A Brief Aftermath

It was awfully quiet in the household, Sunday afternoon.

I woke up late yet again, around 12:30 PM. I wasn't able to sleep at all last night, absently browsing sites till the wee hours of the morning. When I woke up in the afternoon, the only people at home were my two aunts, minding the store, and my mother, doing the laundry.

The absence was pretty obvious. Apart from Ate Fe, Josh wasn't there anymore as well. Kuya Joseph, Ate Fe's husband, took Josh with him back to the province. It's probably going to be permanent.

Kuya Joseph didn't really get along well with Ate Fe's mother and sister -- Tyang Fely and Ate Teres. Kuya Joseph grew up in the province all his life, and the way he does things doesn't really jive well with the way the two women were used to doing around the house. Not only that, the way they think don't match either. So one could just imagine the strain existing between all of them.

Obviously, Ate Fe's presence pacified anything viciously solid from breaking out. But now that she's gone... well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what's going to happen.

So this morning while I was asleep, Tyang Fely and Kuya Joseph's long kept animosity towards each other was inevitably freed (as my aunt told me). And before I woke up, Kuya Joseph and Josh were gone, and the whole household was quiet. The kind of quiet similar to that after, say, a stampede of one or two herds of bulls.

Suffice it to say no one wanted to speak for the rest of the day. It's going to be really quiet in this neck of the world for a long time, I can tell...