ON AVERAGE, over 60 million people die each year. 

In the Philippines, the death rate – the number of deaths within a population that occur during a specific amount of time – is at 6.248, with a growth rate of 1.200%. 

Here, thousands of people die every day. In 2022, for example, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) registered a total of 679,766 deaths, with 1,862 registered dead each day. 

It is harrowing to see these human lives – all those years, with each memory and each mistake included – reduced to a mere statistic. To us, though, who have personally experienced loss in our lives, know just how much these numbers truly mean.

Death is an inevitable part of life, that is a fact known by everyone, but that doesn’t make dealing with it any simpler.

It is easy to say the clichés like “Make the most of it,” or “Live life with no regrets,” but to do these things sometimes feels like the most difficult thing on earth. 

Dealing with loss

It is hard to deal with death, particularly when it takes someone near and dear to you. 

The start of November is a particularly trying time that is often dedicated to visiting the graves of your deceased loved ones. 

You may feel a number of different emotions passing through you as you visit them, possibly good or bad. Even if you don’t visit them, you may feel this wave of emotions regardless. 

This year is hard for me, for example, because I haven’t been able to visit my grandfather’s grave. 

My mother and I talked about it, saying we should visit soon, but with work and everything going on in our lives, our visit date would only push back further and further. 

I know that my love for him doesn’t change regardless of if I visit him or not, but I cannot help the guilt that gnaws at my insides, as if I have forgotten him – as if there is no more space for him in my life now. 

I think a part of our brains continues to live on as if everyone who is no longer in our lives is still in them; as such, I don’t think anyone in our lives ever actually dies. In some way or another, I find them still with me.

We continue to fold our clothes a certain way because it is how our mothers taught us to. We follow the path in life that we hope will make our parents, and our grandparents, and everyone else before them, proud of us. Seldom, however, do these things matter to us when these people are still alive. 

Make your time together meaningful

Perhaps a part of the reason why I feel so guilty in not visiting my grandfather is because, before he passed, we’d grown so distant that I hardly even knew him.

We used to be inseparable, but as he and I both grew older, so did the rift between us. The little time that we were together, we’d spend arguing on the most meaningless things. 

I remember one night, I asked him to tell me stories of when he was a boy scout – just like I asked him to do when I was a kid. His eyes lit up with pure, unadulterated joy. 

I hadn’t seen him that happy in so long. 

The day of his passing, we’d gotten into an argument. He’d suffered from an accident a few years prior, which made it hard for him to walk. He was, on that day, refusing to continue with physical therapy.

What I didn’t know then – and what I know all too well now that it is too late – was that he was suffering from depression. As a child, all I could feel was angry because he didn’t want to keep trying. 

I told my grandmother that if he wanted to give up, let him. Those were my last words to him. Later on into the wee hours of the night, my grandmother came into my room to say that he’d passed.

His death still haunts me to this day despite the fact that it happened so long ago, and there are times wherein it feels just as painful as it did that night. I often find myself wishing that he was still alive, talking to him as if he were, and wondering if he would be proud of me if he could see me now.  

All of these things, I took for granted in the time that he was still alive, just as I’m sure many others do to the people in their lives, whether it be with their family, their friends, or whoever else. 

There are many cliché things in life, but one that will always ring true is to spend your time with the people that matter most. 

Don’t be like me who has realized all of this too late – who is constantly drowning in regrets and what ifs and apologies left unsaid. 

Do the things that make you the happiest, and make memories that you know you will look back on fondly no matter how many years have passed.