PARADOXICAL

Let me extend yesterday's thought by focusing on blessings we hardly ever consider. In my case, there's far too many.

When Glorietta Mall was bombed, or exploded, I should have uttered thanksgiving prayers far more than lingering on my shock, fear, and anger. That's because I regularly walked that exact same path and regularly checked out that little bookshop on top of "Ground Zero." I could have been one of the fatalities or the injured that 'fateful day'. Clearly it was not yet my time.

***

Remember those two buses falling off the Skyway and landing on the service road near Bicutan? That's the same service road two of my brothers take night and day almost everyday. In the case of the second incident, my brother actually heard the shuttle bus fall and he and his fellow jeepney passengers were lucky not to be hit directly. The reason was that the traffic lights turned green a few seconds before the shuttle bus fell, and the jeepney they were riding had already moved several meters forward from the site of the catastrophe.

Thank God for blessings I didn't expect. Again, I should be more aware of these things.

***

When my grandmother died recently, everyone in my family was still caught off-guard even though my lola was already 93 years old, way, way past a typical earthly stay. My cousin Ate C. referred to her overstaying status as her super-extra “bonus” years. Her brief hospitalization (around four days, I think), wake (four days) and burial all in all cost, say, Php35K. Even though this is a provincial rate, it is still a big amount to me. My folks lived in a different time when there was no government social security system or any form of guaranteed safety nets. And so we were all amazed when the money trickled in one day at a time, making us wonder where it came from. I, the jobless one, just had to do the grim accounting task.
***

There are more of these I'm sure, hidden in the zipped files of my mental archive.