Hazel, To You Who Showed How To Live Life

Last night came the inevitable.

Hazel's picture in a corner stood in stark contrast to the dead body in the coffin. It was impossible. It couldn't be her. She's still young, only 37 and full of dreams.

"I need this, Jiji," I told a friend when I convinced her that we should stay longer and wait for the body to be brought in.

I needed a closure; a point where reality shatters disbelief. She lay there, lifeless, and a tidal wave of memories came crashing in: that day when a saleslady mistook us for a couple; the spur-of-the-moment coffee trips, the singing, the banter, the fond dreams.

She was one of the first few trusted friends I came out to, long before the incidental coming out. She was there when I first fell in love with a boy. She was there to listen to my ramblings about my insecurity about my long-distance relationship. She was there when I broke up with him and long after the break-up. In all of these, she never judged me but always listened and comforted me.

Maybe that was why I was always excited to go to the beat knowing I would see her. After phoning in my summaries, we would cap our "days" with a short trip to the mall to share coffee, or perhaps to argue which shade of foundation would look good on her (was it the yellow-based foundation? Or the nude?) and what shade of lipstick would be camera-friendly.

If we didn't go to the mall, we would spend our days singing. Just singing. From her cubicle she would burst into a song, a classic preferably, that showed her talent. Or maybe Kenny Lattimore's "For You" and how we related to the message of self-less giving and loving. Or maybe Broadway songs and how it mirrored life's tragedies and mysteries.

We would dream of things we thought we still could accomplish: life in Paris for her, life in Spain for me. With her, nothing was impossible.

I remembered how proud she was of Sacha and how slowly she's taking after her: the temperament and the boisterous laughter when she's happy.

She was, very much, like a junior Hazel.

I told her, during the send-off party JUCRA held for those leaving the beat (Philip for Congress, Hazel for the General Assignment and Josie for Canada) that I resented her replacement (not the person but the idea) because a friend was taken away from me.

But now death has robbed me again.

It is hard writing about her in the past tense because I thought we would grow old to see our dreams come true. See Sacha blossom into a young lady and marry. And later on, much later on, die fulfilled in a faraway land carved out of our dreams.

But her life was cut off. God, they say, has his own time. But it would take time for me to comprehend this and accept. Maybe, I will never.

Looking at her last night, I wondered, if she liked the way the embalmer had set her hair. Or if the foundation and lipstick were the right shade. Or if the barong suited her (or would she have preferred a more lady-like garb?).

Looking at her, I tried but failed to reconcile my memories of her with the lifeless body in a coffin.

The reality I am looking at says Hazel is gone. But I guess I can never accept her passing away.

The tragedy of death, is that it is a tiny punctuation: someone you know will die, but the rest of the world will soon move on.

But for us who loved Hazel, our lives have taken a jolt, and its course are forever changed.

If there were lessons Hazel has taught us: it is to love, unconditionally, to treasure your friends and nurture them, to always dream, and dream big -- to live in the nowness of the moment, to burst into a song because that is the language of the heart that is alive in loving and to pause, once in a while, to make those near you, feel that they are loved.

Yes, sooner or later, the world will move on for all of us. But it will be a different kind of revolution, made beautiful and worthwhile because of Hazel.