Goodbye, Kuya

Last December 23rd, my eldest brother, Freddie, lost his battle with lung and brain cancer. He was around 45, I imagine. I didn't expect it to hurt so much, but it does.

I never knew Freddie that well. He was old enough to have moved away when I was born, and he was never really required to hang around our house, because his mother and my mother were not one and the same. Of all my half-brothers, though, it was of him that I was proudest. Freddie was once the country's greatest dart player, and people I never knew often asked me if I were related to him once they learned of my family name.

Freddie was a nice guy, as far as I knew him. Perhaps it is best that my rather limited understanding of and relationship with him was limited to the cordial hi's and hello's of Christmas evenings when he and his girlfriend would come to our house for paella and pancit molo. Perhaps it was best that we never had heart-to-hearts because I might not have treated my relationship with my younger brother, John, if it came into context of how he treated me as kuya and I as bunso. A world of perhapses, a galaxy of maybe's, and a universe of might've been's, should've's, and mamaya na langs.

I didn't even get to say goodbye.

Ah, Fred, Kuya that never was, I didn't think I'd miss you, but it's in the void that you've created that I realize the biggest mistakes of all may have been the ones intentionally made.