MANILA, Philippines - Serendipity has always been one of my favorite words and it came alive for me in time for All Saint?s Day and All Soul?s Day.

In kindergarten in the early ?70s, I had a best friend at Maryknoll (now Miriam College) named Lala de las Alas. We hit it off immediately on the first day of school.

We were like two peas in a pod. Lala was bright, very pretty, a funny girl with many stories to tell.

Unfortunately, our friendship was rudely interrupted in 1973 when she had to leave for the United States to seek treatment for a kidney disease.

After a year or so, Lala resumed school but was held back by her illness. I had then moved on to Grade V. We tried to pick up from where we left off, but you know how it is with children. I would feel bad whenever I?d see her on campus; her appearance had changed and she seemed tired, perhaps because of the steroids her young body had to take.

But her smile was still there. The few times we chatted were precious but few and far between.

It was a warm August day in 1975 when the news was delivered over the PA system by the Maryknoll nun: ?We would like to request the school community to pray for the eternal repose of the soul of Lala de las Alas who joined our Heavenly Father yesterday??

It all became a blur as I broke down and cried.

All I remember of that day was my uncontrollable sobbing and how I ran to the bathroom to compose myself.

In the afternoon, coming home from school I asked my parents to take me to Lala?s wake. Perhaps because my parents did not know any better (child psychologists were not readily accessible in 1975), I was not allowed to attend her wake at Sto. Domingo Church.

?It?s better for you to remember her alive?,? my father said. And so it was that I was not able to say goodbye to a much-loved friend who had gone away too soon.

First bout of grief

In the ensuing years, although I had tried to block the memory of that first significant loss, I had always considered Lala?s death my first major experience of grief.

While doing research last year for a book on grief, I remembered Lala?s mother who had lost a child long before grief support was available in the Philippines. I wondered how she was. I then embarked on a search for Dr. Carmen de las Alas that unfortunately ended nowhere.

Last March, I was asked to edit the book, ?Age of Confidence,? a project of the Maryknoll College High School Class of 1984. A collection of 40 stories from Maryknollers of different generations, it wasn?t an easy project to do and was fraught with frustration. But for some reason I was drawn to it.

I suggested to the book coordinators to include the names of their deceased classmates in the dedication. When I got the final layout, my hair stood. There, in the introduction page, was her name??In memory of Ma. Estela de las Alas?

She was the reason, after all, I had been tasked to edit the book. The Maryknoll High School Batch of 1984 would have been her batch.

Then again, I bumped into a wall. Because she died so young, they hardly had any memories of her. But there was a new link I had perhaps blocked off but was reminded because of my association to the Batch of ?84: Lala had a younger sister named Melanie, of Batch ?84. Melanie had moved to Assumption for high school and no one knew where she was now.

From the past

Last August, the hospital I work for hired a medical marketing director who looked vaguely familiar to me, like someone I used to see as a child. I noticed that she, too, would sometimes look at me in a funny way, I would catch her staring at me from the corner of my eye.

Finally, one afternoon, in a colleague?s birthday merienda, Dr. Ditas Gonzalez, the new manager, asked me if I had gone to Maryknoll for grade school.

She did too?from the class of 1980 but she had moved to Assumption for high school.

?Wait a minute, I just did a book on your batch? Do you know Melanie de las Alas?? I asked her, my chest pounding like crazy. She paused, and replied, ?Of course, she?s my best friend??

In the next hour, Ditas gave me an update on Melanie. I was saddened to hear about their mother?s loss but was stunned to realize that Dr. De las Alas died during the month I was frantically searching for her last year.

At last

But I was happy to have finally found a direct link to Melanie.

A few days later, Ditas handed me over Melanie?s e-mail address. For a couple of weeks I was hemming and hawing over what I?d say to her. Finally, a few days before my birthday last month, I wrote her a very long e-mail.

To my great joy she replied the next day. We had both been thinking about each other through the years, ?In my mind you will always be 10,? she said. In my mind, I told her, she would always be Lala?s baby sister.

How the years have changed us both, how the grief we had as children reverberated throughout our adult lives.

What a precious gift it has been for me to find Lala again after 33 years.

The photographs you see here were sent to me by Melanie only a few days ago and the poem was the last Lala wrote the night before she died on Aug. 25, 1975.

God?s ways are truly mysterious. Sometimes it takes decades before we find closure on certain things in our lives.

Today I remember Lala with special fondness, and though I have now been able to bid her goodbye, I am grateful for the new friendship I have forged with her sister.

In Melanie I have retrieved a cherished part of my childhood, and in me, parts of her sister have come alive once more. Our reconnecting has not been just serendipitous, but a divinely orchestrated gift.

E-mail the author at cathybabao@ gmail.com.