Dear Daddy,

               We met again in my dreams not so long ago, where enticingly the constrictive bonds of reality and time are broken. Sometimes I wish I could live the rest of my life in the borderlands of wakefulness and dreams, if only to have you near.  To constantly feel your presence, not in fleeting bursts. 

     I keep searching for you, da. These past few years it feels like I've been retracing your footsteps, stubbornly chasing rapidly fading footfalls. Praying, begging to please let me see you where you last stood when you were whole. Before that cursed aneurysm led to a stroke, which in turn began a slow decay 18 months in the making. You, my Hawaiian Superman, lay immobile as your body betrayed you and turned into Kryptonite. 

     Almost 8 years ago, I told you it was okay to let go. And so you flew. You were free. 

     But I have not let go, da. Where do I begin? Grief's paths have so many twists and turns, and I am still lost. Standing in the middle of nowhere. The roads before and beyond are daunting, and I cannot trust my own hesitant steps. My feet are much too small to walk surely into the forest that I know holds promises of new beginnings. 

     I'm scared to let go.

Have you ever held someone as they lay dying?

I have.  

It has been seven years, and still this memory shimmers at the edges—a standout—and it has since coloured and broken me into a million different mosaic pieces that tell a story only I can fully understand. It is my momma's and my shared memory, and people we know have lived snippets of it with us, and yet the colours and the jagged edges are mine alone to sift through. To make sense with.

November 13th, 2002. Aloha Nursing and Rehab Center. Kane'ohe, Hawai'i. Another time, another place, another life.

I crawled into my da’s narrow hospital bed—tubes be damned—and tucked myself into a fetal position, my ears pressed to his chest, listening to the ragged breaths that I knew would soon fade into nothingness.

“Everything will be okay, daddy. You can let go now. You don’t have to hold on for us anymore.” I said these words even as I wanted to scream and beg for him to fight harder to stay with us. It was 10:20 PM, long after visiting hours had passed. My momma said, and I will never forget, "Hold on, Ron. Wait for us in the morning." But it wasn't about our wants anymore--my momma's and mine--but rather, about what a tired man needed. I looked at my watch as I stood in the doorway of da's room. 10:37 P.M., it declared.  

I dreamt of him that night. My daddy and I danced, bathed in an ethereal white glow. Spin me around, daddy! Spin me around more! I was his darlin' little princess again. Safe in his outstretched hands, I spun around and around, happy to see my da. But then the music stopped and the world, as it had before, became a blur of jumbled backgrounds. I turned to see my da, wanting an explanation, but then, like world, he slowly faded away.
 

“No, daddy! Don’t go! Don’t leave me again!” I stopped dancing, held out my hand to hold onto him, to finish my dream, the place where I could always see him, but then he was gone.

I awoke to silence and knew. Just knew. He was gone. I woke up my momma and told her softly, "Momma, the phone is going to ring, and it will be the doctor or the nurses, telling us that daddy is gone." Half-asleep, momma looked at me and said, "How do you know this? No, no...It cannot be. Your daddy cannot leave us. He..." Before she could even finish the sentence, the phone rang.

My daddy died at exactly 1:17 AM. 

People always tell me that I have the memory of an elephant. Professors have commented that I have a photographic memory. "I wish I had that," one of my mentors said. "It would make life easier!" Well, if I could, I would  give this gift of vivid memories to him. Memories are a double-edged sword. Some memories I am so grateful to have, while there are some I wish I didn't remember so vividly. There are little details in everyday life--seemingly innocuous--that can bring it all back. Triggers, they call it. A song, a word, a scent, a sound. They wield so much power over me sometimes, and I bend. Kneel.  They can send me into a tailspin...down, down, down into a spiral of anger, resentment, and a pain of loss so unbearably sharp I cannot find the words to express. Nobody understands.
June, November, and December are particularly difficult months. Right around Fathers’ Day, I tend to withdraw from the world as I half-drown in a strong current of sadness and anger that my father is gone. He died on November 14th, 3 days after Veterans’ Day and a full two weeks before Thanksgiving. A month and two days before what would’ve been his 65th birthday. Right before Christmas, his favourite holiday. New Year dawned without him in 2003, just as it had from then on and will from hereon after. 

In my dark moments I rage and I scream. Silently. In my head, in my room. Intellectually I know that a vegetative body ravaged by diabetes, stroke, and multi-organ failure cannot possibly endure forever. 18 months was a courageous fight. A miracle. Spiritually, I understand the impermanence of life and the enlightenment of letting go of that which are not ours to keep. And yet the child in me--an eternal half-orphan--sees neither reason or life's cyclical nature: I feel abandoned. Betrayed. How could've my Hawaiian Superman succumbed to the Kryptonite of illness? Wasn't my da the invincible wounded soldier who survived two tours of duty in Viet Nam? What happened to the immortal man who defied two cardiac arrests, a quadruple bypass surgery, and a pacemaker? 

