At first, the alien
spaceships overhead moved slowly left and then right and then advances lower to
where my and James’s spaceship were shooting lasers and avoiding projectiles.
Then the alien spaceships moved faster and faster as their ranks were
decimated. Of course, we had to keep pace or move even faster.
This is how James lived
his life, I guess.
He was always moving,
and moving faster than the challenges thrown at him.
During college, he
worked part time at a Tropical Hut restaurant: flipping burgers and mopping
floors to help pay for his education.
He became a med rep
after graduation and was fast in securing sales. James always said they were
the legal drug pushers.
He once told me he had
to move fast in getting a doctor’s nod to promote the medicine as the gears of
pharmaceutical manufacturers that time were also churning at top speed. The
latter was due to new diseases and illness being born as the world and the
country hastened industrialization and urbanization. James, like many in the 80s, were in fast-moving world.
James was also moving
so fast even his first car, a Mitsubishi liftback, couldn’t keep up with him. One
time, he drove the liftback on an island at the Southern Luzon
Expressway―yes, that time in the 80s, there was a center island
separating the north-bound and south-bound lanes.
James was doing 140kph during a time when there were no speed limits
on the SLEX. He blamed the center island for not moving when he drove. The
thick white band of brace around his neck told it all. A whiplash, a whipping
from his mom and a warning from authorities were all he got.
One late evening James
dropped by our house in Cagayan Street, Santa Ana, Manila, whooping so loud two
of our neighbor’s lights went on.
“What’re you so ecstatic
about?” I asked with hands akimbo.
“I did it, Jo [Jojo
being a term of endearment among Bisaya-cultured Filipinos; James among them as
an Ilonggo],” he said with a grin so wide a semi could pass through his teeth.
“It only took less than 30 minutes to get here from Pacita!”
I would’ve dismissed
this as braggadocio had I not seen how pale his passenger was. There, on
shaking knees, came out an ashen Leo Pitargue. He could only nod and kept hands
on the car’s roof to steady himself.
“Yep,” Leo murmured. And
ask for an ice-cold glass of water, oblivious―or
shocked―to James who was doing the jig on a cold night that
February.
That month was
important because James drove from Laguna just so he could personally greet me
on my birthday. How can you punch a guy for being stupid when he was also that
sweet?
Leo and I have told him
time and time again to slow down, not only in driving, but also after revealing that the nerves of his heart were slowly dying: five percent in the first year of
diagnosis and incremental 10 percent in the next three years.
A doctor said James only
had three years to five years―seven, tops―to live.
That was in 2003. His ailment was not even fast enough for James. But it did catch up with him when he slowed down; retiring three years ago.
Early Tuesday morning,
the heart of James Anthony Mapa just stopped. And by that, James also did.
A day after hearing the
news, I am still unnerved.
Here was a dear, dear
friend who grew up with me―and like me―as penniless teenagers trying to outwit the
alien spaceships brought into the screen we call Life.
Here was a dear friend
who made me realize as I’m writing this that while he was fast, he didn’t speed
through life like a blur: Life just couldn’t keep up with how he was fast enough
to enjoy it.
