His name was Daniel, Neil to his friends and customers, or was it Niel. (We pinoys always have this penchant for shortening names. Often, we’d repeat it even for emphasis (as in Niel-niel, Lotlot, Em-em etc), as though that really mattered.
About that, I once had a friend named Rafael (whose name we close buddies shortened to just Raf) . The inevitable repeat syndrome came and the endearment was later turned it into Raf-Raf. That later morphed into Arf-Arf, credited to his girl classmates and friends in school who thought it was “cute”. When the neighborhood guys got wind of it, he finally became Itoy for short (puppy in Visayan). Thus, there wasn’t a trace of Rafael in the end.
Enough already. Before we forget, this isn’t about old man Rafael at all. Let’s just go back to Daniel.
By the way, he died yesterday. As sudden as that was, it had only been a few days ago, when we last chatted shortly at the gate, as we always did. I called him up and in a few minutes, he arrived in his converted tricycle and replaced our four empty mineral water containers with fresh ones. This, he has done every two weeks for more than 4 years. Just like with other people doing house deliveries in the subdivision, we had become friends. It had become standard between us that there was a 15-peso tip whenever he came by (for merienda daw) and at Christmas, we always had a gift bag of groceries, candies and toys for his baby girl. Always respectful and soft spoken, that was Niel, our friendly neighborhood mineral water man of so many years and I still can’t believe he’s gone, only 35 years young.
I remember the first time he came to replenish our supply, he was the first to break the ice by admiring the row of Chinese ornaments pinned to our screen door, saying we had powerful amulets guarding our door. Since that time, casual small talk evolved into longer chats. There were even many instances when his young wife and little girl would accompany him on his water route and we’d include them in our short conversations.
That’s all gone now. On my way to the store, this morning, spotted his vehicle up our street and at first glance, I thought it was him driving. A new guy, whom we have still to meet, perhaps on our next order, nodded to acknowledge my wave. Just like that, I thought as their departing figures rounded the bend, the cycle, both literally and not, moves on and we’re stranded in a way, even for a while.