I graduated at the top of my class from a university he had also been accepted to. On a drizzling June afternoon, I stood in front of a podium and spoke to my graduating class about persevering and finding one's worth. My momma cried, especially since I didn't tell her about what I--we--had achieved against all odds. How, despite losing the luxuries and comforts from our old life, nothing could take away what is within us. Da should have been there too, because more than anyone, it was he who gave wings to my intellectual curiosity and pushed me to ascend to the pinnacle of my limitless potential. Everyone tells me that of course he would've been proud of the woman that I am today, but how could I possibly begin to explain these unnamed feelings inside me, this guilt because the sound of his voice saying"I'm proud of you, darlin' " is slowly fading away? 

Hospital Scene 2002

Standing by the window

I could see the city lights in the distance

Cars of various shapes and sizes line the streets

There are people down below,

Laughing and carrying on without a care in the world

I step away from the window

And I turn around

My da's lying on the hospital bed

Still as can be

A machine breathes for him

A tube through his stomach gives him food

The room is stark cold, and I shiver

But my mum doesn't even notice

Her eyes are glued to the heart monitor

Some people in lab coats come

To take his blood sugar, they say

I ask them about his glucose levels

And they say, "He's okay"

"No!" I want to scream

I want to chase them in the hallway and yell

Make them see

How can my da be okay

When they say he can't ever breathe on his own?

When they say he won't ever speak?

When they say he won't ever walk?

"No, he's not okay!" was what I wanted to scream

But I just stood there

Quietly watching their retreating backs

I walk back to the window

And look below

I used to be one of those carefree people

Milling about in the streets

And now I'm up here

So close, but so far

Go figure

Unfinished Song

I recently decided to take down some of my earlier writings online and came across one of my old fanfiction accounts (yes, under one of my pseudonyms I wrote my fair share of Power Rangers fanfic…down with Kat! Tommy-Kimberly forever!). I’d forgotten about “To Where Angels Dare Fly,” which was a song I wrote after my da passed away. It was intended to be a duet between a Mezzo Soprano and a Baritone, and though at that time i could hear the melody in my head, I never got around to finishing it. It’s cheesy, but then again, my writing tends to lean on the cheesy with extra cheese side! In any case, here it is, complete with the original author’s note:


Author’s Note: This is one of those lyrics that sort of wrote itself. It came to me in my dreams, almost a year ago. In 2000, my dad had a premonition. After we came home back to the US after my debutante ball, he told me that in his gut he knew that that was the last time he’d ever travel out of the country. A few months later, he had a stroke, and after a lengthy battle, passed away. The song was written through my mom’s and da’s points of view, with a little bit of mine sprinkled in here and there. I have a hard time telling people that I love them, and I reckon that in my adolescence I never told my da that I loved him. I believe it’s the things and words left unsaid and undone that you regret the most in retrospect.


Author’s Note, Part 2: “Mezzo Soprano” indicates the verses sung by the woman, while “Baritone” indicates masculine verses. Being a huge fan of opera, this was written as an aria. Opera; another thing I inherited from Da. Now I cling to it even tighter, knowing that it is one of the things we share in common, knowing that it is one of the ways I feel closer to him somehow.





Mezzo Soprano:

There is a feeling

That burns deep inside me

Haunting me with goodbyes unsaid

I shiver in the cold

As we walk hand in hand

Down that sidewalk street

Slowly you slip away

From within my grasp


Baritone:

I have lived my life

Through Heaven’s borrowed time

Desperately am I holding on

Solely for you to know

You are my other half

And I have loved you

Oh, since before even

Forever and time


Baritone:

But now I must leave.


Mezzo Soprano:

Love, why must you go?


Chorus:
To where angels dare fly

Where they dare breathe

Soar free in eternal sky

Slip away from the shackles and chains

Of this earth


Once upon a lifetime

In a long forgotten dream

Angels used to cry

Tears streaked their rosy cheeks

As they drifted off to sleep

Now they are free

Free to live, free to love

Where angels dare fly



Mezzo Soprano:

Oh, please

Won’t you stay the night?

Let this morning pass


Baritone:

I pray, thee God

For one last embrace

Just to hear her voice


Mezzo Soprano:

Oh, how can this be

That you’re no longer here?

