Grief: Claiming Its Unexpected Gifts A Few Days After My Father's Burial

Having noticed a number of clicks to on this posting from some curious visitors and readers, I figured I have to come up a more open sharing of the gifts I've claimed as I've gone on with my grief over my Father's death in November 2nd, 2005. My Father and I were not exactly the best of friends when he was still alive. We had a difficult relationship. I have learned to forgive him in my heart, and I've learned to lovingly forgive myself for all the hurts, wrongdoings I used to have when he was still around. It was immediately after his death that I have decided I should go and leave the Philippines and continue pursuing my dreams here abroad.

I'm sharing these thoughts more openly now as I've somehow learned to be more accepting of the experience of grief over the death of a loved one, (and in this case, the person happened to be my Father). I have seen how some well meaning persons in my life including relatives, family members, loved ones, and friends have attempted one way or another to allow them, or at least give them the opportunity to be my crying pillow (if ever there is such a thing at least in the level of thoughts and emotions) as I work on my grief. I noticed I was not exactly myself, my natural self, when I got to learn about my Father's sickness (he got so sick of lung cancer, and he died of it; he got the deadly small cell type of lung cancer of which survivors, if ever they will survive will only get at the most 6 months more to live depending on the stage when it was diagnosed plus other factors). I prayed hard, and indeed, learned a thing or two about prayers, as I prayed inside the men's bathroom where I proceeded after being told by an aunt who visited me suddenly in my office with her husband, just to tell me about the diagnosis on my Father.

I felt so sad, so bad, so hurt. There's a way of describing these things without getting people so enmeshed into my own world of seeing things, but I'm taking this opportunity to share my thoughts more than 3 years after my Father died. I prayed inside the men's restroom. And I cried aloud and I would hear others who were inside getting in and out and I didn't care a bit. I heard a response from God, a tiny clear cool voice telling me

"my Father would die soon."

It was an honest response, and I resolved right there and then to make the most of the remaining days of my Father.

He soon got a car of his own, or it must have been like he got a car months before we got to know he's got cancer, which I paid for. And we were actually working on some small businesses even way before he got diagnosed of cancer [having been able to get some amounts of funding from a trusting and kind relative who took the risk to invest with me some money which he borrowed himself]. My Father and Mother got to lived together after a long period of time, having been separated out of demands of economic circumstances. My Mother had to always go away for abroad just to work, so much so that almost all of us children, seven in all (plus a twin of my 6th sibling who died 7 days after being born) grew up practically without her except during vacation or some other periods that became opportunities for us to get together as a family.

I was seeing things were happier with them as they were a couple again, which started after my Mother decided to come home for good. You just simply don't know exactly how I feel about getting so very angry at the stupidity of government officials, especially high ranking officers in government service, when they claim credits for having put in place systems to bring workers to work in foreign countries. And worse, this whole set-up has spawned a worst set-up of abusive and leech like-behaving persons who depend on the remittances of their family members or relatives abroad living luxuriously than most ordinary fellows without doing the same level of hardship hard work being done by those who work abroad just to be able to send money to those back in the Philippines. My Mother got into this system and it got us into a quagmire of complicated web of experiences. But through it all, my Father stayed home. He was among the first househusbands ever at least in our community, which phenomenon was not written much about, until I started reading Alfred Yuson's columns about his experiences as a stay-home-husband. He didn't even care to follow an elder brother who chose to migrate with his family way before in the late 1970s to Canada.

There have been extreme personal costs on these this arrangements that up to now, we still suffer in paying. For those who have work but are based abroad, just for the meaningful life of your families, please give up your jobs abroad as soon as practically possible to your families, at least to your core families, at least those who have children, or at least for your own good, as no amount of money will ever replace the hidden costs of giving up your opportunities to be with your families even during highly distressful periods. Whatever gains you'll get from working abroad which you do now with your family members staying behind in your native country, are simply not worth it...believe me, as we have experienced and have been paying the costs up to now [even though a brother of mine who's married with 2 children decided over a year ago to go abroad and earn for his family's upkeep in KSA, a path taken previously by our Mother]. Why am I writing down these things? Because this forms part of the unintended gifts I have claimed for myself when my Father died over 3 years ago.

The rainbow in the picture showed up when my partner and I happened to be in Tagaytay, with Taal Lake on the view like the best commercially available postcards [why....you see this place being included among the top 1000 places to visit before you die, as I happened to own and have read this book myself]. I was overtaken by so much grief; I could barely talk just like my usual self. We were having coffee in a shop that's around 20 minutes drive from our house located in a community [Barangay Tartaria, Silang, Cavite] in the next municipality and that's made up of families, fresh migrant ones, who have moved from some other locations in the Philippines. At the periphery of my vision, I soon noticed the rainbow. I heaved a sigh, and took a shot of it using my old celfone. The shot got transferred from one computer to another until it got pasted here in this posting.

