She's Leaving Home, Bye-bye

Update: I stand corrected by my brother. The ship that collided with the oil tanker was the Don Juan, not the Dona Florentina. The Dona Florentina was used by the company to ferry family members to the site of the accident during the search. Thank you Toto.

.

Sometimes, I wonder if it really happened. Maybe it was just a bad rumor. They never found her body. So for years I kept hoping she’d resurface and I get a call and some bright cheerful voice on the other line will greet me with “Cille! What trouble are you getting into this time?” and then a giggle.
.

It’s ironic how things work sometimes. A gift is given when one is not asking for it. So it gets overlooked and placed by the wayside. Because it’s there and it’s not a bother and it may in fact entertain you for a while, you keep it. Some people are gifts, blessings. Someone must have really liked me. I am showered with gifts of friendship. Alas, when they happened I have been too selfish and pre-occupied or too immature, or what’s that term, un-evolved.
.
When I was fourteen, I played the role of matador. My quest was to fight two bulls in order to save the beautiful princess being held captive by a mean lord. Never mind that the bulls were two Girl Scouts pretending to be bulls and the lord was the Patrol Leader; the beautiful princess did not have to pretend. She was beautiful and her demeanor matched that of a fairy tale princess.

.
I, the Patrol Second and well dressed matador saved the princess and met a friend. We were young, competitive and nothing was impossible. Cyn and her younger sister and another girl were representing their school. I and another classmate represented mine. We were immediately drawn to one another, even though we had seemingly opposite personalities. I found her gentle, demure, diplomatic, sweet, constant, calm and quiet as opposed to my overly assertive, outward, frank, hyperactive, fickle, gregarious demeanor. We learned each other’s traits. I became calmer and more tender; and she became more expressive when we were together. For six months we saw one another frequently in different camps and events. We had fun, especially that I missed the last three months of my high school senior year. However, we did not have to teach each other how to get in trouble.
.

At fifteen, we became classmates in nursing college. We accidentally set the Chemistry lab on fire when during one of the lectures we dropped potassium permanganate into the slit not realizing that there were aprons in the drawers underneath the desk. The fire and smoke were controlled within an hour and no damage was done except the class was cut short, so we let the incident settle quietly. In biology we were threatened with a failing grade in anatomy because we both refused to dissect the live frog. I found them gross, cold and ugly and she found the live dissection cruel. We let ours loose and they jumped all over the place causing disruption of the class. When I got in trouble with my Spanish instructor it was Cyn who waited for me in the corner as everyone emptied the lecture room.

.
She was a quiet person with a hearty yet delicate laugh, she joined the crowd but preferred to let me or others take the limelight. She always smiled and when we got back to the dorm, that's when we talked quietly with each other, away from everyone else. We shared the same color of lipstick, bright red though we muted it when we were in the wards. We shared the same sleeping quarters, the same projects, the same internship schedules, helped each other with our clinical tasks, all the serious and important things and she shared my downtime. She made internship bearable with her quiet and steadfast demeanor. She was not possessive or needy. She would always be there when I came back but she let me run around with other classmates. In the end, I thought of her as my grown up friend even though we were coetaneous and we were two of the three youngest students in the graduate class of 91 women and 2 men. She was beautiful. She joined the beauty contest as our class muse; she was one of the two class muses. She was a perfect muse. She was always considered by everyone as attractive and beautiful.
.

She listened and gave advice and I was her confidante. We separated after graduation. I went to the mountains for my rural internship for one year and she went to another province. When I went home in the weekends Cyn was not there but I visited her mother or her sisters at home. She married her physician intern boyfriend and I left our province to study speech pathology at the University of the Philippines.

.
One night, the Dona Florentina, a passenger ship that we loved to take for our trips home during semestral breaks, collided with an oil tanker in the middle of the night. Having ruled out that we had no immediate family member on board, I relaxed. In the morning, on my way to the Philippine General Hospital where I had my clinic internship, I read the paper on the bus. They have listed the missing passengers log alphabetically. The names were familiar since it serviced our province and docked in my hometown. The entire family of my third grade classmate was listed. There were the names of our neighbors, my sisters’ classmates, and my cousin who worked for the shipping lines. Then, I saw Cyn’s grandmother’s name, her cousin, her only brother, her sister and then I read Cyn’s name.

.
There was no name listed for her unborn child. Months later I came to visit her mother. She asked me to recall my adventures with Cyn in college. When it was time to leave, I got up and gave Cyn’s mother a hug then I told her that one of the greatest regrets I have, is never telling Cyn that I loved her. Her mother smiled and replied, “I am sure she knew”. Actually, I still love her.