Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

She was my batch mate in college. I called her "Mommy" because during our first Christmas as tertiary education students she was my Secret Santa. She also called me "son" since then even though most of us, me included, were a year older than she was. I remember that the gift I gave her in return was a tacky desktop penholder that had an airline size beer bottle glued to it, and said, "No Smoking."

After college she managed her family's baking supplies and tire shop (yes, it was a weird combination) south of the metropolis.

That's where we held a surprise thirtieth birthday party for her, when in fact we all forgot she was only turning 29 that year and had to hastily redo the banner. It was after I had acquired my video camera, which fortunately I brought, and which happened to capture a whole night of festivities when she proceeded to treat us to a nearby karaoke place.

The last time I saw her was two years ago during the send off to another of our batch mates, Marissa, who was leaving for another country. That's when she admitted that she had recently been to the hospital to remove her swollen spleen, that had grown nearly a foot long.

She also revealed to us that she had started managing some performing ladies and that she also organized events for them in respectable bars all over the metropolis. She even promised to tell us of her next event so we could attend, which we never did.

I asked to ride with her when she left the party (early; a manager's work in never done) since we were going the same way. We even expressed the same disapproval for another batch mate, Ellen's wedding to her paranoid boyfriend who pretended to be her ex in email just to trap her into revealing she still loved her ex; illogical, of course.

The last time she posted to our batch mailing list a few months ago she surprised us yet again by saying she had a daughter she adopted.

Last week I tried to stir conversation in our mailing list because I had just received a warning that our list was inactive and in danger of being deleted.

Marissa said she's coming back to the Philippines for a visit soon and that we could all meet then.

That's when another batch mate who lived near Corey's gave us the news that Corey was back in the hospital because the cirrhosis had spread to her kidneys.

On June 29 I also received a text from one more batch mate, the older sister of the Computer Science student consulting with me, saying that they were going to visit her in the hospital the next day, which was her birthday. I said I'd visit her on the weekend, being out of the way for me at the time.

This morning I had just turned off my celphone alarm at 540am and lay back down in bed waiting for my body to warm up to wakefulness in the heat relative to the night?s windy cold when I received a text message.

Somehow I knew instinctively what it was about before I read it.

She's the second in our batch to pass away, the first being an army soldier whose helicopter crashed in stormy winds in Mindanao a few years ago, when he was already making wedding plans with his fianc鮍

I'm just rambling now. I'll just shut up, except to say belatedly, regrettably and in hindsight that I wish I had spent more time with her.