VINCENT

"Now I understand what you tried to say to me

and how you suffered for your sanity; and how you tried to set them free: They would not listen; they did not know how -- perhaps they'll listen now." DON MCLEAN 

BY ALEX P. VIDAL

The love we feel for a "best" friend is different from the love we feel for a girlfriend or a boyfriend, a wife or a husband, a daughter or a son, a father or a mother.

But when we hear the word "love" most of us think immediately of the way of a man with a lady vice versa. This is certainly a very real and evident form of love. It is not only the staple of great dramas. Romantic fiction, and Facebook "nunals"; Inday Badiday or Boy Abunda and Kris Aquino showbiz smorgasbord.

It is also one of the basic expressions of wedded union, of the permanent union, of the permanent bond between two persons that makes them one flesh, "twins" and "soulmates."

FORMS

But this is only one of many forms of love. There is not only the love of David for Bathsheba. There is also the love between David and Jonathan, and the broken-hearted love of David for "Absalom, my son, my son." 

There is also the love of Plato for Socrates, the love between Jesus and the disciples, the love between persons who belong to a religious or intellectual fellowship. The love of Facebook and Twitter friends. Men and women love their native or adopted land, their family, their ideals, and their God.

The love I felt for Vincent Dadivas, a best friend, is philia or friendship love. It is the Jonathan-and-David kind of love, a comradeship or fellowship, usually, though not always, between two persons of the same sex.

Before he died in August four years ago, Vincent's wish was granted: he saw me for the last time on TV being interviewed "live" by IBC TV 12 host Evelyn "Bingbing" Josue at the Marina Restaurant. He was standing from afar -- in the Quirino Bridge of the Diversion Road (Ninoy Aquino Avenue). After the interview, he disappeared like a comet as he always did.

WORLD

When he was alive, Vincent didn't belong in our world: he was a mental patient. But he was non violent. He was in and out of the mental hospital and lived most of the time in the streets, in the sidewalks; and even inside abandoned drums full of crude oil and beside garbage receptacles and septic tanks.

But this didn't change my view and treatment of the man who began to experience this mental disease when I was in high school, shortly after we concluded a marathon chess match that started at 8 o'clock in the morning until 10 o'clock in the evening. We missed not only lunch but also dinner. It happened not only once but many times in the past.

I was already home at around 11 o'clock in the evening when somebody informed me there was a commotion outside involving Vincent. When I checked, there was no commotion but there was Vincent--bare-footed, glassy eyed, speechless, a large amount of saliva falling from his mouth; he was holding an expired bread. Instead of answering when I asked what happened, he ran away. I gave chase and pressed him for an answer but to no avail. He was alive but I realized I "lost" him that night. 

PSYCHIATRY

In the hospital's psychiatry ward, I visited Vincent and, fighting tears, talked to him like a normal person. He never uttered any word, he would not say anything, but his eyes could tell he recognized me. 

When the streets became his permanent "residence", I always searched for him there and brought foods. We once watched a movie and his foul odor and dirty dress couldn't escape notice from fellow moviegoers who had nothing but show of disdain and discomfort for the "unpleasant" moviegoer. Curious kibitzers also milled around when we played chess. His opening moves were normal but in the middle game, his true state of mind dictated the tempo of his moves.

Four years ago, his only sister, Liberty, reported that Vincent was found dead in the sidewalk. No foul play attended his death. His health must have deteriorated after having been exposed to outside elements and sauntering in unsanitary urban jungle for 22 years (he once suffered a life-threatening wound on the head when a butcher tried to slice it with a bolo when Vincent tarried in Capiz).

EMPTY   

Because they had already been emptied in the past, my eyes shed no more tears for the object of my philia, the Jonathan-and-David kind of love, a comradeship or fellowship between persons of the same sex. He needed to "rest" and death was Vincent's only logical destination! 

I believe that love essentially is good will--thinking well of others and wishing them well. It is the state of the will, not of the animal passions. Even in the earthiest form, it is a giving as well as a taking. People who cannot give of themselves can never know love.