My Kuya and Ate once had a big fight.
They always did.
This one, however, was different. It would be their last great fight, and they were fighting over perhaps the saddest reason of all: money.
We were raised by our parents never to look too closely at the color of money. That was probably why I found the whole argument absurd.
There is nothing inherently wrong with money. Money itself is not the root of evil. It is the love of it—the importance we give it, the things we are willing to sacrifice for it—that can drive sanity out of men and slowly melt virtues and morals away.
For Kuya Uro, making money was never particularly difficult.
His hands were his money makers. When his fingers gripped a pencil or brush, or his index finger pressed the trigger of an airbrush, his paint traveled from the canvas all the way to his bank account.
Unlike most of us who draw bucketfuls of sweat in exchange for tablespoons of coins, Kuya could pile up bills while listening to Clapton make love to the blues with six strings, or Lars hammering away in a rampage of percussion.
Kuya earned his bread while sinfully indulging his soul on either meth, herb, or coke.
Money was simply not that difficult for him to create.
Our Ate Praxie, on the other hand, possessed vocals far more alto than Le Grand Caruso and, when necessary, a soprano that could give Kathy Jenkins a run for her money. Her litanical overtures could rival Carmina Burana, complete with a coda that faded into Riders on the Storm—usually because you simply elected not to stay long enough to hear the end of the concierto.
That was exactly what happened that day.
The concert remained unfinished when its sole audience walked out through the gate of our house in Better Living—undefeated perhaps, but certainly withered.
And apparently devising an insane plan to prove a point:
A man can live without the possession of any financial currency.
I was outside the house, deliberately trying not to hear the symphony my siblings were composing inside.
I sat on a bench I had finished building only the day before, staring at nowhere, drinking a cup of coffee, keeping myself ready to play peacemaker should a riot erupt from the slam pit that our kitchen had become.
Then Kuya stepped out.
He took a sip from my coffee and smiled at me.
He laid down his wallet.
Then his wristwatch.
Then every loose coin he had in his pockets.
And he walked out of our gate.
It would be around six months before we saw him again.
Kuya Uro went off-grid.
Social media was still a thing of the future. Television news and the local tabloids were about the only media you could check. If you needed speed, the neighborhood tsismosa probably had a better network.
Then, one October evening, while Ate was preparing dinner, Kuya came home.
His long hair was definitely longer. His body was thinner—remarkably undernourished, much like the wandering artist himself.
But what struck me most was the manner of his return.
A white taxi stopped outside our house.
Kuya stepped out, knocked on our gate, and asked Ate Praxie to pay the fare.
There was something almost comical about it.
Six months earlier, this man had walked out of that very gate determined to prove that he could live without money. Now he had returned in a vehicle whose driver expected to be paid.
But perhaps Kuya had not entirely disproved himself.
He had survived those six months without carrying money. What his experiment failed to account for was something far more important:
A man may live without possessing money, but he does not live without other people.
Kuya climbed into that taxi knowing he had nothing in his pocket to pay for the ride. Yet he also knew where he was going.
Home.
And somewhere behind that gate was his sister.
The same sister he had fought with.
The same sister he had walked away from.
The same sister with whom he had argued about money in the first place.
Perhaps that was the real currency Kuya carried on his journey home—not pesos, not coins, not anything he could put inside the wallet he had left behind.
It was the assurance that when he reached that gate, his sister would open it.
And she would pay the fare.
She did.
No lecture. No I told you so. No ifs. No buts.
Only tears.
There had been beef between them the last time they saw each other, but we were siblings.
Cut from the same thread.
As we call it in Tagalog, magkapatid.
You may pull the threads apart. You may stretch them until they almost break. You may even spend six months proving that you need nothing from anyone.
But somehow, when one thread finds its way home, the others still recognize where it belongs.
That evening, Ate brought Kuya to the nearest local spa. He was their last client, and Ate had to pay more than double.
The hobo became a man again.
Fresh haircut. Clean clothes. Clean body.
Kuya was home.
It was already late when they returned. I waited for him.
I missed him.
Their reconciliation did not mean they never argued again.
Of course they did.
We all did.
We fought over the most nonsensical things imaginable. Then sooner or later we would find ourselves sharing a cup of coffee again—sometimes even passing around a single stick of Filters or Lights.
We were siblings. We were supposed to argue. We were supposed to fight. But above all, we were supposed to love one another.
When Kuya died, there was, if I am to be completely truthful, a sigh of relief.
I will not deny that.
But neither will I deny how much I miss him.
Just as much as I miss my sisters. When ate Ruby passed away, I felt sad. When Ate died, I could not understand what to feel...
There was once a time when I sat outside our house in Better Living, drinking coffee on a bench I had just built, wishing my brother and sister would stop making so much noise inside that kitchen.
Today, I would give much to sit on that bench again.
Coffee in my hand.
Kuya stealing a sip.
Ate singing her furious concierto from somewhere inside the house.
All of us fighting.
All of us laughing.
All of us still there.
These days, I thread this wild road called life mostly on my own, grateful for every day that I am still allowed to travel it.
And perhaps Kuya did prove something after all.
Maybe we can live without money.
But none of us truly lives without someone on the other side of the gate—
someone we trust will open it when it is finally time to come home.
Originally published on Benjie's Bench - Measuring Life's lessons in Millimeters
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