Yukio and the wind that blew the pup

Hi, my name is Yukio! (Feb. 29-September 25, 2012)

The grieving kicks in when I received an SMS message from the veterinarian who looked after Yukio at the hospital. The prior diagnosis was dire and it was, according to her, a parvo virus. I buoyed my hopes on his recovery when he still recognizes me when he was already in the dextrose drips. As was our habit together, I see him in the morning at the clinic and then in the late afternoon before I head home. I already felt the emptiness in the house the day he was in the hospital and in drips. I kept a silent prayer and chanced on each day light to allow me to see him progress more into full recovery.

Journey 245: Reaching Out

Everyone, in most parts of their lives, has to endure problems, trials and challenges which span from relationships, finances, work, marriages, commitments, vows, and the ever pressing concerns of health. In it, we value no one but ourselves and the only way to cope up with the challenges that comes our way is to understand why it has been there and why it has happened and what lesson has it there to teach us.

My first brush at life’s challenges comes unexpectedly and neither I nor anyone can ever understand why it has to happened so suddenly and so unexpectedly beyond my comprehension. I am stressed and depress yes, but I am prayerful and hopeful too. I had been tortured emotionally but I am getting through there. I am pained yes, but I knew this trial will pass. I am bruised yes, but I know this too shall heal. All my pains and the challenges that comes my way are constant reminder for me to reach out, not on my own and for my victory’s sake but reaching out to those whom I have left behind – my God, my family and my friends. Reckoning hard enough, I had been on the high-speed highway driving to nowhere but surely, am anchored in what God’s purpose for me. It is just unfortunate that in so doing, I have been speeding pass many others who are there to support me through.

I am grateful for my closest friend who has cancer who shared to me the film Fireproof and watched it as well as reflected on it. He knew my predicaments and he knew too well who I am in my life. He and I shared a life that only the best of friends knew and I am continually is grateful for the wonderful blessings God has given me when he shared his thoughtful suggestion about the film to reflect on. I in fact was reminded by him that we all have all our problems that we just have to face it head-on.

A friend of mine too, as with many countless others, have informed me that she has cancer. It broke me harder since I am surrounded by friends and family who are with cancers. I have already in my mind how many of them have been in the phases of life with cancer. I could not and never fathom why they, so young, has to endure it. I say to myself that one day, the physical pains will be redeemed by the renewed spirit to be an inspiration. I thought that life has to be as simple as living until our twilight years and rest peacefully in our time but God has higher purposes and direction. We are never drivers of our lives but we are mere passengers, though we have the option to hop in or not. In our life’s struggles, we have everything that others have not of which I believed will be one of the reason why God wanted us to share, share our life, our experiences and our ability to make a difference.

Reaching out is like this little boy with a twig trying to reach out a branch. It is by experiencing what we had been given that we may reach out. Reaching out to those who have made our lives significant and meaningful. It is through reaching out that our pains will be replaced with joy. It is by reaching out that our struggles will end with such victory that only we can all appreciate and share. It is by reaching out that we carefully evaluate where we are at the present and decide where we are heading in the future. It is by reaching out that we know God better, much more than we allow ourselves to know.

Journey 239: How do I say Goodbye?

In so many ways, whether in work, career, relationships, ties and bonds, one find it harder and harder to say goodbye which is why to some, suicide is an option but really, like how do we say goodbye? I have observed that many among us just utter ‘bye’ without the goodness of it for an apparent concealment of how we truly felt when we say it. Just as when we say it, how do we feel? We perhaps feel the guilt, the pangs of retrospection and regret as well as reeling on the possibility that one day, our paths will cross but nothing stays the same any longer. Just as when we thought that our bidding is necessary that we still clings on what are those that continually hurt us or worse, keep us from moving on.

So in which case, having talked to a friend whose career had been shattered by someone who remains down to earth and undeterred, pained but unmoved, confused but remains infused in his spirit to make his story stands is one journey I tend to make good of my promise to fully understand what it is to say goodbye. I was at one point, on March 9 this year so depressed that I nearly committed myself up and stop the clock with a click on the cold .45 but I choose to live and never utter goodbye. My penance may be too gross to many but no one understood how badly I felt and depressed at that moment that ‘saying goodbye’ becomes an option, however, I succeeded to say I am still here.

Even in relationships, many whom I knew become suicidal because they can hardly come to terms to the pains that come along every relationship. While reading the book Diana’s Boys, I even now knew how painful it was to go through such a wreaked marriage and so many attempts of the late Princess Diana to commit suicide became so apparent that the establishment has to call in psychiatrists to help but Charles remained indignant and remained unimpressed so to speak. In the affairs of the heart, no one is really too good of an expert to understand its intricacies and ups and downs. Many in fact are left scarred for life that the surface may be healed but the wounds are still there, gaping like it was first been cut.

When I journey through my life, I came across the perennial questions like: “If I am gone, how will you ever say goodbye? If I am gone, how do u bid goodbye to me? For the headaches I have done to you in the past, how do you say goodbye? For the failures I have done and had been up to, how do you say goodbye? For the greatness of spirit that I shared with you, how do you say goodbye? For the time we shared laughing, crying, believing and dreaming on, how do you say goodbye? For the moments we hugged and kissed, how do you say goodbye? For the moments I have came across your mind, how do you say goodbye? Until you give me your BEST goodbye, I shall remain your bestfriend until here and until eternity when our goodbyes are just the best we can give than just by saying plain byes.