omens

Do you believe in omens?

I was painting upstairs when i heard a loud crash emanating from the kitchens. One of our oldest plates broke into pieces from the hands of my mother. Was it a bad omen? a preview of things to come? I was never a believer of those, and shrugged off what had happened.

It was in the morning that the call came.

Lita, a household helper from one of my father's cousins, who goes to my grand aunt's house to clean during weekends discovered the demise of lola rosa. She phoned us quickly, and my dad and I quickly dropped by to survey the situation and to broadcast the news to all the relatives.

It was my first time to see a freshly dead body, and of someone I knew so well. My grand aunt was still sitting in her favorite spot in her simple dining table, still with her mouth wide open, her body hard and cold. There was remnants of her piss on the floor, which lita wiped after the funeral boys took my aunt to the funeral home. My grand aunt, lola elong was like a broken record when we found her. She had been complaining all night that she couldn't call our house, complained why lola rosa was the one taken, instead of her and how lola rosa choked, vomited before passing away. They have been together for more than 9 decades, in the same old house. Now she was all alone.

It was a common consensus that my lola elong, alone during that night, might have been rattled, with poor eyesight, could not call us though the phone and find help. Maybe there could have been something that could have been done....

Faced with death, I'm still numb from the experience. Early as now, i'm trying to think of how life will be when my parents will be older. Will they be staying with me? Is it going to be like how lola elong and lola rosa lived? The two of them having petty fights everyday and actually look forward to the arguments? Who'll go first? Mom or Dad? Or maybe me?

In the midst of all my thoughts, my mother draws me to the corner...

"Sabi ko na nga ba, baka yung basag na plato yung warning sa atin". ( I had a feeling the broken plate was an omen).

I personally don't believe it, but... what a strange coincidence.........