8.28.2022
second life
i visited home last week, and in between all of the piles of sentimental junk my mother blurted out, "…ikaw baya ang second life ni papa te" (you are your father's second life). not out of context of course, and i think i understand where it's coming from, though it took me by surprise. naturally, i respond with a tiny laugh; she is exaggerating.
i have thought about it several times since then. i felt closer to her than we already are, because by that statement alone, i knew we were wishing for the same thing. he couldn't be around longer than the cancer permitted him, so could he please at least live on through me, through my mother, through my sister?
i can never talk about this easily, and i have stopped after breaking down each time in front of someone. i saw him suffer from the inevitability, day by day watching himself wear away. he didn't talk much in his last weeks, but he made sure to tell us he loved us. i was losing him while i was still a disappointment, so i promised to him that i would pick up where i left off in my studies. (it sounds trivial in the context of that moment as i write it now, but i meant it) hours later, he breathed for the last time. we were there. we saw life leave him!
it takes enormous effort to heal from that. but what i have learned is that loving someone can bring you so much light as they leave you, not in the manner that can be had by any other way. perhaps that is the case for any suffering that comes out of love.
it's his day today. he would have been 60.