The Last Despedida

People I meet these days have been asking me the same question: “Are you still here?”

 Well, yes, I am. But, not to fear, I am finally leaving this coming Tuesday, July 29th, for my first ever “sabbatical” in twenty-eight years of Jesuit life. Two months of doing nothing, not being responsible for anything, with time to sleep, read, and pray! What a gift! I am very grateful.

Last night, I attended the last of perhaps twenty despedidas I’ve attended in the past month or so. Very kindly organized and hosted by Jimmy and Jojo Hofileña in their Xavierville home, this was a gathering of AtSCA alumni from the ‘70’s and (very) early ‘80’s.

It was a magical evening of good food and drink and of marvelous conversation and music. We remembered old loves and spoke of present concerns. We talked about, among other things, children (theirs, not mine, of course), the present woes of the country and the work needed for meaningful change in 2010, and the various symptoms of the mid-life transition, which all of us, all in our late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s, are going through in various ways.

Mostly, we sang, with Jimmy and Rene San Andres playing the guitar as wonderfully as they did thirty years ago, and with Titay Bonto-La Viña’s  still lovely soprano soaring above all our combined voices. We sang the old AtSCA songs we composed. We found ourselves laughing at how naïve and, well, young some of the words we set to music were, and , at the same time, found ourselves too shaking our heads in wonder and disbelief at the beauty and depth of other lyrics, like those by Ellen Dionisio and Achoot Cuyegkeng--a beauty and depth which we had perhaps not noticed when we were teen-agers.

I found myself in awe again at the lovely lyrical quality of Jimmy Hofilena’s melodies, none of which, tragically, have ever been recorded. Jimmy also played a song Rene San Andres and I wrote the music for in 1979, with haunting lyrics by Ellen Dionisio, a song that won first place in the Ateneo song-writing contest of that year and which I have not heard or even thought of in at least two decades. Then, to my surprise, Jimmy played another song I wrote in 1980, with lyrics by Achoot, which was sung in one musical presentation and never again, and which I certainly have not thought of in 28 years.  I could not believe that Jimmy still remembered it, and the 49 year old me could not believe there was that kind of music in me when I was young.

All of us stopped writing songs after we graduated from college. No loss where I am concerned, but a sad waste for prodigious musical talents like Jimmy’s or Rene’s. Where did the music go when we began our careers in the “real world”?

There were other songs from the ‘70’s that we sang last night. Fumbling through half-forgotten lyrics of Metro-Pop hits, laughing when, through the haze of thirty years, we surprised ourselves by still recalling, as if by instinct, the lyrics to Ngayon at Kailanman, How Deep is Your Love, or Don’t Give Up on Us, Baby, the soundtrack of our youth was played back to us in our singing, and with that music, I think, came all the warmth of good memories, friendships and dreams, from that now irretrievably lost time of our lives.

A snippet of a conversation returns to me this morning, however. While we were getting our food from the buffet table, I turned to Chochoy Medina, our AtSCA president during our senior year, and said something to this effect:  “We’re going to be 50 next year, Choy. More than half of our lives are over. What have we done with them?” With what sounded to me like a rueful chuckle, Chochoy answered: “Oo nga. When we were young, we wanted to change the world. At ngayon . . . “ After a pause, he smiled and continued, “we still want to change the world.” We laughed.  While much has changed, and life and the world “has happened to us,” some things remain.

Of course, the most precious things that remain are these old friends. Over the decades, some of  us have remained in closer contact and others have moved further away from the circle of regular inter-actions. But, when we get together like this, somehow the years fall away, and without sentimentality or illusion, I think, we become aware, with a kind of quiet gratitude, of the enduring bonds that link our lives to each other’s. I remember the lyrics of a Stephen Sondheim song, Old Friends:

Say, old friends, 

How do we stay old friends?

No one can say, old friends,

How an old friendship survives.

One day chums, having a laugh a minute.

One day comes, and they’re a part of your lives . . .

Last night, when I got home close to midnight, still warmed by this gift of a gathering, I looked for the copy of the last novel I had just finished the previous day, Alexander McCall Smith’s The World According To Bertie. As he always ends his novels in his 44 Scotland Street series, McCall has the painter Angus Lourdie recite an extemporaneous poem in a final dinner with friends. I l wanted to share that poem with my friends. It is not Eliot or Auden, but it will do to express something of what I feel and pray as we come to yet another parting of ways:

Dear friends, we are the inhabitants

Of a city which can be loved, as any place can be,

In so many different and particular ways;

But who amongst us can predict

For which reasons, and along which fault lines,

Will the heart of each of us

Be broken? I cannot, for I am moved

By so many different and unexpected things .  . .

 

But what breaks the heart the most, I think,

Is the knowledge that what we have

We all must lose:

 

I don’t care much for denial,

But if pressed to say goodbye, that final word

On which even the strongest can stumble,

I am not above pretending

That the party continues elsewhere,

With a guest list that’s mostly the same,

And every bit as satisfactory;

That what we think are ends are really adjournments,

An entr’acte, an interval, not real goodbyes;

 

And perhaps they are, dear friends, perhaps they are.

 

July 26, 2008