Miracles and Mishaps

(via ache)

Death has always been a stranger to me; it was always something that happened to someone else or someone else’s loved one. It scares me.

This past week has taught me a lot about myself. I came to realize that maybe I’m not so much who I thought I was - good or bad, I don’t know. But I know that maybe I’m not that much of a “free spirit” that I thought I was, that deep down my heart is where my home is.

Hearing the news of yeye’s passing, I just had to come home and I’m glad I did. I learnt the importance of being and not doing, the importance of being present. It still feels surreal, it only hits me when I see him in the coffin to realize that he is really gone. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it, but it feels like a part of me is different, a part of me has gone together with him.

Having grown up with my grandparents from birth, it never occurred to me what my life would be like without them. I realize that my yeye always set the example for me in terms of health - physical and spiritual.

My earliest memories of yeye was when I was still in primary school. I remember him being very active in his younger days, having a daily exercise regime consisting of Aikido and lifting free weights, push-ups and crunches. In fact, that was how I started exercising out of PE or school CCAs. He would always buy multi-vitamins and vitamin C tablets for us too.

Yeye was also the first one who taught me how to pray without really even trying. Every night before he sleeps, he would kneel in front of the altar to say the rosary. And one day, I just started joining him. He was the one who taught me to say The Apostle’s Creed and once I learnt it by heart, I was always very proud of myself for being able to recite it without referring to anything during Sunday Masses.

As the years went by and as I started to “grow up” and yeye started to grow older, his routine changed too. He wasn’t as active and eventually he stopped praying too. I never really spent very much time with him either, but in the last 2 months, I believe that I did the best that I could. I’m glad that we all got to see him when he was lucid, when he was present. I’m glad that my last memories are of him smiling at me and knowing who I am. If there was anything that I could wish to be different, it would have been that he didn’t have to die alone. But I believe that everything has a reason, that things have happened the way they are supposed to happen.

I hope you have found your way home yeye. Thank you for all that you have taught me and all that you have given me. You will be dearly missed.

Lights will guide you home and ignite your bones.

Death has no power over us.

I am alive and I haven’t felt this way in a longggggg time.

Perhaps it’s the upcoming trip or the insightful catch up with friends that matter over the weekend.

It could be knowing that I have plans at least for the year ahead.

Whatever it is, I just want to hold on to this moment and live in it, the here and the now.

This should be what life is about.

Skagen is the northernmost point of Denmark, where the Baltic and North Seas meet. The two opposing tides in this place can not merge because they have different densities.

(via midnightlunacy)

I love abandoned places where nature is taking over again. It always makes me think about how the world would be fine if the human race was all of a sudden obliterated - things would go back to normal, it would be one giant jungle of cities covered in nature again. Also reminds me of Castle in the Sky, the 1986 movie by Hayao Miyazaki.

(via eletheowl)

allthingseurope:

Cologne Cathedral (by chiriacradu)

whitepaperquotes:

White Collar’s Elizabeth Burke

(via eletheowl)

ashappyaskings:

If I have a son, I will frame this and hang it in his bedroom.

fuckyeahtravelinspirations:

Peacock in San Diego, California, USA

Forgive me for caring, for interfering in decisions that are not mine to make; for thinking of what could happen in the long run; for saying what I think is best. I obviously have no idea what I am talking about and even if I do, it is not my place - I know that now.