Coping

The telephone rang and I jumped up from my seat -- only to sit back down again two seconds later, after realizing that no, it's not him and no, he'll never call again.   

You see, my dad used to call us at about this time of night on Mondays and Thursdays, like clockwork.  I would usually talk to him for a few seconds and pass the call on to my mom or Tempest (who were the two main reasons why he called anyway) and we would talk about the most nonsensical things -- something funny Tempest had said that day (or more recently, something the baby did that was cute)  or  whatever mundane thing I did that day. 

The night he died, he made the same call to me -- and looking back, I wish I had told him something more meaningful than that Tempest obviously had inherited my lack of dancing skills, that I had taken mom and Tempest to Pancake house for merienda and that my bathroom was leaking again and could he look at it on Friday? I wish I had said "I love you" and "You are the very best dad"  or that I missed him when he went home to the province or that one of my best memories from childhood was holding onto his pinky finger as walked because my little hand was too small to hold onto his, and feeling that as long as I could hold on to my papa I would be safe from the monsters in the dark, from the thunderstorms, from getting lost in the big, big world.

The thing is, I always thought there would be years of phone calls, thousands more of our funny conversations, years more of sharing stories about my daughters.  I had counted on hundreds of days more of hanging out with him at the mall on lazy summer afternoons eating too much ice cream at Dairy Queen. I had counted on him being here with us for decades of Christmas dinners and birthday lunches and those 

"Hey anak, let's just go get Japanese food just cause I feel like it" jaunts. And I guess that's why it hurts so much -- because I feel so cheated. 

Today had been a "good" day -- and by that I mean, I hadn't given in to crying since early this morning -- until the telephone rang. 

Had you asked me three weeks and five days ago how I thought grief would be I would have said that it was like being trapped under a thick, hot, heavy blanket and where you are enveloped in pain that is so dense and black that it suffocates you, that you want to scream and rant and rave because part of you thinks that if you do, maybe you'll find a way out of the nightmare.  

But I know now that it's not. 

One some days, you will wake happy -- because you had been dreaming you were still together.  And then you wake up and upon realizing that the loss is the reality, you wish you could just remain asleep.

On other days, you will wake up crying and realize that you had dreamt of that moment when the world shifted and your life changed forever because of your loss.  And then you fear sleep. And fear that for the rest of your life, you will relive that moment.

On a "bad" day, a sound, a word, a memory will have you running to his closet, to cry into his clothes because somehow, they still carry a whiff of his cologne.  And the old shirts that mom kept threatening to throw out and which he loved, still hung there as if waiting for him to take them out and wear them to church.

But somehow, you WILL find some reserve of strength that will allow you to get up each morning, to eat some food, talk, work, function.  Sometimes, you'll even find yourself smiling or laughing.  There will be brief moments of normalcy.  And then the painful part -- realizing that despite your grief, notwithstanding your pain, the sun will still rise and set, you have children that will still need you.

And that the world will go on - a world without him in it.  

For my part,  that world and I as well, will be forever changed.  The sky will be just a little less blue, the sun a little less bright and the flowers he loved, a little less beautiful.

But then, what would be the alternative? A friend told me - You are only so sad because you loved him so much.  You grieve so much because you had a wonderful father.  Would you rather not be this sad? Would you rather not suffer this much because you didn't have a wonderful father who loved you will all his heart? Would you rather that you felt nothing or even felt relieved that he was gone?

And as usual, this particular friend was right. 

I have always placed great stock in the aphorism that it is far better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all -- I just never thought that one day, it would make me think of my father.