Episode 3: Feelers from the Great Beyond
Shaken, Rattled & Rolled: A Halloween trilogy
There are dozens of films about life after death. Three of those are:
Heaven is for Real, based on the best-seller novel about a boy who undergoes emergency surgery and recovers to tell his incredulous parents that he has gone to heaven and described what it looked like.
Miracles from Heaven, also a true story about a girl with a rare incurable disorder until everything changes in an instant when she tells an amazing story of a visit to heaven after surviving a headlong tumble into a tree and recovering from her fatal condition.
After Life (fiction), an acclaimed Japanese film about a group of people who have recently died and find themselves in a limbo realm resembling a relatively mundane building. Counselors help the new arrivals pick one memory from their lives to bring with them into eternity.
I call them “feelers” from the Great Beyond just like the story narrated to me by a boy who was 15 when his father died. Listen (fictitious names used but details are certified true)...
I loved it when Uncle Tom would pay my Papa a very rare visit, so rare that he would show up unannounced once in a blue moon. Uncle Tom was Papa’s younger (only) brother. He was rootless, I mean an NPA (No Permanent Address), who travels extensively around the country mostly to play mahjong with his fellow Chinese. He didn’t have a family, anyway not like our own, but he had sired a few children, one in Hong Kong and another in the province, and God knows how many others.
Our family was based in a then remote town in Samar accessible only by motorboat from another town three hours ride away. Maybe that’s why Uncle Tom seldom visited from a Legazpi City where he rented a big house for his Chinese wife who was visiting from Hong Kong.
During those rare visits, Uncle Tom would engage Papa in a debate over cups and cups of tea and their favorite topic was: Is there life after death? Papa defended the “yes” side with impunity, citing incidents in dear old China about the dead being sighted by those left behind. Uncle Tom sometimes raised his voice to drive home a point. It was actually a playful debate that was never resolved, resumed the next time Uncle Tom would visit. They spoke in Fookien so how did I know what they were arguing about? I understood and spoke tolerable Fookien since I studied in a bilingual (English-Chinese) school in Albay.
Anyway, it was Uncle Tom who rushed Papa to the hospital from a hotel in Chinatown where he died in his sleep, barely two weeks after he came back from Hong Kong where he recuperated for almost a year in the care of my Chinese brother. It was also Uncle Tom who brought Papa’s casket from Manila to the province. (My heart still breaks when I recall how Mama welcomed Papa’s casket with a long wailing that broke the stillness of the night.).
After Papa’s burial, Uncle Tom slept on Papa and Mama’s huge matrimonial bed with a transparent white mosquito net while Mama and eight of us kids slept on a mat rolled out just outside the curtained entrance of the room where Uncle Tom was.
Near midnight, we were roused from sleep by Uncle Tom who was running out of the room, calling Papa’s name. He told us that while trying to doze off, he felt the soft, thick mattress sink a bit. When he turned around, he said that he saw Papa sitting on the edge, smiling at him. Uncle Tom tried to reach out to Papa who had stood up, looking back at him, smiling. Uncle Tom ran. But sadly, Papa had disappeared, floating into the night.
And that was how the longdrawn debate between Papa and Uncle Tom was resolved.
You know who won, don’t you?
Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea — from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Crossing The Bar