A Day to be Remembered

29 years ago, a musician who just wanted to go home to be with his family and rest after a hard day’s work was shot just outside his Dakota apartment in New York. He was a former Beatle simply named John Lennon.

During my stint as a college student (maybe mid-90’s), me and my high school buddy met somewhere in Pasay City, Philippines. It was All Saint’s Day.

TRIVIA:

In the Philippines, All Saint’s Day is together celebrated as All Soul’s Day every November 1.

Anyways, back to our topic, I spent the Halloween in my friend’s apartment and got up maybe around noon of November 1 after a few bottles of beer the previous night. I don’t have hangover or something, but the mid-afternoon sun gave me a headache.

It was semestral break and we didn’t went home to Roxas City for a vacation, but instead we bonded together to have a Metro Manila adventure. There was a cemetery near the place where he lived. So we ate lunch, as I remember, we bought 12 oz. of Coca-Cola and a recycled bread called “pudding”. That was our lunch or we may say brunch! We don’t have enough money to buy real lunch for it was vacation and no allowance being sent to us.

A little after three in the afternoon, we ended our lunch. Yes, if we were together we just talked and laughed about the things we said and done back in our highschool days.  We never noticed that the time was ticking so fast. For us, time doesn’t exist. We were living the “Einstein way” that was what we were.

So we took off to the cemetery and his cousin (who was also a buddy from highschool) came along. And we were three! Then we went inside the cemetery and we were looking for namesakes of our highschool classmates and schoolmates. It was fun though. And the human traffic inside the cemetery was not different in the province where we came from. We also bought candles as our prop.

Then we get tired after three or four hours of walking in and out the area. We went home walking to my buddy’s apartment and his cousin took a jeep home to his own apartment to spend the night with his other relatives near Baclaran.

So we decided to grab a beer or two before we called it a night. We didn’t have had anymore money so he asked a friend in the store to help us out and just list the bottle of beers that we got and we will pay it off when our allowance arrived. Then because of my friend’s good credit standing in that sari-sari store, we were allowed to have a little celebration of a Philippine tradition. We were also given some food by his beloved neighbors.

If you will ask me why the introduction is about John Lennon? Here we go. When I came to my friend’s house on the 31st of October, I brought a back-issue of MOJO magazine which I bought before the first semester ended in Booksale, and I showed it to him. We were listening to RJ 100.3 fm and they were airing a whole day of voting on who was the best, Elvis or The Beatles. So to put our candles into good use, the centerfold was a picture of John Lennon wearing a white shirt with a New York word printed on it, we let the magazine stood infront of a big rock which was already there sitting outside my friends apartment. We were sitting on the floor just at the door of the apartment and watching the little candles burn infront of the photo of John Lennon and we dedicated that day as John Lennon’s Day because November was the month that fell between his Birthday (October 8th) and the day he died (December 8th).

We had fun that night and we tried to do it again the following year. That time, we had his cousin to celebrate with us and it was the last time we had a John Lennon’s Day. we wanted to expand it along with our friends for the next year, but we were already busy. Sometimes, not all things happen as they planned. I think the following year, my friend got married with his college sweetheart and so does his cousin with one of our classmates in highschool.

Every year that passed by, I hardly forget to remember the things we did that day. It was one experience that we surely will never forget. There were still times when we meet that one day, we will celebrate another John Lennon’s Day or take a road trip which we really dreamed of if only we got a car. Yes, some members of our so-called brotherhood had managed to take a road trip a year ago, but its different if all of us will be there. Lastly, we hope that one day, we will have a group picture that everyone in the “gang” will be present.

{Bloggers Note}

This was supposed to be the first entry to this blog, but since December 8 is the day the city where I came from celebrate a feast in honour of the Virgin Mary and also a death anniversay of John Lennon, so it was replaced in favour of my being a citizen of Roxas City. Anyway we just want to tell everyone about our past experiences using the image og John Lennon while we were tipsy and groggy… see yah again… grayscale out!