I have felt you caress my face

Then morning came



Baritone:

My love, don’t let go

Please finish this dream

In there I’ll hold you

Until the morning comes


Mezzo Soprano:

Please take me with you now


Baritone:

But alone I must go


Chorus
Mezzo Soprano:

Is forever just a word?

A promise left unkept?


Baritone:

Forever is a promise

A love that never ends

Baritone:

Look into the skies, I am smiling at you


Mezzo Soprano:

I can feel you watching from up above



Chorus:

Where angels dare fly

Our love won’t ever end

For angels dare fly

Forever is a promise

Where angels dare fly

Where they dare breathe

Where they love

Until the end of time

Forever won’t be just a dream

But a promise kept

Where angels dare fly

Handumanan sa Amahan Nako'ng Nahanaw

In Loving Remembrance of My Da

16 December 1937 - 14 November 2002

Siete na ba or sietenta na

Is it seven or has it been seventy

Ang mga tuig nga ninglabay

These years that have caressed

Ni'ining pagdagan sa panahon'g

The soul of time

Sama sa kabukidnon'g sapa

Like the river of yore,

Nga wala'y kaupusan? 

Relentlessly unheeding?

Ang kalibutan kanunay'ng nagatuyok;

Life goes on, the world--its pulse, its beat;

Nunca kini muhinay o muhunong para bisan kinsa.

Never stops, never pauses--not for anyone.

Pero wala gihapo'y kausaban:

But still nothing has changed:

Gimingaw gihapon ko kanimo,

I still miss you,

Amahan nako'ng nahanaw. 

My cherished Da--now lost. 

Kini lang gayud ang mga hagawhaw sa kagahapo'ng

But these are simply whispers to a yesterday

Karon'g dugay nang naanod

Long since forgotten

Ni'ining masulub'ong panganud.

By a mourning sky. 

"We must be our own before we can be another's." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

I thought about my momma when I first came across these words. As strong as she is, her whole life she has always been defined as being somebody's: she was first my grandparents' favourite, light-skinned daughter, at 20 she became my 39-year-old father's devoted housewife, and at 26 my doting momma. She never really had time to be herself. Just herself.


She's never really eaten at a restaurant alone. Nor has she gone to a cinema alone. 'Til now, she's never really lived alone. Her whole life she's had somebody to eat with, cook with, live with, laugh with, travel with...It must have been lonely, though.


I worry about her, and I worry for her. More than anything, I want her to have herself. It breaks my heart to know that she has built her whole life around my da, grandma, and me. My da's gone, my grandma's getting on in her years, and what if something happens to me? I don't want her to lose her world, don't want to see it crumbling down. I want her world to remain standing even if pieces of it shatter. I want her to persevere and not merely endure.


More than anything, I want her to have herself.

Saudade...

…is a Galician and Portuguese word that is used to describe longing for something or someone that you used to have, but is now lost. It is an enduring love of sorts, a remembrance of what once was. Growing up as a budding linguist, “saudade” was this romantic thing to me; pining and longing were the stuff from which little girls’ fairy tales were made of. You see, I used to be believe that inherent in the word “loss” was the implication that what was lost could easily be found or replaced. Happily ever afters were something I firmly believed in, and good ole Disney just reinforced this belief.

Now I know better.

There is nothing remotely fairy tale-ish about saudade, for it is firmly rooted in real life. To feel saudade—to experience it—is to have joy, sadness, triumph, defeat, hope, despair, ecstacy, sorrow, etc all at the same time. More often than not, it does not lead to a happy ending. “Tenho saudades tuas.” Now I know the true meaning of loss; it’s the realization, day after day, that what you lost can never be replaced.

Beyond Paradise Hawai'i

There are many people who spend all of their lives in Hawai’i, and I used to pity them, convinced that they just didn’t know any better…that these paradise islands somehow enthralled them to the point of blindness and ignorance. Imprisoned them, somewhat. Stunted their growth. “How could you love something so much and never want to leave, if it’s all you’ve ever known? If you haven’t experienced what the world has to offer?” Those were the questions that I asked. So despite my love of Hawai’i, despite the fact that I have roots there, I chose my wings. Chose to fly away. I was proud of my restlessness, my curiousity, my wanderlust.

Now that I am in my twenties, I wonder if this restlessness within me is in fact, a prison. I always found home in people—my momma, my da’s memories, my best friends—but never in a place. Despite setting down roots and having pieces of me in wherever place I live, I never really allowed these roots to embed deeper into the soil. I have yet to be a redwood or a koa. Never really left an intangible mark. Left my heart, yes, but never my soul. So maybe these people I used to pity? What if they are the lucky ones?