Twenty-Five Years Later

Time. We’re finding ourselves re-evaluating, redefining, and reconstructing what time means to us as we deal with the unexpected and sudden shifts in our daily lives due to the pandemic.

 These days, my calendar is one of my most reliable tools -- to remind me not only for meetings and tasks, but simply to remind me what day of the week I’m living in. Is it Tuesday or Thursday?

 Yet, today is a day that I have no need for a calendar to remind me of its significance.  Even twenty-five years later, on this day, my heart pains for the loss of my dear father. The grief that I felt as an eleven-year-old all bubbles up to the surface with the same intensity, and there’s nothing I can do but to acknowledge it.

 The pain is always there. People say, “time will heal”. It doesn’t. Time just allows you to learn to get used to it, to live your everyday with that pain and become a master of carrying it within you – with grace – as you move forward.

I know I am not alone in this pain. My mother lost her husband and best friend. My brother and sisters also lost their father on this day. I am certain that each of us are remembering that hot April day in the Philippines in our own ways and memories. Yet we are united in mourning what we all felt was taken from us too soon. We have our own thoughts and ideas about what our lives could have been if he was still around.

Part of me still has a hard time believing that for twenty-five years, I have lived a life without my father. That’s also the wonder of time and its fluidity. Something like this that happened many moons ago can still feel like it only happened yesterday when memory of the pain is summoned. Then, when I look around and closely examine how things have turned out, a quarter of a century has unfolded slowly allowing me to make the choices, take the actions, make the mistakes, grab or leave the opportunities, and come into the realizations that would eventually result in the individual that I am today – who I am and why I am what I am today.

And with this post, I share this photo of me with him and my mother during my Kindergarten graduation ceremony. I was awarded Most Outstanding Pupil with this trophy, and I delivered a speech in English, my valedictory address, that I had memorized by having someone dictate the words to me and I repeat them back. And let’s not forget that I also performed a rendition of Diana Ross’s “If We Hold on Together” even if I suffered from stage fright right there in front of all the people and forgot the beginning lyrics. Yes, the theme song from the 1988 film The Land Before Time. Instead of belting out the words, I tearfully called for my sisters for help right into the microphone.

My father demanded one of my older sisters who was perched on the school’s fence to come down at once and rush to my aid. After a few minutes of coaching, I still remember how I wiped my tears off with the ruffles of the pale green dress that was custom-made for me just for the occasion. Overcoming the sobs and initial wave of embarrassment, I got up on that stage once more to sing the song that I learned through dictation and imitation without a hitch this time around.

It will always be my belief that this was the day that I made my father most proud of me. I’m glad that I got to do that early on since the universe only allowed me only another five years with him. 

Twenty-five years later, I still feel that I have been robbed. I still feel how unfair it was for an eleven-year-old girl to lose her father. I still have feelings of anguish thinking of all the important moments of my life that he missed out on. Most of all, I still feel the intensity of his absence and the gaping hole he left behind. I will always miss my father.