For Mike, the world is his playground

THEY

buried the remains of Mike S. Ramos last weekend. He was my best friend. He was so close to me, so attached to me, that he kept saying, “I will die for my friend here.” Of course that oath was always fueled by spirits a.k.a. crazy water, delivered standing, index finger pointed to the sky.

Usapang lasing, you say?

“No, not that he had gulped a lot already when he starts saying that,” said one katropa (buddy). “Mike and Al here go a long way.”

We’ve been friends since childhood. we got to Grade 1 yet. We were graduated together in high school. When I was called up the stage during the high school graduation ceremonies— as the tenth placer in our batch [read: I brought up the rear of the crème de la crème, happily]— I got the loudest applause from my batch mates down the stage. That’s through the instigation of Mike. He yelled. He whistled. He coaxed everybody to follow suit. Was I embarrassed? Not at all. The collective, lusty, cheers authored by a friend, how can I not be proud?

Mike and I downed a quatro cantos a.k.a. gin bulag after the commencement exercises. With yellow papaya as pulutan. (In those days, anything goes.)

There was no obituary. Mike would not have minded it. But had there been one, it might have contained this: “Mike was someone who lived in conformity with the world.”

His only two children, sons Bakoy and Jessie Boy, are my godsons. I was Mike’s godfather in his wedding. He had diabetes, which he did not really fight with resoluteness.

Almost always, he ate with his heart’s content.

In our dinners at Kamayan-Saisaki, in the company of hometown buddies from Mangatarem, Pangasinan, Mike would down a whole canister of leche flan for dessert.

“There is medicine for all that we eat,” he’d justify.

The last two years before he breathed his last, he was on kidney dialysis.

His death wish: “After cremation, please toss my ashes at Lingayen Gulf (Pangasinan).” To many, that was a stunner. Not to me. Lingayen Gulf was where we had our beach escapades in the high school summers, and even when he had our semester breaks in college.

Rest now, my friend, absent but not forever. Enjoy your vacation. Before