The Good Fight

Life only revolves around three central topics: Love, Faith, and Death. The first can be shrugged off as non-existent, but it does, at the very core of each living being; keeping the second will always be a constant struggle until we are brought down to the third, which is inevitable.

I grew up in an environment of boys. I used to play more toy swords and ninjas than teddy bears and Barbie dolls. I spent the summers of my childhood selling ice pops around the village and playing video games with my all-male gang. There has even been a point in my life that I absolutely thought I was a boy too, so I pee standing up. All my childhood experiences wouldn’t have been as colourful as they have been without my brother, my cousin Dawe, and a family friend, Kuya Onel.

Kuya Onel was the oldest among us. I remember he was already in high school when I was in kindergarten, and with that my parents always trusted him to take charge of all the little ones. My mother took him in as an assistant back when they still made bags for our living and sent him to school in exchange. He wasn’t really too old, I guess he never had enough of his childhood and he still played along with us. We even have our names carved on the old wooden closet that was given away a little before we moved out of our old house. “May Marc Karen Onel. Bubble Rangers For Ever.” It was the 90’s, and while other kids the same age as kuya Onel got into glue-sniffing, we were addicted to Bazooka bubble gum. They were both sticky, all right.

We were not blood-related, mind you. But the relationship that we had stuck like those chomped-up Bazooka under our wooden sala set. When I was in grade school, kuya Onel moved out and lived with his family in the city where they simply made ends meet. We rarely got to see each other, but he and his sister ate May (who was also part of the Bubble Rangers) remained to be the closest ones to us.

It was when I was in high school that I had news of kuya Onel having been diagnosed with severe Tuberculosis, a recurring illness in their family. With the disease having already killed their grandmother and an uncle, kuya Onel was determined to fight it off. He wanted to live a normal life, and though thin and sickly as he had always been, he still managed to build a family and have a bright and bouncy son named Russell.

His lungs never got any better. Every now and then we would receive news that he was rushed to the hospital, being on 50/50 for more than once, and we provided assistance as much as we could. Some days he is better, but on others he was so weak he can’t walk. But still, he was determined to fight it all off, still giving words of advice for ate May whenever she runs to him with her problems, and keeping the faith he always had. He trusted God and if he is to go, he’s ready.

Being ready, however, does not necessarily mean he wants to. If only he could, he would stay for a little longer, watch Russell grow up and spend more time with his family. These are things that we could only wish for. These are things that we all wished to have happened, but did not. One sunny afternoon in May, Kuya Onel breathed his last, from the suffering lungs he dealt with for the longest time.

I never cried upon his death, nor am I crying now. I haven’t even got the time to visit him on his thin, frail body’s last days on the face of the earth, before it was buried deep into the ground. Though I knew that he wouldn’t last as long as we hoped he would, I still can’t concede to the fact that I will never get to reminisce with Kuya Onel again—the one who I spent happy weekends and summers with, the one I grew up with, and the one who I roamed around the village with whilst selling ice pops and buying a lot of corn cheesedogs from the change.

I remember his face as I write this, and I am glad that I cannot imagine seeing him on a sad state. I will always remember his toothy smile, and his eyes that shrink as he does so. Kuya Onel has always been happy. He stayed positive. He held on for as long as he could. He kept the faith.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day —and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. 2 Timothy 4:7-8

You are missed, kuya Onel, but we know that you now have the peace you deserve… in a place where there is no pain or suffering. I’ll never forget. We never will.