Firstborn
By: RDV
She picked up the phone--No, that’s not even how it began. Her tea cup broke, which was already an omen of a thing gone bad. So when she held the receiver close to her ear, she wasn’t expecting to hear good news. But she didn’t expect to hear something this bad either. At times like this, it seems like relying on superstition was enough. It knocked the breath out of her, just like that.
How one suck at the marrow killed her first child, then going on thirty, was the mystery. True, he wasn’t healthy, physically or otherwise. Overweight and often ate in excess, his son wasn’t much of a child one boasts of. He didn’t have a job. He was more on the burden side. His past girlfriends called him a pig and he most probably was. But of course, that gave no one license to laugh at him. Chances are, there’d be more sighs of relief than cries of mourning when his wake was held.
He died in the city of Baguio while taking a vacation trip with his friends, who apparently were thick enough to fraternize with the likes of him. On the night of his death, his company revealed that the last meal he’d had was his favorite, bulalo. He was sure to clean out the bones, like a dog would, and he was more than sure to take more than his share of the meal. At something past midnight, he’d stopped breathing. It was morning when one of his pals took notice of how cold he was. Well, that was the end of him. At least he certainly loved his last meal.
He was delivered home shortly after. A day passed before his death, their next door neighbor, a friend of his mother’s, died of cancer. The street had two to grieve over, but his mother, most of all, harvested pain. Even if he was never a good son, there always would be someone to cry in his death. After all, mothers bear children for that purpose, inter alia. Children are born to bury their parents. Should it be the opposite, there is always guilt to answer to.
Right then, the mother had plenty of it. And apart from brooding bitterly, she was finding it hard to recount the good things that his son did while he lived. At the end of the day though, she was convinced that she was too jogged in the head for recollection.
But in greater reality, she knew that he didn’t do many things of worth. He was an armful of
headache, like the father who left them. And he was her son, unfortunately.
She picked up the phone--No, that’s not even how it began. Her tea cup broke, which was already an omen of a thing gone bad. So when she held the receiver close to her ear, she wasn’t expecting to hear good news. But she didn’t expect to hear something this bad either. At times like this, it seems like relying on superstition was enough. It knocked the breath out of her, just like that.
How one suck at the marrow killed her first child, then going on thirty, was the mystery. True, he wasn’t healthy, physically or otherwise. Overweight and often ate in excess, his son wasn’t much of a child one boasts of. He didn’t have a job. He was more on the burden side. His past girlfriends called him a pig and he most probably was. But of course, that gave no one license to laugh at him. Chances are, there’d be more sighs of relief than cries of mourning when his wake was held.
He died in the city of Baguio while taking a vacation trip with his friends, who apparently were thick enough to fraternize with the likes of him. On the night of his death, his company revealed that the last meal he’d had was his favorite, bulalo. He was sure to clean out the bones, like a dog would, and he was more than sure to take more than his share of the meal. At something past midnight, he’d stopped breathing. It was morning when one of his pals took notice of how cold he was. Well, that was the end of him. At least he certainly loved his last meal.
He was delivered home shortly after. A day passed before his death, their next door neighbor, a friend of his mother’s, died of cancer. The street had two to grieve over, but his mother, most of all, harvested pain. Even if he was never a good son, there always would be someone to cry in his death. After all, mothers bear children for that purpose, inter alia. Children are born to bury their parents. Should it be the opposite, there is always guilt to answer to.
Right then, the mother had plenty of it. And apart from brooding bitterly, she was finding it hard to recount the good things that his son did while he lived. At the end of the day though, she was convinced that she was too jogged in the head for recollection.
But in greater reality, she knew that he didn’t do many things of worth. He was an armful of
headache, like the father who left them. And he was her son, unfortunately.
posted by Ria D. at
7:16 PM
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