By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo
Transitions
I mean the life-changing ones, transitions that change in a major way. For example, marrying a former classmate of your husband seven years after he passed away, with your children reminding you, you can take care of your grandchildren instead, and you, despite all the opposition, choose to risk and love for the second time. Or, having lived an over-active life, find yourself suddenly glued to a wheelchair, or worse, in a bed, being flipped over by caregivers to prevent bedsores. Two different stories with different pathways converging into one final end.
This brings me back to what my late friend Mildred Yamzon asked me on our way to Bolinao in 1997, when we were involved in preventing the establishment of a cement complex in Bolinao, and having prevented it, realizing that we may have unknowingly abetted the continuation and proliferation of more unwanted activities in the area. “Is this it?”, she asked me, not as a question, but a hint of dismay and resignation. Resignation because our collective capacities and resources were inadequate to pursue any action on the new encroachment, which happens at sea, and lands at transshipment points in our coastlines.
Transitions, experienced personally or as a member of a larger community, impact differently for different people and groups. Michael Jay Fox, in his book entitled, “No Time Like The Future”, shared his personal transitions about “illness and health, aging, the strength of family and friends, and how our perceptions of time affect the way we approach mortality.” An optimist, Fox approached mortality with his thoughtfulness and sense of humor, at times forgetting humor, in his daily negotiations with transitions, both physical and mental, but never giving up.
I could never approximate the extent and depth of the transition of devastated communities like Gaza, but I can empathize with their collective suffering. It is the pain of not being able to do anything against forces that prey on less-developed nations that render those who sympathize, helpless or unnecessarily risk their own lives.
Quantum physics suggests that death may just be a transition to a more mysterious reality, that consciousness survives the death of the physical body. Albert Einstein was quoted as having said that, “ . . . the distinction between past, present and future, is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” If we look at transitions this way, we can approach life and death with gratitude. The ephemeral is always special. The texture of it, the taste of it, the richness of the colors, and the many other colors and sensations they evoke and allow us to experience.
In transit
even this pain is fleeting
like the clouds, no matter how slow
the dance, or how fast, or cruising
even your voice on the other end
where the line holds tightly to a kiss,
seconds before I start to miss
would have quickly ceased to exist