Goodbye to a year of goodbyes

WITH the price of petrol falling for successive weeks before the end of the year, the LTFRB-approved fare increase was subsequently revoked, leaving jeepney drivers stunned in disbelief. Saying goodbye to a bountiful Christmas.

Consumers also thought that they will be having a great holiday with the expectation that prices of goods and services will also fall as a result of the falling petrol prices. However, they also said goodbye to a great yuletide season as the prices did not fall even after petrol prices went down.

Inflation slowed down by December, but is still beyond what was forecasted by the government's’ economic managers. With the price of petrol falling during that period, it is but natural that inflation would slow down, too.

On a more personal level, 2018 was a year of remarkable goodbyes.

Political affiliations or perspectives should never affect personal relationships. I said goodbye to several friendships because of differences of perspectives. Some of them were decades old friendships.

Some had ceased reading his friends’ posts, unfollowing and even unfriending them on social media.

I value these friendships, believe me, but when the good of the greater majority is affected, when morality and the sense of right and wrong is tarnished, when human life is sacrificed for political gains, and when assurance of an improved welfare of many is at stake, then friendships with those who don’t share these values can be set aside first to focus on what really matters.

Towards the second half of the year came the more difficult goodbyes. In August, my closest sister-in-law passed away. A difficult goodbye as she was the closest to a sister I would ever have. I could not also imagine the pain of the loss of a mother for my nephew and niece, and of a partner for my brother.

The pain of a loss remained difficult to imagine for only 21 days, as my own mother also passed away after less than a month after my sister-in-law died. The pain is much more painful, as it crushes you and your spirit, than if one only imagines it for somebody else. For me, the goodbye one bids to a dying parent is the hardest goodbye one has to give, the most painful goodbye one can ever go through in life.

That scene, those last minutes and seconds, those last few moments, plays over and over in your memory. How could one ever get over it? It’s there and it’s there permanently in your memory. It messes you up. It changes you forever.

It was time to say goodbye to your person before this tragedy happened. It left a very deep dent on your life. A dent so deep that it seems like a hole, a hollow space, that nothing or no one would ever able to fill.

Your world became different, saying goodbye to a world of happiness, beauty and love. You became more sensitive to the world’s problems and conflicts, and of people’s judgments and/or indifference of other people’s feelings and lives. They exacerbate this pain you are feeling.

Making people aware of these problems somehow releases that pain but people will not understand you. They just think you are never satisfied in life, and a noisy can that just complains and rants on social media about the smallest problems.

Until you become numb of everything. Even the most hurtful judgments do not hurt you anymore. Not even like the pain of being pricked. You don’t even dare put up a fight. You let them speak. You just let them think what they want to think about you. You, yourself, became indifferent. You know that they do not understand you and what you are going through because they are not you.

They may have experienced loss at one point in their life, but they were never you and they never experienced your loss of your own mother. Without empathy and care for your feelings, they can even say, “My mother died too, but I did not behave like how you are behaving.”

You don’t even care anymore if karma will hunt them later on. They can go on and on about it, you simply not care anymore. You became very tired of caring. You do not give a damn anymore.

And when you die, they’ll be saying good things about you, and your goodness as a person, as a friend, as a nephew, as a cousin, as a brother, as a colleague, as a subordinate, as a neighbor, as a teacher, as a teacher of your kid, as an acquaintance, as someone you may know very little thing about, as someone virtually unknown to you.

Who knows, you may be given this chance to do this year.