Can my thoughts run across cyberspace, towards the next life? (from July 3, 2006)

You have, through life, become a person who has always been either at the foreground or periphery of my every single day. But being human and unaware of how fleeting a lifetime with you is, I have been too tired and too busy with life to even take a peek in your room as you slept peacefully at night. Oftentimes, I found your peculiar ways such a nuisance. Radios that played too loud. Bathrooms that stayed occupied for too long. Days after I lost you, I remember.

I remember when you used to take me places, all over Manila, to your churches and in Avenida, where the avenues were lit with various colors of light and the streets were all dusty and cacophonous and alive. You used to carry my things, because they were too heavy and I was all of 4 feet and 5 inches and scrawny. You must’ve thought I was glass. I remember we once chased after a bus where you accidentally left my school bag; we miraculously retrieved it. You used to always smell of rum and paper, and the house was filled with your pens and countless writings, which you hid jealously from us, curious grandchildren. I remember how I used to steal into your room and rummage into your stuff while you were out somewhere, envying your handwriting and not understanding a single word of the dialect you used in your texts.

I remember how your voice thundered at my mistakes when I was nine or ten. How you were the only father I ever lived with. Your prayers at the dining table that always seemed too long when I was way past hungry. How you always insisted on what you believed was right, when all I wanted to do was be young and make mistakes.

I remember how you became your wife’s life’s meaning, more and more as years passed. I remember how friends, relatives, your children, your children’s wives, and your children’s children looked to you with fear, respect, and sometimes, love. I remember how hard you stood by your principles, even if it meant ending relationships, or sowing bitterness in others. Good, for you, was absolute, like your God. I remember how I wanted to hate you longer, but couldn’t, because I have become you, in a way. I have aspired to emulate your courage unwittingly. I have become your child more than ever.

I remember a photo taken during my high school graduation, with your flowing script at the back, telling of your dreams of who you want me to someday be, which for you had already come true. In your secret world.

I remember how you loved life. You loved it! Down to your last years. You walked down the street each passing day, waiting, always waiting for something. Talking to an invisible companion. I’d rush off to work and give you a wave, and you’d always smile back. You had started being forgetful by then; but you never forgot me.

I remember how you never wanted to be weak, never wanted to show it, even in your pain and need. I remember how I carried you the way you carried me those years ago on your lap while I slept on the way from school. I remember how the tears stood in your eyes during your last minutes, but never fell. I remembered how, in your painful slumber, I whispered “I love you”, and knew it was true. Do you?

I feel like a part of me has died when you passed away. I miss you now that you’re gone, and it’s all futile. I am lost, somehow, and I didn’t even notice how much when you were with us. I am bereft, needing to be strong for the other’s you’ve left behind. I may seem stronger and more astute sometimes, but I am just as lost as all your children. I, like all the others, wish for things that might’ve been but weren’t, things I could’ve said but didn’t.

But a part of me, deep down, is glad. Like your secret dreams. Glad that I won’t only have to think about the damp dark and how the dead are orphans, when my time comes. When my time comes, at least I would have you to come home to. That, to me, is a blessing.