Here is June, my favorite Youtube cook (and resident cook at Delish). She uploaded this video of her grief a year after her mom died. This is the first time I visited her personal channel after watching a new episode of Budget Eats and learned that she and her partner and occasional food taster, Aaron, had broken up). I saw in this video how raw grief could be and how universal it was to receive messages from our loved ones in our dreams.
I sent this to my friend, B, and told her that she may find this helpful or cathartic and she doesn’t have to watch it soon. She can watch it next year. She said, she appreciates how I keep her in my thoughts.
Anyway, June talked about her scary and confusing dream about an emperor penguin attacking her, trying to protect her young from her. She dreamed about the terrifying emperor penguin around the same time her mom died.
One Sunday in July 2005, I woke up from a dream, crying. My father was in the hospital and dying. He died in front of my eyes. But I knew my dad was just downstairs in his room, but I was panicking still. I called my mom who was on a business trip in Iloilo and was also visiting my uncle—my father’s brother–and his family. I told her to come home immediately as I dreamed about dad dying. I told my sisters and my brother. I can’t remember if it was my mom or my sister who told me that we already knew he’s going to go sooner or later since only 30% of his heart muscles were functioning after his heart attack in 2000 and that the doctors only gave him a year to live and yet here he was, five years on, still fighting. No need to fret, they said.
I couldn’t get it out of my head. I left for Quezon City later that day because I had classes on Monday (grad school in UP Diliman). But before that, my dad cooked me breakfast and told me to take my medicine as I was coughing and may have an asthma attack later. I didn’t heed him. I just said I will come back Tuesday.
I was still unsettled.
I did not come back Tuesday. I told myself I will come home Thursday.
On Wednesday morning, I woke up, said goodbye to my partner (with whom I was secretly part living with on-and-off at that time) and went back to bed. I had a weird sensation of seeing myself giving my partner a hug—-this uncomfortable feeling of being watched from above.
After lingering a bit on the bed, I marched to the other room where my office was and watched the Korean drama Attic Cat on my computer as a way of procrastinating before tackling an editing job I must finish (I was a part-time editor for an English-language editing service in Hong Kong).
My brother called me on my phone. He was crying. He found my father dead on his bed; he wet his bed in his sleep.
I called up my older sister who was at work. She fell on her seat and started crying. I called up my mom, who was having breakfast with my uncle and the rest of the family. She started wailing. I told her, I told you to come home…my dream was a warning…
My brother and another uncle (who was also a professor in our university) immediately brought my dad to the funeral home. They were told that my brother may have found my dad 30 mins – 1 hr after he died since rigor mortis hasn’t really set in yet when they were fixing my dad. Or something to that effect, I couldn’t remember anymore.
My brother often had breakfast with my dad; he would drop by our house after his first class. Without fail that day, my dad cooked breakfast for my brother. However, the screen door was locked that morning when my brother knocked on the screen door. He knew my dad was inside but was not responding. He knew something was wrong. He started breaking the screen door to unlock it, used his key to open the heavy wooden front door, and saw my dad peacefully sleeping. One leg was propped up, as his usual position. But he was already cold.
A neighbor told me that she saw my dad early that morning going to church for the first mass of the day, at 5:30 am (or 6 am?). It was surprising because he normally didn’t go to church because he didn’t want people to see him sick. That’s how proud he was—he didn’t want people see him weak.
While we were waiting for my father’s body to arrive (not in the next 12 hours or so), I checked my dad’s room. He had worn his favorite red and white striped shirt that he had hung behind the bedroom door. He had in his pants’ back pocket my mom’s, my sisters’, and my handkerchiefs. I cried so hard. I think he knew he was dying that day.
A day before, he had one of his best friends visit him and they had a very long and fruitful conversation in our porch. At one point, he told his friend (which he told us) that he was ready to go as he has already settled what he needed to settle with his children…meaning he has sort of finally had some relationship with us. His only regret in life was he wasn’t able to give us material comfort because he was too proud and so fixed in his ways and refused to go with the system to become rich, he said.
I remember him telling me this, that he was being bought by one company he was fighting with because it was polluting a fishing community in Pangasinan (He was a faculty of the School of Environmental Science at that time). He said he could have taken the money and gave us a more comfortable life. But he didn’t.
So during my dad’s memorial, I told everyone and my dad, that it was ok if we weren’t rich. That we didn’t get to travel the world. That we were always short on cash when we were growing up. He shouldn’t feel guilty and regret some of his choices in life. I told everyone and my dad that he taught me–us—that integrity, dignity, and keeping our name clean are more important than any financial gain. It is the best lesson and gift that he could give us children. The lessons like fighting for your rights and fighting for people with lesser voice are worth more than gold. Living an upright life and not sponging on anybody is vital because DIGNITY is something other people couldn’t take away from you.
Every time I commit driving booboos, I remember my dad. I knew he would wring my neck. He always reminded me to check my tires (and pressure), radiator water, and engine oil before going on a long drive. I always remember him whenever I do those.
When I let my mom read my speech before the graduating students of my undergrad college, my mom told me, I am my father’s daughter. She sent my speech to my dad’s friends.
I know he is with me with my fight against our water concessionaire. My guts, pigheadedness, sense of justice, and the gumption came from him.
No, we do not get over the death of our loved ones. Even though they have hurt us at times. We just learn how to live with their absence. The grief does not go away. Your body just wraps around the grief and you grow around it.
But it’s always there. It will always be there.
