Imagine this as the “fabric of life.”
Disclaimer: Lengthy diatribe. May contain macabre elements. The foregoing picture has no direct correlation with the content below. It merely serves as a metaphor for the “fabric of life” and the strands that inadvertently fell off or were deliberately cut or discarded.
I Passed by her home earlier – the place where she was robbed and brutally murdered. There were several people hovering at the small parking space near the entrance while a large flat screen TV played on. The motorcycle sped by so it was hard to see what the commotion was about. I suppose a memorial took place and snippets of her earthly sojourn were displayed.
She had been living there for five months before that tragic incident happened. Her house faces the mountain road going to Upper Busay, right at the mouth of a makeshift pathway that leads to the back portion of our subdivision. I must have passed there hundreds of times (even stopping by a few times to scan the structure when it was still under construction). And I never knew… until she died.
Strange. We were always in the same place almost all the time but our paths hardly crossed. We attended the same high school. We were in the same department (ergo the same course) in the same university. Some of my former workmates were her workmates at some point in her working life. And this year, she became my neighbor without me noticing it.
Butterflies symbolize resurrection and hope. In some faiths, a dark colored butterfly connotes the presence of a soul who has yet to cross the great divide. Whatever they symbolize, this picture of a throng of butterflies is my way of honoring the memory of a neighbor and schoolmate who was gone too soon.
Strange how a person so full of life, who has yet to reach the pinnacle of her being, could die just like that – without warning. That most deaths are orchestrated not by the laws of nature or the mandate of God but by the sheer evilness of mankind. That material poverty is always used as an excuse to commit crimes and harm others. That we preach forgiveness so easily and casually when we don’t know first hand the depth of a victim’s pain. A Human can only do so much, which is why it’s easy to succumb to pageantry and forget there is a world outside of ourselves.
Strange that even as I rant on, not knowing where this rant is headed for, somewhat sick of a society that’s hard to change, wishing for a superpower of sorts to bring murderers and conflict mongers to justice… I haven’t really lost hope. I still have faith in humanity. It doesn’t have to be perfect but hopefully, in the next era of mankind, the world will not run out of decent human beings.
Her brief existence will not be in vain. I say this with conviction: THE LIVES OF ALL GOOD PEOPLE WILL NOT BE IN VAIN. And to all evil people: don’t think you can run away with it. Life has a strange way of exacting justice. Your days are numbered so enjoy them while you can.
