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I learned early on that
the grief at the loss of a loved one
never completely goes
away.
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Time and again we remember - and we feel the pain once
more.
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I was 17 when my father passed away. |
It was the 20th of July, and he’d
been in the intensive care unit for a week, unconscious the
whole time. I still remember the morning when he’d had the
stroke and we brought him to the hospital. He kept staring at
us, as if committing our faces to memory. We didn’t know
then that he was already saying goodbye.
The day before, he came home from an
official trip out of town. He brought me a pack of M&Ms
which I never finished. When he died, I put the remainder
inside an empty Gerber bottle. I closed it tightly and kept
the bottle with me for years. I couldn’t part with it. I
held on to it, I guess, because it was the last present he
gave me. Or perhaps it was my subconscious way of holding on
to him, because I wasn’t ready yet to let go.
It was only a few more years later
that I finally found the heart to say goodbye to the bottle
and empty it of its already moldy contents.
One night, I was feeling down and
dejected after some unpleasant incident or other. I felt so
alone and unloved I silently cried myself to sleep. I dreamt
of Papa. He was inside my room, bending over my bed, kissing
me on the cheek. I woke up with a start and could almost feel
warmth on my cheek where he’d kissed me, as if he’d really
been there.
Had he been? Or was it my
imagination?
I didn’t go back to sleep
immediately but stared at the darkness, thinking about my
dream. I remember how sad I was when I’d gone to sleep. Then
I realized – or was it my subconscious telling me that I was
loved? – that I was just overreacting. Or maybe Papa sensed
my sadness and wanted to comfort me, to tell me that he
continues to love me even though he’s gone. My heart
believed the latter. I thought of him, of how much I missed
him. I cried again as the old grief resurfaced but, at that
moment, I felt so close to him, so loved by him, and this
comforted me.
I went back to sleep, no longer with
a heavy heart. I know he is just a loving thought away, for as
Thornton Wilder wrote: "There is a land of the living and
a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival,
the only meaning."
- Lani Estepa
San Juan, Ilocos Sur, Philippines.
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