My memories of the happiest man alive

TRIGGER WARNING: Mental Health and Suicide. APPROACH AND READ WITH CAUTION.

Alvin.

I have no photographs to remember him by. Not a single one. Our friendship began long before the dawning of the smartphone.

Alvin was a handsome young fellow who towered over me by several inches. He donned a well-chiseled face. Wore fair-skin. A bit scrawny on the shoulders but relatively buffed. He was neat to a fault. He looked like a ’60s hippie lost in the curlicues of Time. His long, straight locks, aglow with the cheerful highlights of pale ochre, draped over his shoulders like gold rain over the distant hills.

What I remember most about him was his love for books. We swapped tomes the same way people swapped stories and rumors. He smiled and laughed a lot, told unbelievably corny jokes, and never once saw a horror movie in his life (the one thing we disagreed on).

I met him in a Protestant church service where I used to spend my Sunday mornings. We hit it off shortly after our conversation turned to books and our favorite Christian and atheist philosophers. Back then, I preoccupied myself as the youngest teaching elder of a non-Catholic Christian fellowship.

After learning that he lived several blocks from my former residence in Marikina City, I made sure we met well-nigh every day, books in hand. Our favorite spot was a curb on the road a few hundred meters from the local grocery. There we laughed, traded ideas, and reciprocated each other’s presence with the appreciation and joy seen only in real brothers.

Never once did I notice that something was wrong.

During one of our several meets, Alvin pulled me aside and said, “I have to make a confession.” I replied in jest, “Then go get a priest!”

He laughed out loud and said, “I have a physical condition, bro. There’s something wrong with my nose. If you’ve noticed, I keep on touching it. Each night, when it gets really cold, pain crawls up my nose to the insides of my face, eyes, head…”

Taken by surprise, I replied, “Have you seen a doctor?”

He said, “I have. Several times. No one can tell me what’s wrong. Because of the pain, I haven’t been sleeping properly for years. I prayed long and hard for God to heal it. But it’s still here and it’s getting worse each day.”

“Anyone in the family know about this?”

“They do.”

“And?”

All Alvin could do was smile and shrug his shoulders.

Half past the first year of our friendship, I left the church to focus on getting a job. Soon enough, I got hold of a stevedore post in a popular meat factory, hauling 1.9 tons of canned and market produce for a meagre P100/day. To add to my dismal wages, I had to pick up “bad orders” — rotting meats, spoiled hotdogs and Christmas hams — on the way back to Manila from regular delivery routes.

It was bad enough that the bad orders were worm-infested. That the company never cared to provide us with gloves rang of exploitation.

The time I spent on the road delivering the produce got between my meetings with Alvin. The following months saw us meeting at the curb only twice. He was the same jolly fellow I knew from church. Nothing changed. If anything, his laughter only got louder. The last thing he gave me was a vintage edition of a rare English translation of the New Testament which he left at my doorstep. That was the last.

The next several months saw me developing a serious medical condition that prevented me from doing my job. Forced to resign, I ended up contemplating a life of crime: maybe rob a taxi cab. Tagging along beside me now were two amazing kids who I had to feed. Having no academic achievement, or any chance at making something of myself, robbing someone seems to me then as the best option. Apologizing to God only came next.

But the Fates seemed to have other plans. A call arrived from a friend in college asking me to consider working as a writer/reporter for a nationally-circulated newspaper. The paper soon hired me not as a writer, but “editorial assistant” (all because my resume had nothing in it). It was quite the fancy title back then for janitor and messenger.

Two years passed and, with some braggadocio, I soon realized my dream of being a writer and journalist. The job, being what it was, ate up even the time I had spared for my family, to say nothing of friends. The trip from the Manila Port to Marikina City was a good two hours even back then. The routine of spending most of the day on the field and the newsroom, and arriving home late at night, did the damage it was expected to do.

I never met Alvin again.

The following year saw me in the middle of my separation from my first wife, separation from my first two kids (which was even more devastating than the first), and newsroom assignments stacked one over the other. The memories of stories I have written on the matter of murders, corruption, rapes did little to help my floundering situation.

The separation put me at loggerheads with my parents, forcing me to leave my home and rent a room elsewhere. Many times I thought I bit more than I could chew. My life was going downhill faster than I could say “Shit!”

I soldiered on, regardless. I soon came to terms with the realities imposed on me. I saved P5,000-P10,000 I earned from doing extra writing gigs just so I could spend time with my kids at the mall each month. Each time I would see them leave at the end of the day, I would weep on the way to my rented room.

I worked tirelessly to the point that I collapsed and lost consciousness several times on my keyboard at my new home. One instance, my landlady saw me blackout from across the door and fall on the electric sockets right beside my computer. Good thing she had the mind to wake me up.

Life for me got really tough, but it wasn’t all bad either. At the newsroom, some people were beginning to recognize my output. I was a workhorse, writing every single day. This was more than can be expected from a college dropout surrounded by colleagues with tons of academic achievements.

The blackouts lasted for about a month and never returned. After a year of staying with their mother, my first two kids decided to finally stay with me and live the rest of their lives under my care. Best thing was that no one forced their hand to do it.

A year from my children’s return, I was assigned to cover an event scheduled in a posh hotel in Quezon City. I booked a room as the event required me to stay overnight. Upon arriving, I unpacked my bags and set out to scout the place.

And then a call from a stranger arrived. I picked up my phone and asked who she was. She was mum about her name, but told me in hushed tones that “Alvin is dead”.

I hollered back, “What? Who is this?”

“Joel, Alvin committed suicide last year. Inside the bathroom. We found him lying there”.

For the first time in my life, I was speechless.

“Rummaging through his stuff,” she continued, “we found a box of unsent letters all addressed to you. Basing it on the dates, he wrote them at the time you went off to work and never saw each other again. There are so many letters here. Would you like me to send them to you?”

I thought long and hard for an answer. “No,” I said beneath my breath. “Please do me the kindness of keeping them. I want to remember my brother the way he was, they way I met him and enjoyed his company when he was alive.”

After thanking the stranger, I switched off my phone and wept.

On days when life seems merciless and the hours fall like huge jagged rocks over my head, I look back to my memories of Alvin and what might those letters may have said. I know. I knew even back then that he found out about my separation, my losing my kids for a time, my job as stevedore and the illness that followed, my leaving home. It’s even safe to presume he knew of my blackouts.

I could almost predict what those letters may have said: for me to be strong, to hold on to life, to fight the good fight. To stand my ground come hell or high water. He was the indubitable encourager, my human comforter, my second wind. He would quote the philosophers and the Psalms from memory and with relative ease, with the intention of letting the words grab me and save me from sure destruction. He knew of my strong suicidal tendencies, my pathological rage.

He was to me the brother I never had.

As strong as Alvin may have been for me, sadly he never lifted a finger to save himself. I have learned in time that that’s not how it works. Soon after, I discovered that he took his life for reasons that his medical condition, which he had suffered for far too long, had become unbearable. The sleeplessness, the exhaustion of not knowing what it was, and the unrelenting pain finally did him in.

I truly regret not being there for him.

In 57 years, I have lost many dear friends, but only a couple to self-harm. Even today, the memory of Alvin’s laughter takes me from one hurdle to the next. He was my first true buddy, one whom I looked to as a real brother.

I regret the fact that I failed to see the signs. For how could I when I felt he was the happiest man alive?