SOME GOOD THINGS ABOUT NIMFA'S GOOD-BYE

If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! (Ecclesiastes 4:10)

I could be the dumbest one. It would take me eternity to process that a bomb has just been dropped right to my face. And there in that small coffee shop I broke down when I learned that the weeping lady in front of me is leaving the country in less than 12 hours to New Zealand.

It would have been a different story had it not been someone else. But Nimfa is the most unlikely but the dearest of friends that I found in my Cebu Normal University days--days when friends were few. There are only a handful of them. I call ourselves the inseparable threesome--Ben, Nimfa, and me. Ben and family left last year to migrate to Canada. And as expected Nimfa is off the shore now to fend for the family and do what she does best as a professional, teaching IELTS.

I knew eventually, she'll be gone, unreachable and quite far when proximity can be the only cure to some life's maladies. I became emotionally vulnerable when I began to think that I would be alone facing my own quirks and eccentricities not to mention my stupidities which multiply even as I grow older each day. I thank God for these bundle of gifts in people. They never cease to amaze me when I am as helpless as a dog. Friends have been a great cushion bag when tossed here and there. To me, they are a good picture of Christ. I hold on to life as I cleave to them. But now one of these people that I truly call my friends has to go and wade the cold waters of distance.

Such news sure broke a valid stronghold I have put my frail self secluded in. But I am all right. I made sure I will be. I am a grown-up woman. She would be back of course. And that would be a happy day. But I get a feeling that it would be a little odd not seeing her as up close as before and as often as my wont via the seven-peso jeepney fare.

In all these seeming losses, God must have allowed some lone travels in some cold valleys not for my marrows to get the chill but to get my unmoving feet to a corner I am meant to go alone.