I want you to do my eulogy.
We've always had this idea of having a living funeral. We got the idea from a book you lent me. Tuesdays With Morrie. The whole idea was to gather a bunch of people and then write a eulogy for each other. What's the use of having people do a eulogy for you when you're dead and cannot hear them praise you or compliment you? But then if we had a living funeral, I don't think that people would be as open as they are when it's a real funeral and they give a real eulogy.
I was in my creative writing class last Tuesday when the professor asked us to write ourselves a eulogy. We had to pretend that we were writing from the point of view of our best friend. I sat there wondering who would do my eulogy. As of the moment, we are not on speaking terms. Everyone else was writing and their yellow pad paper was full of words. And mine had nothing.
If I died today and someone asked you to do my eulogy, I think this is what you'd say.
Ate Anna was aloof.
She didn't have many friends. In fact, if you checked her phone-book, you'd see that she had less than thirty contacts. She regularly messaged only ten of those contacts. I just so happened to be one of those people. Flooding my inbox with lyrics from songs, quotes from books, lines from movies and series, stupid jokes and lots of nonsense was her pastime. And if I did not choose to reply, she would send more text messages. Friends who would check my inbox always thought that this person named Anna was my girlfriend or something.
When Ate Anna still had a Facebook, I would constantly post random words or phrases on her wall. She would also do the same. We invented our own language. Ate Anna would add 'z' to her words while I would use letters to stand for words. People who saw our conversation would not know what we were talking about. And though she deactivated her Facebook, we continued bugging each other on YM and Twitter and so many other sites. Her close friends missed her presence in the online world though. Her witty status updates were gone. Her sarcastic comments were hidden. And the lovely way she would annoy people she hated became a thing of the past.
She often bragged about her ability to distance herself from people and events that drained her. When people walked out of her life, she would announce to the whole world that she didn't give a damn. Her words. Not mine. And yet late at night she would bug me saying, 'Am crying so bad 'cause I miss her. And I think it's my fault that we fought.' No one really thought that ate Anna had the capacity to feel and cry and grieve for things and people she lost along the way. She had perfected the art of not showing her true feeling in front of everyone. She had put on so many masks that one would have to know her so well to know if she was pretending or if that was the real her.
I knew the real ate Anna. She always told people that in reality she wasn't as strong as she made people believe she was. She claimed to be so weak and that she got her strength from her faith. Part of that is true, but I think that she is still strong even if she says otherwise. She's the first to apologize but the last to forgive. She's the first to judge but the last to accept. She's the first to shut up and the last to speak. She's the first to let go and has the last laugh. She is the first to criticize but the last to accept defeat.
You'd often find her in crazy situations. They were normal situations which she managed to turn into amusing scenarios. Wherever we went, people would stare at us 'cause of ate Anna's outlandish behavior. She'd be dancing around instead of walking. She'd sing her words instead of sticking to the normal way of talking to people. And her hands flew all over the place as she made kwento about her latest book, the newest series, the most hilarious person, an awkward instance, a guy she was into and her favorite food. I knew exactly what she thought of a certain person or a thing just by looking at her eyes. If she rolled them, she was totally annoyed with them. If she stared, that meant that she found something weird with the person. If her eyes lit up, she was interested in the person or the conversation.
If someone ever called me up and said that ate Anna was lost, I'd give the person a list of places where they could find her. They could search all the streets and look for a kwek kwek stall. Ask the tindera if a girl consumed Php100 just on kwek kwek. For sure, that would be ate Anna. Go to a bookstore. Check all the aisle. The girl who's sitting on the floor and who looks as if she lives in her own world is ate Anna. If you still cannot find her, she might be at a McDo, a Starbucks, a Japanese restaurant or a place with lots of food. Can't find her? She must have already invented an invisible cloak for herself.
Ate Anna wanted to be invisible. She liked working behind the scenes, yet she often ended up where all could see her. She wanted to fade in the background. She did the work while others took the credit. She did nothing but push us to our limit.
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