Let me take you back to much simpler times. It was either summertime or in November, and I was 6-8 hours away from where we lived—so far, yet somehow it felt like home. It was somewhere I knew quite well—it was the place where my mother grew up.

There were sounds of banter amongst my siblings and my cousins. The smell of burning mosquito coils wafted through the room. Insects buzzed in our ears and darted past the yellowish lights. It was sometime in the late 1990’s, and all of us younger ones were on the floor, wide-eyed and curious, eagerly awaiting each story, ready to accept anything as the truth.

We were all ready for bed, and yet we were all awake as we ever could be—excited more for the bedtime stories (which consisted mostly of intriguing family gossip, tall tales, and urban legends) than for the respite that comes with the night. The adults all took turns, and sometimes all at once, telling us of random things that satisfied our mystified little heads. And I distinctly remember when one of them said in a hushed voice, “kung sino man ang nalalapit sa kanyang kaarawan ay kailangang mag-ingat, dahil habang lumalapit ang kaarawan ay lumalapit din kay kamatayan.” (“Whoever’s getting close to their birthday should be careful; as you get closer to that day, you also get closer to death.”

And I didn’t pay a lot of attention to it, but like a subconscious dagger, I carried it with me throughout the years, taking it out whenever I see death, automatically checking when their dates of birth were. Sometimes, they’re close, but sometimes they’re not. It was one of the ‘games’ I used to play during All Saints’ Day when I was younger and we used to go to cemeteries to visit our departed relatives’ graves. I used to walk around, looking at gravestones and checking to see who died young. Who died together. And who died close to their birthday.

Death is a peculiar thing indeed. Simple, yet so complicated. We are all going to die one day—there’s nothing out of the ordinary about this. And yet at the same time, nothing about what surrounds death is ordinary. What has led someone to his/her death? This in itself is as broad as the ever-expanding space, too big for us to see in the sky, and too complex for us to comprehend. It makes me wonder who began the idea about birth and death being close to each other. Why do some people die before they get to be a year older? And why are some unluckily given by fate the irony of “the gift of another year,” only to die after a short while? And what about people who die of other people’s doing? Or of their own choosing?

There are way too many circumstances that had to go together that there cannot be a single formula for it. I imagine it as some sort of chain reaction ball machine, only with more control options wherein you can change things which may either lengthen or shorten the ball’s life—eventually, though, no matter how intricate you make the labyrinth for your ball, it would still plunge to its inevitable end.

In the end, I realised that this “death and birthday” idea is a cock-and-bull story, which, like many other fables and sayings with no logical explanation, were obviously made to serve as an excuse to relieve people of guilt. The guilt of having some sort of connection or fault that lead to someone’s demise.

But we all have something to do with each other’s deaths. Every single thing we say or do, leads to something else, and leads to yet something else. It’s like a crazy domino game wherein one tips the other, but this time, it’s coming from all over the place. Does everything happen by destiny then? Maybe. If destiny entails each individual person in the world sending torrents of butterfly effects together, then yes, it is our fate to die when we do. Even if it’s suicide.

Benjamin Franklin once said that some people die at 25 and aren’t buried until they’re 75. How different is this kind of death from the one we’ve all come to know? How sad it must be, having an empty shell, a cold vessel, functioning like normal but with nothing left inside. Look around you. Which ones do you suppose are still alive?