Friends

“What’s the worst that can happen if you read a book without a plastic covering it?”

“There would be dog-eared corners! Some liquid might spill, and it would damage the book cover and its pages!”

“And what’s the likelihood of that happening? Knowing you...”

“Well, it still could happen...”

“So? I’m going back to my question. What’s the worst that can happen if you read a book without first covering it in plastic?”

It was precisely this conversation from 2016 that changed my reading habits. I had been in a reading slump for years since I returned to television work. I always used my demanding and time-consuming job as an excuse, but there were many other reasons why I did not, and could not, bring myself to read again. One of them was that I wanted to cover my books first, and I found that task daunting because, at the time, I had a pile of books that remained untouched since I purchased them.

Underneath that seemingly simple conundrum was my predisposition to ensure that circumstances were perfect before I do something for myself.

But my first long-time therapist was right. What’s the worst that could happen?

In the same breath, we talked about how much McDonald’s soft-serve vanilla ice cream gave me comfort, yet, even if the nearest branch was a stone’s throw away from my workplace back then, I wouldn’t even bulge from my cubicle to get myself a cone.

In a fraction of our hour-long session, my therapist Zsa Zsa made me realize the importance of indulging in the now. To this day, naked books and ice cream are elements, actual tangible things present in my life, that remind me of what I needed to do for myself.

So, since I had my own refrigerator, barely a month would even pass by without it having its fill of ice cream.

The first book I read without a plastic cover was Thich Nhat Hanh’s The Heart of The Buddha’s Teaching. It was not the last.

More recently, I finished my nth naked book. It was an unexpected gift from a friend, one on which I initially had reservations.

One Sunday afternoon, I received an email from Amazon notifying me that a former journalist, whom I admired before I even joined the profession, gifted me with an e-book. I messaged her to ask if said e-book was intended for me or if there had been a mistake. She said it was no mistake; the book was for me.

There were technical issues with Amazon, though, so I couldn’t access the e-book with which I was gifted. Five days later, I received a call from an unregistered number. A physical, signed copy of the same book was delivered to me.

The mere knowledge of being remembered was enough to make me shed a few tears. And by the time I reached page two of Sigrid Nuñez’s The Friend, my tears flowed like rivers.

The Friend told the grief journey of an unnamed narrator whose loved one died of suicide and left her with an unusual gift, his dog.

Six hours, 46 minutes, and 20 seconds — spread into four days, which were stretched out into two weeks — this was all the time it took for me to finish The Friend. Within the first few pages, I understood why Luz Rimban thought of me. I was reading the words I couldn’t muster the courage to write, both for myself and for my late sister Maricel. (I even had to force myself to type that word, “late”.) I read the book in my skin. And like one does when one enjoys the company of a friend, I extended our time together, as much as I could.

Within the same week, for two consecutive nights, I also received vegetarian pizzas unannounced from my friends Pam and Sha, and my former colleague Martin. Moments like those make me think I must’ve done something good in my life to deserve their affection.

Halfway through the book’s first chapter, the narrator introduced us to the man for whom she had been grieving, and I saw in him my former professor in university, who would later become my confidant and father figure. The unnamed character was similarly loved by his students, and he was also described as charismatic, as vain, and as terrified of the physical manifestations of old age as my former professor, who recently died of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

At that point, though, even if the book felt more and more like a fictionalized version of my story, my reservation was still unresolved: the dog. I am a cat lover; I have always been. Apparently, the narrator was, too.

I finally closed the book on September 4, exactly 100 days since my sister passed. That week, I had gone home to our family house in Laguna, tucked in my red-walled bedroom that was right across Maricel’s purple-walled haven. In my solitude, The Friend was my companion.

I don’t think I can be any more grateful for having shared the pain of losing a loved one that day with an unnamed narrator, an author, and a friend who can understand. •