When I found nothing written to comfort me, I wrote my own.
My absence from the blogging world would only mean something
happened to me or to my family that I could not have the time to squeeze in a
few hours to write. My dad passed away on Monday of the Holy Week. It was my
parent’s 40th year wedding anniversary.
The fact that it took me a longer time to write about it
could mean something more. It meant that I wasn’t able to put down into words
the loneliness and sadness I feel in my heart with his passing. Many times the words seemed to fail me. The
emptiness, the pain, the sadness , it was all too much. Words have failed me. I
felt that being able to write about it would mean acceptance, acceptance for
the fact that he is gone, and never to return forever.
Some people say that life goes on and it’s time to move on. But
it’s just not true, because I don’t know if I’d be able to move on that quick. I
may not at all. True that I have come to accept his passing, I have conditioned
my mind to that thought about years ago, but no matter how you think or feel
you are ready for the time when one of
your parents die, there would always be something that would make you wish it wasn’t true. No one would ever be ready to have their parents or
parent die.
No son or daughter is ever too old not to cry like a child
when a parent dies and you come to face the reality that they would never come
back.
My life is forever changed.
It’s been almost three weeks since he left us, but the pain
is still here. When he was dying, I prayed and we lifted up his life to God’s will. I prayed that if it was time
for God to bring home my father, at least make the pain bearable for us and
give us the grace of acceptance.
It’s been this long and yet I still cry so much as if the
tears will never stop flowing. I cry at night before I sleep because I know
that I don’t have a dad anymore and that a part of my being has changed and
died with him too. I cry when I wake up In the morning because I realize that I
have a whole new day to survive without having my dad around anymore.
Somebody asked me how my relationship was with my dad when
he was still alive. I thought that it was a weird question and irrelevant,
because no matter what kind of relationship you had with your parents, their
passing would be the biggest grief you would ever have to experience as a son
or daughter.
Can you really base the depth of your grief with the kind of
relationship you had when they were still alive? Your grief would be measured by the numbers of opportunities
you missed telling and showing them how much you loved and cared for them, by
the regrets that you have with not taking every opportunity to call them when
you could and realizing that it’s too late now to do those things.
The lines to heaven is super busy, it is taking forever for
them to pick up your call.
I miss my father. But what I miss more than the times that
we spent with him the last 5 years of his life, were the times that I was given
the privilege of experiencing him longer than the rest of my siblings did. He
was a big man and until the day he died, he was still the big man to me. I
thank God for giving us the opportunity to be able to spend precious times with
him before he was called home.
I thank God that I had the opportunity of dancing with him
not just once but many times while I was growing up. A dance is a special gift
fathers give to daughters. I am honored to
have received such gift in this lifetime.
He is gone now. But his memory, his scent, his presence is
still felt in the house, in our hearts and in our lives. He may not have been a
perfect person, but to us he was the perfect dad. No weakness or shortcomings
of his can ever change that.
In memoriam.
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