Goodbye, Snooky

Category: People

This would be the 300th post to this blog, something worth mentioning, that should have been written more than a week ago on Father's Day. We were gonna have a happy day then, I knew it, specially when my husband donned his red underwear that morning, which is really this private thing between me and him, except that it's too cute to keep as a secret. So he had on this red underwear that is older than our eldest daughter, that he only wore for occasions such as valentine's, christmas, his birthday, our anniversary, and father's day, particularly the last one, on that fateful day, when in the middle of Sunday service in church we got that dreadful call which told that his youngest brother had passed away.

Now I'm reeling from all those nights of the wake, with all the long rituals attached to having had death in the family. The urn for my brother-in-law's cremated remains, having been sealed into the crypt on the fifth day during his funeral, was unceremoniously taken out of it again, with my mother-in-law still being unable to come to terms with the death of her son. She wants to keep him (the cremated remains) out, she said, until the 40th day by which time she probably thinks she's better able to let go. I do not know about that but I know I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of my sister-in-law, now a widow at 33, who, apart from grieving over her and her little children's loss, would have to deal with inevitable estrangement, decluttering a home full of stuff (my brother-in-law was an inveterate hoarder), not to mention bewildering burial arrangements and such. Death, what a sorry thing it is.

I'll remember Snooky, that was his name, for his paella (he bequeathed me his recipe), his loud laughter, and for having done to my husband exactly what my younger sister did to me a few years ago when she died, leaving me to celebrate my birthday (we had the same birthday) alone, without her. My husband, now bereft of younger brother and his birthday mate (they have the same birthdays too, can you imagine), thinks he will never want to celebrate now that Snooks is gone, and I can understand why, although I know that just like me, he'll change his mind.

These days, I am once again reminded of how transient we really are, having recently lost someone I knew so well, who was the same age as I am. Also it reminds me to be grateful for every morning that I wake up to, and another day added to my life. It makes me thankful for my own little family, for our good health, for provisions and protection we are able to enjoy while we're here. God is good. And death, this dark and fearsome thing, reminds so much about life in the most profound way, with the lesson being that the best way to live is to be ready to die any day. Then all would have made sense. What a thought.