One Way Ticket

Peter Pan

I've come to the realisation that a particular uncle and I are more alike than I thought, in more ways than one. Just after we got back to London when we went home in 2016, I was greeted by a message from this amazing uncle (not that my oher uncles aren't amazing, they're all amazing in their own way ;P ) and it basically articulated one of my long time thoughts better than I ever could have. Here's a a part of it:

Tito W | August 19th, 2016: hindi ko kasi expected na ang laki na ng pinag iba mo in terms of mannerism and maturity, akala ko yung Z pa din 5 years ago ang dadating, hindi ko inisip na kung sila S at C nga nagsilaki at nagsitanda, ikaw pa kaya? Ano yun, Peter Pan? [...] although nanibago din ako sa pagtawag mo sa kin ng Tito W, na dating W lang na parang sila S and C, yung pagsagot mo ng opo, yun lang, pero you're still the same Z na umalis nun..please always stay the same..
[It's just that I wasn't expecting you to have changed so much in terms of mannerism and maturity, I thought it was the Z from 5 years ago that was coming home, I didn't think that if S and C had all grown up, what more with you? What was that - Peter Pan?[...] although I wasn't used to how you called me Tito W, instead of just W, just like S and C and you before, and how say "opo" now. Just that. But you're still the same Z that left then. Please always stay the same. ]

I wish it did all stay the same.

At some point in the time we were away from home, I'd decided I didn't want to have to watch my family grow up from afar. I dreaded the Skype calls and the Facebook messages because I knew I couldn't just reach my arms through the computer monitor and simply give them a hug. It hurt so much to only see them as blurs on a pixelated screen and hear their muffled voices through a speaker. But breaking contact with them for so long was a huge mistake.

One day I got a call from one of my cousins. As soon as he began speaking, I said Kuya D!! I've missed you!! It's so great to hear your voice!Then what followed was a laugh I'll never forget. "Hehe Z, no its me - Kuya P!" I'd forgotten that puberty is a thing, and boys' voices will gradually sound like their older brothers. You could say it was a funny little moment. But it was also startling. Shocking. There was something so heartbreaking about realising I'd never be able to hear his innocent little kid voice ever again. If I had been there with them and grown up around them, I probably wouldn't have noticed all these changes because they'd have seemed more gradual. It would have been great to hear Kuya P's voice too, if only it wasn't a completely unfamiliar sounding voice coming from the other line. Those people I once knew, who now are nothing more than fragments of pictures and photographs and distant memories - I'll never see them again. Never talk to them again. Never be with them again. It's as if they died, and I never got to say goodbye.

In my head, they still looked and acted and were exactly like before. Before I left them, as if somehow no time had passed. As if growing up isn't a thing. Their memories lived in the little Neverland in my head. I miss those memories. I miss those people. I can be so stuck in the past that sometimes I talk about calling certain people to see how they are, momentarily forgetting.....that they're dead. Or be completely oblivious to the existence of another new baby in the family, until their first day of school! Long story short, I can't keep track of who's dying and who's being born. Sometimes I find it sad to think that these future generations, younger ones of my own, the new additions to the family etc. will never get to know the same people I did, or experience the same life (or at least the same objective storyline but as a different character, not necessarily the same attitudes or perceptions or feelings) as I had. That's all life, though. People come, people go. I mean, I sure don't know anything about my great great great great grandparents (other than the fact that they existed, otherwise I wouldn't be here), do you? They probably thought the same thing about the characters in their own book of life, and how their great great great great granddaughter will never get to share a chapter with or even be in the same novel as said characters.