To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists.

People die everyday, and for the most part we are oblivious to that basic fact unless the people who die are close to us. When that happens, a little piece of us goes away too: that part that was occupied by that person, and we are only too aware of their absence.

And sometimes, it feels like too many people are dying. Unless there was a global epidemic or major cataclysm, that probably isn't true. There might coincidentally be several people we know who left us one after the other, and the collective gravity of the loss colors our view of the world.

The other day I went to see this woman for a card reading, and she told me she came from a funeral that morning. So we talked about recent deaths.

I told her about a friend's mother. For almost a year, she was catatonic after a serious asthma attack last year that lead to a cardiac arrest. I saw her months ago and it broke my heart.

High school was spent going to my friend's house on some afternoons and his mother would always be there, joking with her son's friends. She had a earthy laugh that rings around the house. We never lost touch when us kids entered college, and after several years I became godfather to some of her grandkids.

Seeing her in bed without awareness to the people around her, without that vitality that was her defining characteristic, it was like looking at a husk of a person. It was like looking at someone else who shared her face. I thought, this was not the 'tita' I knew; she was always so full of life.

She finally passed away earlier this week. My friend told me of her last few days when I passed by her wake. Knowing what the family went through, the suffering each one endured, I said her passing is more of a relief. Her sister, my friend's aunt, saw me and remarked how her sister had been like a second mom to us. I said yes without hesitation. In some wakes, I just go out of sympathy for the family who was left behind; one of whom happened to be a friend. With her, it was paying respect to a person I knew when she was still alive.

She will be laid to rest later and I plan to go to the funeral after work so I could say good-bye.

I still think of my friend whose passing I learned more than a month later. I've never removed his number from my phone and I pause every time I see it. I'm being sentimental, I know; that number has no use now. But it's a reminder of my friend when he was still alive.

I fear mortality.

And I feel sad when I see friends post about the passing of people they love. It's a heavy burden left to the living: remembering the person when they were alive. But it's also very touching. It's proof of a well-lived life when the people you leave behind remembers you fondly.