A Rehearsal for Dying
By Michael Ian Lomongo
“To conquer death, you only have to die… you only have to die.” – Jesus Christ, in Webber/Rice’s “Jesus Christ Superstar”
I was a young kid then when my brother Errol and I used to play with toy guns, soldiers and tanks. Once, our mother heard us talking about wiping out each other’s “men.” She said that we shouldn’t be talking so cavalierly about killing and deaths because, in the real world, lives that are taken are lost, well, permanently.
At about the same time, during the proclamation of faith in one mass that we attended, I heard Errol sing “Si Kristo’y namatay, si Kristo’y nabuhay, si Kristo’y babalik sa wakas ng panahon.” I told our mom that my brother’s got it all wrong, that it should be “Sa bakas ng panahon.” Only to find out that I was the one who’d been singing it wrongly all this time.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I tried to imagine what it would be like at the end of time. I thought there would only be trees and birds. (I even imagined the sunlight filtering through the trees and the birds chirping in an early “people-less” morning.) Everyone I know (including me), and even those I hardly know and don’t know at all, would be gone, dead. It was awful.
I thought people didn’t really die. I thought that they soon got up from their graves or from wherever or whatever they’ve been lying, just like those numerous people who get killed in action movies. And to top it all, there was such a thing as the “end of time.” Oh God!