head that "I love you," and I just wish I didn't. I could hear my own voice coming out of my mouth as she cried from the other side of the line. She was apologizing. I wasn't sure if she was lying or anything, but what I know was how much I meant each word I said. I could say it more and more but it would never lose its meaning. I love you I love you I love you, and she already hung up.

10:34 AM It wasn't a really good day to start off. I guessed maybe this was why February 29 only happens once every four years. To be exact, today was my mother's funeral. The whole place had one hundred black chairs filled proportionally by sixteen people. There was me, my father, and a few other moms she spent time with in her cooking class.

According to my memory, she had attended it for only eight times in two months every two hours. Technically, she knew each of them in a total of sixteen hours, which was less than a whole day.

My dad talked about how he met mother in a farm at Baguio, she wasn't educated but he loved her all the same. I talked about how she filled the holes of dad's absence, how low was the probability of her dying because of a simple accident like slipping in the bathroom and hitting your head in the toilet seat. I mean, counting the variables in the process and the odds of falling in the right angle— I really, didn't expect her death. I could spend two more hours writing about how heavy it felt inside me, but I guessed it's better to keep it in and repress keep it in and repress keep it in and repress.

3:11 PM The mass of the coffin was two and a half times the mass of mother multiplied by the acceleration of the gravity divided by four, and that's the amount of weight I carried as we lowered her to the grave.

8:56 PM Most people couldn't get themselves to eat after a traumatic incident, maybe after a break-up or the death of a love one— but to me, if you analyze the whole situation, I find it logically unacceptable. So even though it was true and I indeed felt that way, I ate. I shoveled the rice into my mouth thirty-eight times til' I'm full and let nine bottles of beer quench my thirst.

FEBRUARY 29

6:44 AM I woke at sound of a death metal song set as my ringtone. Thirty-thousand pounds of weight were added to my body as I tried to get myself up, my head was being crushed between two ten-wheeler trucks and I never felt so tired.

I grabbed my phone thirteen inches away from my bed, two inches beside the lamp on the drawer.

It was Courtney. I never really thought she would call me after yesterday. I already assumed that everything between us would be cut off for at least a month or a year. Of course I thought maybe she changed her mind and it got my hopes up for a second, but the moment I heard her voice I knew it wasn't much of a good news.

"I'm sorry Brendan," she said. It was the exact three words I heard yesterday.

6:47 AM Mother said that if you repeated something so many times it would begin to lose its meaning. I knew I probably said it a thousand times and now a thousand one, but I'm going to repeat it over and over inside my head that "I love you," and I wasn't sure if she was lying or anything, but what I know was how much I meant each word I said. I could say it more and more but it would never lose its meaning.

Today was February 29, and so was yesterday— or was it yesterday? There was the same storm pouring against the window, the same food I had in the fridge, and the same weight in my chest heavier than my body.