“Angel”

Come September 23, it will be one year since Angel has passed away. Life has not been the same since the day she was gone.

Angel came into our quiet lives eight years ago, bringing sunshine and joy, quite unassumingly. Her quietness and constant solitude alternate with her playfulness, and happy disposition in the company of familiar faces. Her sweetness is inspiring, and her mere presence can turn a ho-hum day into a lively one, effortlessly. She is an effective antidote to stress, a live Prozac.

Angel gave me an opportunity to discover things about my loved ones and myself, which I wouldn’t have otherwise known under normal circumstances. Thru her, I learned that my only brother is such a sweet and caring person (much more than I imagined), and prone to favoritism (!). I discovered that my father, who used to shun misbehaving and restless kids (no matter how cute and cuddly they might be), has a soft spot for playful and intermittently quiet beings. And my mom, oh how she would call Angel sweetly, so in contrast with the way she sometimes snarls at my father for the pettiest things.

Angel was a welcome presence during times when an unwelcome suitor would drop by the house. As if knowing I needed better company, she would cuddle up to me as if on cue, and the unwanted visitor would soon realize there’s not enough space for the three of us. And during occasional times when my father and brother had to verbalize their dislike for one another’s actuations, Angel’s innocent and piercing stare, so similar to that of a gentle teacher catching her ward scratch crayons on the white wall, would somehow tone down the raging hostility. Mommy’s solitary moments, mostly not by choice, were delightfully disrupted by Angel’s constant prodding for “belly scratches”. Angel’s company truly saved the day in many instances, regarded then as trivial, but considered now as precious and terribly missed.

For seven blissful years, we enjoyed Angel’s presence. In her seventh year, Angel has started to show signs of deterioration. Her skin began to disintegrate, at the slightest presence of an irritant. Her vision blurred, and with it came the other annoying effects of vertigo. It broke our hearts seeing Angel go in circles, endlessly, until she had to stop because of excessive dizziness. She tried to drink and eat, we could sense, but the pain she might have felt in her throat could be that unbearable. Oh how my heart bled seeing tears in her eyes. And seeing my brother, her closest friend, suffer silently and feign bravery, shred my soul. I haven’t seen him that devastated, not even when our old house was burned to ground zero in 2002.

The fateful day came, a day everyone expected but denied deep inside. Angel was with my brother to accompany him in his office, as she always did. On the way, she breathed her last, while she lay on my brother’s lap. I didn’t know how my brother was able to reach home, with his Angel, now literally one.

As tradition dictated, Angel was laid to rest, and on the ninth day after her death, we gathered and had a special dinner in her honor. Every now and then, we would stare at her pictures, and videos – if only she could see how her presence bonded the family. I have let her go but my brother is still slowly learning how to. She has left a soft spot in my heart, and in my brother’s, a gaping hole.

September 23 is a few weeks away, and on that day we will surely look back at the joys of having Angel and the pain of finally letting her go.

We miss you dear Angel!