This time, my idle thoughts are somewhere more specific: people who die "after a fall".

Sometimes I read articles about prominent people who die "after a fall". Often they're of old age, so I have this image of people who slip and fall and... die?

It makes sense if they hit their head badly and fail to recover. Or maybe they fall from the stairs and fail to, well, recover. But for some reason I imagine them falling and cracking their hips. Now, I know little about old age or hip injuries, but I'm pretty certain that immobilizes you for a while. Maybe it triggers a sequence of events somewhere that leads to fatal consequences. I don't know.

But that goes to show one problem with my tendency to imagine things as I read them: the fewer details there are, the more they tend to not make sense.

Many, many years ago, when I was a kid, my mother frequented this market stall just a few streets up from our place. It was back when we didn't have a car and we couldn't easily travel to the nearest supermarket. Then again, this was when the nearest supermarket was a few cities away. The mid-90s. You get the idea. Anyway, she'd walk up to this market stall where she got her weekly supplies of meat and vegetables. A particularly fond memory is of the longganisa this stall specialized in. My first ever longganisa was very red and just the right amount of sweet.

It was run by a husband and wife couple. Aling Nonia and Mang May, we called them. I'm sure they remembered me, too. There were times when I would accompany my mother on her trip to their shop, only for me to cross the street and frolic in the playground while she actually did her shopping. When she's done, she'd just call me and I'll be there before I know it, carrying one plastic of... maybe it's vegetables, but sometimes, I'm certain, it's meat or fish. This exposure is probably why I'm not queasy when I'm at the produce section of the nearest supermarket. Or maybe it's because it's a supermarket, but I digress.

I think I was six or seven when Aling Nonia suddenly died. As my mother recalled, she slipped in the bathroom and hit her head and died. I generated this mental image of her body being found slumped by the toilet, a smear of blood on the wall. Maybe she was dead by then, or maybe she was still unconscious and fighting on. That's the extent of the image I have, and for some reason, it sticks with me over two decades on. Like, whenever I read articles that say so-and-so-person died "after a fall". At least until I imagine hip injuries and I get confused.

As for Mang May, well, he persevered. As I grew up, I remember noticing that his market stall is still there, in the same place. The "plaza" where the playground is has lost most of its greenery. There are offices (for the homeowner's association) where some trees used to be. The "clubhouse" - really a gazebo where people did stuff - is now closed to the public, perhaps to prevent people from hanging out for no reason. There were a bunch of computer shops and restaurants and other commercial establishments that sprouted around him. But his place is still there, with the crude fly swatters made from a disassemble ceiling fan, or something like that. And those very red longganisa sausages. And his voice, which seemed to crack every chance it could get.

I just asked my mother. He is still alive, tending to the same space he tended for... let me count... roughly three decades now.