It shows God's eternal presence in everything in that ever happens in my life, every second of it, even if I'm being bad, or even if I'm being wrong. I've got to understand gradually that He'll be always around and just won't give up on me, even in hardship situations. This remains true even up to this moment of writing where I'm located in a country that happens to allow me so much freedom and provides for space for my dreams to grow. There have been a lot of sacrifices that I did and with the word "sacrifice" taking a new meaning now, as given in the context of this writing.

My Father's death is actually a non-verbalized cue from him of letting me go of my past and moving on forward to work on my dreams. It refers to his acquiescence to my dreams, which I told him when he was still alive even on the night when I last saw him alive. We worked, planned together of details of what businesses will be done and engaged in. There were severe limitations actually. I would have wanted to have received help, one way or another, yet not much help came, to be openly frank about it. I didn't really know if those who I requested prayers from really did pray, or did include me in their prayers, but I have remained grateful nonetheless.

The kind of sickness that my Father had needed a lot of money just to be able to make it to the next 30 days. He lived for almost 2 years after we found out with the stage between 2nd and 3rd stages of the fatal disease. Except for certain people who helped one way or another, no one actually offered some cash or another (even ridiculously small amounts like 5, 10, 25, 50cents!!); most were just waiting for his death to come, and not knowing actually that any monetary amount would have helped a lot. Not so much logistical help came coming as I worked on coming with a brave front, and I tried to understand from where people's inadequacy of help is coming from. But of course, I knew this is pretty normal as people tend to protect and work on their survival instincts. I just didn't like the dishonesty of it all, the parasitically supportive curiosity shown by people who'd be asking

"how my Father's doing, or how I was doing"

but I persisted on what I could do while my Father was still alive. And it also amazes me as to how people would just make themselves available and get more generous only after someone has died (but that's a topic for another posting!).

My Father spoke and wrote in really good English, with an Ilocano accent. He never gave up this accent, having been born and raised up in the North, where late Philippine dictator and leader Ferdinand Marcos hails from (they both got the same accent; it was not obvious then but who would condescend down openly on a dictator?). He knew that I was really angry whenever we would verbally fight each other in English. I remember my Mother pleading me not to be disrespectful to my Father, as I was really that disrespectful. It was my way of getting even on someone who I expected but I could not figure out how to say exactly how I needed badly a positive role model. As I grew older, I've realized this has been the predicament of most societies nowadays. There's a bad case anywhere, a real bad case repeated every generation, of having really poor role models for growing up children. Listen: children don't really listen to anything you'd be advising them unless they see you actually doing what you just told them. It was a long period of time on my part as I coped with my own difficulties. There were years when I didn't talk with my Father, as I had no recourse but just to ignore him, just to make it through each day, as we lived together. Also note however that I'm just describing my own experiences, my own perspective. My siblings have their own stories to tell.

But wonders indeed happen. It took a sickness and a dying moment to enable me to claim gifts that are unheard of, something you won't understand ever if you have not experienced something like a death in a family even someone whom you're really disgusted about. Or even someone you really didn't know in the first place. Death comes with it a void, an absence that becomes apparent, and I would soon be filled up in a part of my being just like what I experienced when my Father died.

It was a very long day when my Father died, like as if the hours were extended beyond the usual 24 which we normally have. Except for certain small things like my failure of not showing him the condominium unit that I got to live in a year before he died, I have kept on leading an honest, sincere, friends-like life with my Father during his last years of being around. He struggled just like the rest of the family members and friends. I had to misuse a lot of money entrusted me, plus I had to max out my credit lines just as to be able to provide him a decent life while he was still around. It's to his legacy that I've come strong, healthy, good-looking, intelligent, warm and loving, amidst all these ridiculous events. I've sought his intercession more often than expected, even in my prayers where he would be appearing in various make-ups (i.e. sad, happy, empty looking, worried looking, ghost like, alive again, among others).

When I was back to my office work after he was buried, I saw a lot of inquiries from abroad for job opportunities for me from my inbox of the email system. This was his way of responding as to how I'll manage to come up with solutions with the problems left me to solve. But I know and have been kept reaffirmed constantly that every time I see that rainbow in that picture, I know he'll be on his usual guise of guiding me, leading me. He's given me permission to seize all the opportunities to accomplish all my dreams even the most improbable ones with him taking steps to nudge constantly the Lord to continually bless me, provide me all graces and mercies, gifts and other necessary credentials, with the combined prayers of those of my ancestors plus those people I know who have gone ahead of me. I've discovered now why the ancient Romans among other races like the Egyptians, Chinese, those tribal Filipinos, have practices on their long-dead ancestors as growing to become eventually venerated as participants of the pan-God and deity-system they've got. This comes as a highly interesting aspect of their spiritual lives, that gets my curiosity in my readings and explorations. I observe how this aspect is being ignored and unspoken of openly nowadays, or one may be taken as a dangerous fanatic (religious at that!). I don't wonder now, and I've grown to practice what I believe.

Come now, join me, claim your own share of gifts from Grief, as a slice of grace from the Lord!