First of all, I would like to thank the people who extended their condolence to my family for my father’s passing. I specially would like to thank the people who I shared with my grief right away thru emails. I have not replied yet and this post is a general expression of gratitude to those who have been kind enough to share my grief.
I have extensively blogged about my father’s passing in my other blog. I have long wanted to publicly talk about it here in FS but it took until now to do so. It’s all because the lessons of my father’s passing is just settling in.
I always take time to ponder about the important things in my life. I am not in a rush to say that now I am okey and that I am not grieving or that I am grieving and sad about everything. I am…just internalizing yet. Just yet. Who knows I might figure out how I really feel as I continue to write about Papa’s passing.
Two things I am certain though: even if it was painful, I am still grateful.
Painful because he had to go soon. At age 70, Papa said he was still young and jokes about his birthdays. He told us that he stopped counting at 60. It is painful because I see my 75 year old Mama crying sometimes. I feel for her so much coz even when Alvin and I have only been together for 5 years, it is so difficult to live without him and JB. How much more difficult it is for my Mama who lived and loved my Papa and no one else in the last 40 years?
I am grateful that although we have been apart for the last two years, we have grown closer instead; all the letters and phonecalls have added another dimension to our parent-child relationship. He has been enthusiastic the whole time talking about his work, his colleagues, new information he has learned, books he has read, national geographic updates etc. The last time I asked him about his health, he said he was very well—and I took my father’s word for that, in fact, he was very well when I arrived on June 30, 2009. On July 7 he had a stroke. We were informed he had a 41ml bloodclot on his brain and 5 days later, we were informed he only had 10 days to live.
Nothing was easy during those days in the hospital, in the wake or in the funeral. There were a lot of things that needed quick decisions. I barely slept and had to be up the next day. To be very honest, there was no time to stall and get sentimental about things: there was just ‘do this and do that’. I barely cried in public because there was really no time to do that. I cried only during my private time. I only have burst cries of sadness and missing my father, not really prolong howling cries. It’s maybe because my understanding of my father’s passing is that he is not really dead as in gone; his body may have died but his soul is just continuing a journey; something natural and something that has to happen sooner or later.
I guess my gratitude stems from the fact that in a way God had prepared me for it to happen. Last year, after my father’s sixth stroke (and by the way, he fully recovered from each of the stroke he had), I was drawn to books about spirituality and how the catholics view death. I read them and learned the old wisdom that even when we die, our soul is still connected to eachother and that when we meet again, depending on how much love there was, then we will or will not know eachother. All the spiritual preparation has helped me. I thank God for His help. He has never given me a life experience where I end up saying that I could not accept it. I have no ‘what ifs’ in my life… and I have no ‘what ifs’ with my Papa. He loved and raised me as a good father and I respected him and made him happy as a good daughter. I thank God for giving the opportunity for us to see eachother again and for the family to be complete before He took him. I thank God that I was not away when He took Papa. God is kind. He even provided the resources for Papa’s smooth transition from this life to the next.
True, I spent the whole month of July in hospitals (7 days for JB, 7 days for Papa), 5 days for the wake and 4 more days for the novena. I was just given a week for the interview then a whole month’s vacation was already consumed. After that, I was only able to spend a weekend with my family-in-law before I was hospitalized myself. Without really resting long, I proceeded to doing the things in my to-do list and that’s how I salvaged my last two weeks in spending time with people I love and care, trying my best to make them happy despite everything.
The whole thing could be viewed as painful but to me it’s not all pain. It was just one of the things I needed to do coz it’s part of life. It’s like writing a thesis, it’s a burden but it’s a burden you have to carry anyway and reap the benefits of learning afterwards.
So, thank you again for your prayers. Prayer is the best condolence there is. The soul needs it. I may now be physically fatherless but except for his not being around physically, to me, he is still alive in my heart.
