What is THIS? Some Kind of SICK JOKE?

This post is an emotional mess

I realized the reason why I didn't read a book only after FIVE years and during a funeral wake. a tear jearking epiphany.

Fate has a funny way of getting back at you like a sick joke.

• "That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays."

2003 the first job I had was at a small allied medical studies school I met a philosophy teacher who told me to read "Tuesdays with Morrie" a book by Mitch Albom, it recounted the story of a Dying teacher and his relationship with students.

I didn't read the book of course, knowing my anti sell out attitude I would always go for the one less popular I do not follow the trend, I set the trend.

2004 I saw a newly released book of Mitch Albom, "The Five People You Meet in Heaven", I planned to read it since then but I never had it in me to even go beyond the first page.

Every year I would have an electronic copy and promise to read it but I just couldn't read it. I wouldn't call myself lazy because I read a more than four books a month. Three of them would be of apathetic technical books.

Five years later at the funeral of my second mother I searched my old hard drive for something to read over night, there is was like a treasure stashed away just for me to find... "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" beside it another book "Freakonomics", I choose Freakonomics at first copied it to my multimedia device for reading, turns out I placed the other book instead.

I would like to contradict myself for not being lazy a few paragraphs back... I am too lazy to get Freakonomics and just settled for "The Five People You Meet in Heaven" a book I wasn't able to read for five years.

FIVE PEOPLE... FIVE YEARS.

A FUNERAL... A Book about the afterlife

The symbolism just keeps piling up.

"The story begins at the end, when Eddie dies from an accident"

He meets five people, recounting five memories that made a meaning to his life... this is Heaven.

The main character limps like my Mamang

his father died of pneumonia like my Mamang

his wife had a brain tumor like my Mamang

the past owner of the the place he worked at met her rich husband in a bar just like my Mamang

"One withers, another grows."

I read everyday since the start of the wake... I read anywhere I can... the last day I was reading it at the fourth day of the wake at a ride to work tears automatically flowed I don't care anymore of those people around me, I just wished mamang was in a better place.

At worked choking at every word I say a student went to me and said "Sir was what you wrote on your blog about having a brain tumor true? Because I also have one"


"All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you." Eddie was skeptical. His fists stayed clenched. "What?" he said. "That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind."