Where Do the Departed Go When Their Time Comes?

Written By: Angelo Lorenzo

I’ve been bringing people back to their home for as long as I could remember. This is a different kind of home – not massive mansions or magnificent palaces, not one-studio apartments stacked in high-rise buildings, and not humble shanties or wooden huts that one would mostly see in the rural countryside. This is a home where one finally settles in after spending some time in a world where everything is fleeting. It’s an abode that is neither temporal nor vulnerable, a place where people will be called to return when their time comes.

My purpose is to bring them there. In this world, there are many like me; but we remain invisible to the eyes of those whose time has not yet come. We pass over roads and highways, taking the wheel to maneuver our vehicles until we reach our destination. After the sun sets, when the night is calm, we begin to seek our passengers.

In the place where I was assigned in this world, the vehicle I drive is designed after the vehicle that is used for public transportation. They call it a jeepney, a mechanized carriage that has two adjacent seats stretching all the way from the back of the driver’s seat to the rear entrance. Sometimes, I would catch a glimpse of the passengers from my rearview mirror. They would often sit in front of each other, trying to stir conversations. Sometimes they held the handlebars on the ceiling with their hands, trying to keep their balance as the jeepney would ascend towards the sky.

Some passengers were ready, but some were not. One time I heard a woman talk about the last words she heard before she found herself standing next to her eldest daughter in the hospital room. It was the same room where she had breathed her farewell. Her eldest daughter promised her that she would be the one to take care of her younger brothers from then on. She was reassured by that promise before she finally left them and waited for my jeepney to arrive.

I also witnessed a man who was trying to get off the jeepney while we were on our way to our destination. Even when I didn’t need to interfere, the man eventually relented after the other passengers tried to console him. He said he wasn’t ready to go yet because he still wished to see the day when his son would march onstage and receive his diploma. Unfortunately, the last thing he could remember was the tightness in his chest while he was pedaling his pedicab before he fell and hit the ground.

As a driver, I can only listen to their plea, but there’s nothing else I can do to give them what they ask for. There have been plenty of instances when some of them made that particular request. But I wasn’t the author of their fate. I wasn’t responsible for what they experienced in their time, no matter how brief or fulfilling. I may know the ways to reach the destination, but it is not within my capability to change their destiny.

I knew it was best not to interfere, but there was one night when I tried.

I was driving my jeepney on the road that wound around the city and its outskirts. The hour was late, and only a few of the ones who did not pass yet were out on the streets. On some corners, adolescents spent their time sitting at tables with bottles and glasses that complemented their somber conversations. On the sidewalk, there was an aged man who walked alone, pushing a wooden wagon that contained his unsold wares of the day. Flies began to hover over the rotting vegetables.

I saw an old woman outside the gate of a university campus, collecting what remained of her packs of peanuts into a basket. Then I passed by a couple sitting at a bench at a park outside a cathedral. They held their hands as the faint lights from the streetlamps revealed the hope on their faces. It was a hope for the possibility of a shared tomorrow.

All these people still had time, a chance to give, to earn, to love, and to live. That’s what made them different from my passengers.

Even when they still bore the shapes of their physical bodies, my passengers’ translucent glow set them apart from the ones they left behind. The crowd standing and waiting outside a hospital was an example. Most of the time, they gathered at these places. With their patience, they took their time to relish the last hours they had on earth before my jeepney passed by them. Others wandered the streets, reminiscing the moments when their physical bodies used to tread on the grounds. Once they saw me, they raised their hands and waved. It was a gesture signaling that they were prepared to go.

When the seats were filled behind me, I thought it was time to go. I turned at an intersection, waiting for the vortex of light from the sky to appear any time now. In this part of the city, no high-rise building stood. Instead, houses with walls of wood and rough cement stood on each side of the road, the distance between each of them barely an inch. Their roofs were made of corrugated iron sheets. On their edges stood stray and feral cats, their glowing eyes taking watch over the growling dogs with mangy fur as they rummaged into mounds of trash below.

Amidst the faint beams of the streetlamp descending on these mounds, I saw a girl standing. Bearing the same translucent glow that my passengers had, she wore an oversized shirt and baggy shorts that failed to hide her frailty. Her gaze was set on the streets, her narrow eyes revealing a combination of familiarity and confusion. She knew where she was, but she didn’t know where she was going from here.

I knew then that she was bound for home.

I stopped the jeepney along the street where she stood.

She looked at me as if she knew that she was bound to come with us, and then shifted her gaze briefly to the rest of the passengers in the jeepney. 

“Where are we going, Kuya?” She asked with the tone of unmistakable innocence as she addressed me as a big brother.

Most of my passengers had passed on due to disease or old age, but this child had promising years ahead of her. Her time may have come, but I knew that these were some of the moments that made me question if the world was truly fair for everyone who lived in it.

“You’ll be home soon,” was all I could manage to say.

Without saying any word, she climbed into the jeepney. But instead of riding with the passengers behind me, she took the seat next to me. A brief glance from my rearview mirror revealed that all the spaces and seats had been taken. As she settled, she gazed towards the open road before us. At this hour of the night, despite the consuming darkness, there wasn’t anything that could scare any of us. The passengers behind me talked about what they were looking forward to seeing, and I realized that whatever fear they had of the life after passing was now replaced by a certain kind of hope – the anticipation of all things eternal.

I started the jeepney and we continued down the road.

I was waiting for the light from the sky to appear when the girl beside me began to sob. I looked at her and felt the weight of the massive tears that poured out of her eyes.

As a driver, I could only bring them home. But the girl’s weeping made me realize that I could probably do so much more. I have been doing my job all my life. Every night was the same. I knew that everyone had their chance in this world, but this was a girl who had been robbed of the promising years ahead of her.

“What exactly happened?” I asked as I tried to slow the jeepney down.

She struggled to stop crying and to keep herself calm. But her constant sobs bothered me.

As I reached a wider highway, I saw far ahead of us the night sky beginning to part. From its wide opening, a whirl of light descended. Incandescent streaks revolved like the wind of a tornado. The spectacle was the gateway, and no matter how bright it shone, it remained invisible to the sight of the living. For the passengers, it was a sight of ethereal magnificence.

I heard them gasp in wonder and awe. But when I was about to increase the speed of the jeepney, I considered the girl for a moment. She had calmed herself after a brief weeping.

“I should have said goodbye,” she said, breaking the silence between us. Behind me, the rest of the passengers went on with their conversation. Among themselves, they expressed their excitement and anticipation for the destination ahead.

Before I could speed up, I let the jeepney go at a much slower pace. 

Her eyes shone this time, but it wasn’t because of the light ahead of us. The tears that fell began to glaze her cheeks.

“The last thing I heard was my mother, telling me not to go,” she said. “I didn’t want to…”

I stopped the jeepney on the middle of the road.

From my seat, I turned to her.

She kept weeping. She wanted to see her family again. I realized that the least that I could do at this moment is to let her go.

A moment later, the seat beside me was once again empty as I steered the jeepney’s wheel towards the illuminating whirls of light. As the rest of the city slept, as the families of the passengers grieved their passing, we all ascended.

When we arrived at the gate, I parked my jeepney alongside the variety of vehicles used by other drivers from around the world. There was a double-decker bus, a cable car, and a gondola. There was also a wheeled carriage, a three-wheeled pedicab, and a series of trains amidst cabs and trucks. All passengers came from different parts of the world, awaiting what was to come.

The gatekeepers in their silk white robes approached each of them and began to survey their identities, asking for their names and birth dates, and confirming the information from their scrolls.

“You have missed one,” said one of the gatekeepers as she pointed at me with her feathered pen. She had just finished scanning the names in the scroll. “A girl named Marilyn Ongpauco,” she said, “from a city in the Philippines, who died….” She sighed as her shoulder slumped forward. Her golden eyes gleamed with fresh tears. She tried to calm herself by taking a deep breath. “You need to go back and get her. She must be here with us now,” she said. 

I remembered the child’s face. There was no joy from her tear-glazed cheeks. All she needed was a time to say goodbye.

“I can bring her back tomorrow,” I said. “I don’t think she is ready yet.”

“Everyone should be back home at their appointed time,” the gatekeeper said. Behind the calm and patient tone, there was a hint of urgency she was trying to hide. “This is our rule.”

“She needed more time with her family,” I said.

The gatekeeper held my arm. I felt the warmth of her touch. She gestured towards the passengers lining up.

“Driver, what do you see?” she asked.

“I see the souls of those who had once lived,” I said. I knew that before they had arrived, they all once spoke different languages, believed in different faiths and doctrines, and aspired different dreams and ambitions. They were people whose temporary time in the material world had come to an end.

“They’ve all left behind people they loved, and even when some of them weren’t fully prepared,” said the gatekeeper. “Will you let a little girl stay in a place where she comes from and witness her family’s grief with no hope of reuniting with them anymore?”

As I gazed at them, I began to wonder how these people had lived before they were brought here. Who were those who had used their time to cause misery on others? Who were those who had helped people in need, those who caused more good than harm? Who were those who had wished to live longer, or those whose passing came earlier than what was expected?

“If they are going back to the same place,” I said, “what’s the point of letting them live a life that would still end?”

The gatekeeper thought for a moment. The gate remained closed. “I cannot answer such questions, Driver,” she added. “But if there’s one thing that I am sure of, it’s that everyone deserves a place of peace.”

“How can she be at peace when she must leave her family behind? How can her family have peace when her passing came at a very young age? Can’t she have a second chance, one that does not end in the same fate?” I tried to keep my composure, but the weight of seeing people passing and leaving their loved ones behind was already too much to bear. “Can’t her death be undone?” I added.

There was silence between us as the gatekeeper’s hair swayed and her robe billowed with the course of the wind. She brought her eyes to me and said in a much softer tone, “I’m sure they will see each other again when the right time comes. But you must understand, Driver, we are only doing what we need to do. We cannot change people’s fate or give in to their plea. What we can offer is their chance for eternity.” She pointed to gate ahead of us. Golden bars gleamed. Behind them, a light shone much brighter than all the constellations that lit the sky.

The words of the gatekeeper rang in my ears when I found myself walking through the neighborhood where I had first seen the girl. This time, I did not bring my jeepney with me. Tomorrow would be another day of meeting the next batch of passengers. But if I couldn’t find her, the ones who were waiting outside the gate could not pass through. They all needed to be complete.

The path between shanties grew narrower as I went on with my search. At this time of the night, people had already retreated to their homes. In their slumber, they replenished the strength they used for the day. I occasionally saw rats skittering in the gutter. But soon enough, their squeaks ceased when I heard a guttural wailing nearby. At this short distance, I could already sense the grief filling the vicinity. I hastened my steps until I reached a clearing.

There, I saw the child. She was kneeling beside a woman whose knees were also on the ground. Beneath the dim light of a streetlamp, a small crowd gathered. Two uniformed men with their badges stitched on their shirts were talking to a man whose words were slurred by his constant weeping. They asked him a series of questions as if they were interrogating him. Each answer was muffled by his sobs. On the roof of a car parked at a distance, beams of red and blue light flashed throughout the vicinity.

The woman nearly dropped her face to the ground. But another police officer tried to help her stand. I walked closer and discovered the source of her grief and everyone else’s fear.

Lying in a puddle of blood, limp and lifeless, was what remained of the little girl’s former body. Beside the remains, there was a cardboard with the words painted on its surface: “Huwag Tularan.”

In this part of the world, that phrase meant “Do not trust.”

“The men talking to my father said that it was a stray bullet. They didn’t catch the ones who did it,” I heard the girl’s voice. She was now standing beside me. We remained unseen to everyone’s eyes.

“I remember playing with Brownie outside our house before my father went out to bring us back,” she said. “The last thing I heard was the sound of thunder until I hit the ground and felt the pain right here...” She pointed to a spot on her back near her shoulder. “My mother came out as soon as she heard the sound. I didn’t want to leave her. But when I got up, I noticed that she no longer saw me.”

The little girl went to a corner where a puppy with brown fur was shivering as it crouched. She patted its head, but her hand came through the fur.

“The sign on the cardboard…”

“Was not supposed to be for me, too,” she said.

I stayed silent as the puppy began to whimper and howl. Soon, the mother tried to lift the dead girl’s body. She stained her shirt with her own daughter’s blood as she cradled her in her arms. The sight reminded me of that time when a mother wept for her son as he lay on her lap, wounded, naked, and lifeless after an excruciating time hanging on a cross many, many years ago.

“Are they going to be okay?” she asked me as she walked towards me again.

I was unable to give any response as the mother’s shrill cry pierced the night. Nothing could comfort a grieving family, especially when such a heinous tragedy could befall on someone they loved dearly.

The woman continued to weep as I held the girl’s hand and led her back to the whirls of light at a distance. If there was one thing that I could promise her, it would have to be the certainty of peace.

I brought the girl to the gate and saw her merge with the crowd as they passed.

“You have done a good job bringing her here,” the gatekeeper said as soon as she reached me.

“It’s terrifying what people can do to each other,” I said. “I have seen what happened.”

“People are given choices to make,” she said. “It’s up to them to decide what to do with them.”

“But what can we do to set things right for them?”

“We have our purpose, Driver, just as they have theirs.”

“That girl… that poor girl… she probably isn’t the only one, is she?” Before she could answer my question, I nearly fell to my knees as warm tears poured out of my eyes. I was not someone like these people, but I was beginning to understand what they feel.

The gatekeeper helped me regain my stance as she held my arm. She pointed to the gate – now opened widely as the people entered.

“Driver, what do you see?”

I saw the faces of those who passed. They came from different parts of the world where life is numbered in years. They might have made choices of their own. They might have found their purpose. But when their time had come, they were all headed to that place that was far different from where they’re from. Despite tragedies and suffering, the life ahead could only promise them happiness. 

I did not respond as I beheld the light that welcomed them.

“That’s where they’re all headed,” she said.

To this day, whenever I meet passengers who suffered the same fate, I can only promise them that there is a place destined for them where the darkness of the world could not penetrate. Perhaps the world’s tragedy was a consequence of people’s wrong choices, but I don’t think everything is lost when one meets their end. I still cling to the hope that those who have been left behind would make the right choices. They still have time, and they can use it for their own good and the good of others.

I cling to this hope whenever I drive my jeepney and meet those who have passed and those who will be led to an eternity of peace.

***

Author Bio: Angelo Lorenzo is a writer and educator from the Philippines. Currently based in Benidorm, Spain, he teaches English to primary students and travels around the country during his spare time. His literary works have appeared in international journals and magazines. He has a YouTube channel where he interviews fellow creatives and documents his travel experiences.

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*** While this story did not appear in our monthly magazine, we really enjoyed it, and wanted to share it with the world. :)