To Hold a Sunlight

"I'm going to die when I'm thirty," she declared for the umpteenth time. Every time she told me that, I would just laugh it off, not believing a word of it. But when she read that disbelief on my face, she would add, "It's true, you don't believe me? You will see." She was only in her early twenties, and for her, life has become a sunlight that faded into spectral gray.

That's my friend, always raving about the what-ifs of her young life, making up an imaginary existence which is diametrically different from her present life. What if she would "die", or erase her life now and take on a new identity and live someplace where nobody knew her? That was real excitement for her.

Her frenzied talks seemed to me like an escape from this world that has turned against her. She has lost all of them, those she held dear in her heart. Her real parents ruthlessly abandoned her when she was a little girl. Her aunt and uncle took up the responsibility to raise her up as their own daughter until death's insatiable voracity swallowed them up. And how many more would she lose in the future? Her relatives, her friends? Why not leave first before they would leave her?

One day, I tried to reach her. No reply. Her cell phone was out of service. For many days, I kept trying to get in touch with her but without success. Then it dawned on me that she was a month closer to age thirty. Meaning? Was she preparing for that big day when she would march out of this world and step into a whole new existence? Or to an unknown non-existence?