Last week, feeling nostalgic, I sent New Year greetings to my former batchmates in college one sunny-rainy afternoon in Fiji. It brought back memories of the time when we were wide-eyed, idealistic students taking up BA English Studies (Language) in the University of the Philippines-Diliman, where we immersed ourselves in language, literature, discourse analysis, and other matters our young minds deemed important, as well as societal upheavals during that time.

While we were about 40 in that class in the late 90s to early 2000s, now, I have only maintained communication with less than half, largely thanks to social media.

Life brought us to different careers: education, law, tourism, business, socio-civic advocacies, foreign service, and others. Some have their own families and kids now. Others, none and have chosen a career-focused life.

I was sad to learn that one of our batchmates passed away last month due to cancer. My message to her was a month late. Another is struggling with a daughter, who in her young life, already wanted to end it, and tried twice, and now has to be monitored constantly so as not to harm herself. I was heartbroken to learn this. I breathed a prayer for her daughter, but I wish I could do more to help to ease the darkness from that young gal’s mind.

Writing this, flashbacks of moments come to my mind: eating banana cue for lunch in the UP campus with Janice, sitting on the sidewalk outside Sampaguita Residence Hall talking passionately about societal issues with Phanie, chatting in our UP Lingua tambayan at the back of the UP Faculty Center (which was destroyed by a fire some years back), being kilig about someone’s crush on another batchmate, sitting on the grass listening to poetry and passing our easy-to-prepare hors d’oeuvre consisting of fita biscuits on clean paperlined trays, topped with cheese and tuna-mayo filling.

And some classroom scenes: meeting our literature professor’s question with silence (it was a question about if there was an instance that we felt a darkness within; I think we were discussing Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” not sure now); a high-ranking police looking for her activist daughter in the classroom (she hasn’t gone home for several days); waiting in line to prerog (a jargon to get the chance to be admitted in a class; I’m not sure now if it’s still done in UPD); a classmate in a French class appearing to seduce our prof by her way of answering and her facial expressions and clothes (perhaps she was just being herself but it appeared to be so in the late 90s); our professor wearing matching colors for her clothes, shoes, socks, and hair accessories; scrounging for blue books when unprepared. Haha!

I was supposed to write something inspiring for the New Year. But as I write, my mind led me to the past, of youth and idealism, and young love, and classroom requirements and discussions. Then life happened. We’re moving towards midlife now. Mostly busy working; others successfully balancing a career and a family; some being tested by life’s challenges. 

We’re not so close now, both in proximity, and in emotional connection. But for a time, we were a block, attending classes together, feeling hopeful about the future, feeling invincible from life’s travails. Now, leading different lives and careers, but sometimes brought together briefly to celebrate an occasion such as the New Year. Then after hi’s and hello’s and wishes of getting together, we go back to our busy lives and connect again after a year or so. That’s how it is, I guess.