You were never the best vocalist, E. You had a great voice though: deep, resonant, given to throaty chuckles and thunderous greetings from across our high school hallways. When your band did covers, the usual new wave/independent rock stuff we all liked was generally beyond you, except for that one time in the gym, when you played Under the Milky Way by The Church and your voice finally fit.
When you died, E, none of us were with you. They fished your body out of the Pasig River on a Sunday morning, and the NBI report declared your death a suicide not long after.
At your wake, all I could think about was how your smooth black coffin looked much too plain: if you had any say in the matter, it would have been spray-painted with naked women riding big-ass motorcycles, or superheroes blasting the hell out of each other. The thought brought a huge smile to my face, a smile that probably signaled to the people around me that I was some sort of heartless freak.
The stern-faced photo of you that they perched on your sealed coffin looked nothing like you at all. Not that I never saw you in a serious mood, or in a suit; it’s just that I never saw your face frozen in one expression for any appreciable length of time. Maybe instead of a still, they could have had one of those lenticular images made, so your expression would change every time someone tilted or walked around the frame, like Jesus Christ on the cross opening and closing his eyes in that picture in your Lola’s house. If you tilted it just right, you could get Jesus to wink.
I want to ask you stupid questions that you might have a unique perspective on, being wherever you are. Is love the answer to everything, or just the quickest way to f*** everything up? Is there a God, and if so, what does He or She look like? (Specifically, the clothes. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of a naked God, and yet I also can’t imagine a badly-dressed God or for that matter one that is aware of, much less obedient to, human trends in fashion.) Also, I had this notion that you can instantly acquire knowledge of how to play whatever instrument you want, after you die. Maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. If it’s just harps, then never mind.
Not long after you died, I was with some friends, and one of them was talking about a blockmate of his who had passed away, and how his barkada put together a mix of his favorite songs to play during the wake. (It included the The Sundays’ Here’s Where the Story Ends.) Otherwise, he said, they were afraid that people there would have been playing sappy dirgelike Tagalog tunes like Maaalala Mo Kaya.
So of course we started discussing Top 5 songs to play during our own wakes. I came up with one right away—At My Funeral by the Crash Test Dummies (“Life’s not long, so I hope when I am finally dead and gone/ you’ll gather round, as I am lowered into the ground.”)
But then I was stumped. I supposed it would be too obvious to play a Joy Division song, and besides, I thought I would like cheerier sounding, though not necessarily silly, fare. Maybe Doo-Wop in Harlem by Prefab Sprout would be nice. (“There is a door we all walk through/ And on the other side I’ll meet you.”)
I dream about you sometimes, E, alive and well. In these dreams you tell me that you never really died, that you just wanted to get away from everything, and that you’re happy working somewhere, under another name.
“Wish I knew what you were looking for,” you sang, all those years ago. “Might have known what you would find.”