...and may God hold you in the palm of his hand.

I want to dedicate this space to a former office-mate who recently passed away due to brain tumor. I wanted to write about this probably because I felt a tinge of guilt or that admittedly, it makes me sad to think about him and about this sad circumstance. The week before Teody got comatose and consequently passed away, he went to visit me at the office- like he always did. Quite often than anybody who had ever visited me. He did that for one reason: he had longed, needed to get back to work at the CSC again. I knew he was gonna mention his pending work application. He was persistent in trying to be re-employed. And it dawned on me, since his coterminous employment with the ended in February 2011, Teody had struggled to get back to a more stable job. He had struggled for five years to make ends meet. Maybe I never really truly understood how much he needed it- not for himself but for his family. But even if I understood it clearly, I knew then and I know now that I could only do so much. With his passing, I wish I did more than what I thought I could to help. But more so, I wish I was more kind and good. That Monday on the week before he died, I bumped into him at the office lobby. He greeted me in his usual upbeat tone and was trying to converse with me. I was in a hurry to go home and so just to hold the conversation, he walked me to the parking lot. That Friday of the same week, he went to the office and I could still remember how I stared at him. My face could not have hidden my annoyance as I knew he was just going to talk about his pending application. The following Monday, he was diagnosed with brain tumor, got comatose and a week after, passed away. Teody would no longer bother me with his pending application. I will never be annoyed by him anymore. There won’t be any text messages, or FB messages following up and requesting for recommendation. And it has made me felt terrible. It saddens me to realize that he lived his life for the past five years struggling to get a more stable job. There may be countless of people like Teody. And I don’t know exactly what to feel about that. But one thing I know for sure by now: you have to be kind and good to people. All the time. Kindness and goodness don’t choose a time and day and circumstance. You don’t choose to be kind and good only when your life is all great and your day is perfect. You should be kind and good even when you feel like hell inside, you choose to be kind and good even if your day was nothing but tough. Because no matter how bad you feel or how terrible your day is, the other person may just be undergoing something worse than that. May God hold you in the palm of His hand, Teody. I am sorry for what I could have done and did not do. I know that God doesn’t need any of your application to get you in. You had been trying so hard to find a stable, secure job while living. Maybe you didn’t need to. You’re definitely in a better (work) place. It’s all fine now.