Closer Than Before

#105: Keep Me Company, Gavin

It’s stupid. I can’t keep a plug on my tear ducts. Two days. Just two days. I’m checking my planner and there’s a Technical meeting tomorrow I have to attend. No, I don’t have to attend it. I don’t want to attend it. When you’re on the brink of something that will massively change the life you know and have enjoyed for 25 years, a bloody meeting on packaging cost efficiencies can wait. If you don’t know when you’ll next see the brother you’ve been sharing most of your life with, wouldn’t you want to spend each minute you can with him between now and the airport?

I can’t even work now. The tears won’t stop. I’m a mess. Of course it doesn’t help that Gavin DeGraw is singing in the background. But while listening to his song is not the wisest thing to do at this point because it just turns on the waterworks, it’s the best way I know to make my surroundings echo what I am feeling.

I want comfort food. KFC (I’m not caring that much now that it’s a Pepsi account.) And I’m calling Comfy Mano to meet up with me. He will understand why I’m being silly sentimental about my brother’s leaving. His younger brother also left two years ago. Being one of just two kids is both good and bad. We had opportunities to do things (travel, art classes, music lessons etc.) that wouldn’t have been possible if my parents were constantly worrying about where to get money for the tuition of the 5th or 6th kid. But as I was looking out the car window on my way to meet up with Mano, I kept on chewing on the thought that maybe having just two kids in the family is not a good idea. Maybe I’ll have more.

“When your brother leaves, it will make a big difference in your family’s life. It will mark the point in which you will already start living separate lives,” he said, completely parroting the exact sentiment running in my head for how many days now. I went back to the nights we’d spend together hanging out at the family room – not exactly conversing but taking comfort in the fact that while one is doing an entirely different thing (which you have or want nothing to do with), the other is just there. Just breathing but there.

You see, our house sleeps awfully early. By 10pm, my parents are already in bed with the maids signaling the end of the day by turning off the house lights one by one. Only the family room continues to be awake with the glow of both the PC and TV screen, and the familiar sounds of usually hilarious shows - canned cackles, most of the time. The light in the family room, and not the light on the porch, is my indicator as I pull into the garage that someone is still up. Or to be more precise, that Barry is still up. And it's always a good thing to have someone still up when you get home.

Yesterday, we had this Farewell party for him. I organized it because I’ve never been comfortable being mushy with this ogre who used to wrestle and box with me when we were kids. I can’t hug him because that’ll be more funny than heartwarming. The gathering of close friends from church, (along with the scrapbook I painstakingly put together, the songs and the verses I had for him), was the best way I knew to make him know that I loved him, I love him and that I will continue to love him across the distance. I can’t tell him straight. I’d either laugh or cry. And so, I’d rather blog about it.

Gavin continues to sing in the background. It’s weird. I can listen to this song a thousand times this day. And it’s not even apt. It’s a love song and it’s better off as the anthem to underline my brother’s emotions as he leaves his girlfriend. (I’m sure she’s doing her own crying as well. We’ll probably cry together on Wednesday; which explains why my brother requested me to drive her home from the airport.) But I can’t help but steal some lines from “More Than Anything” and keep them for my brother.

“I’m gonna hold you closer than before…”
“I’ll be free for you anytime…”
“Tell me all you need and I will try…”

All these while wondering when I’d see him next.
All these and more.