Daddy ko

My father died in his sleep on December 12 (2013). I worked from home that day, and was planning to visit him across the street after my 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. shift, perhaps read to him from the books I brought him a couple days earlier, and maybe hug him. Him not being a touchy-feely person, the last time I hugged him was a few days before his 80th birthday last October. He had a surprised look on his face, as if to say, "What's that for?" He left quietly as he had lived -- without much fanfare, without drama.

My second sister (we are five girls and one boy), who visited him the Monday before he died, said our father didn't want to feel like an invalid. Toward the last few weeks of his life, my father would become weaker, unable to eat for days at a time. My mom would offer to bring him his meals in his room, but he had always refused, not wanting to be a burden to anyone. He instead walked to eat at the dining table. We offered to bring him to the hospital so that he could be intravenously fed, he refused. He was like that, low-maintenance, low-key. He always said that people need to be useful.

The day before he died, when he seemed stronger and had eaten, he even fixed a leaking faucet, although he asked help with tightening the wrench. One time, a couple of years ago, my third sister, who lives with my parents, calls me on my cell phone. I was already on the bus. She was frantic. There was trouble with the electric post outside their house (I forgot if it exploded or had sparks or both), and my sister said my father, an aeronautical engineer by training who managed the electricals of a steel plant for a long time, had taken out the ladder and was preparing to go up the post to find out what was wrong and fix it. I asked my sister to give the phone to him. I told him, "Get down the ladder. I will call Meralco and its people will have you arrested. That's their post. It's not yours to fix." He understood authority, which for a long time he was to me.

I've had a difficult relationship with my father, especially after he retired and became crankier. In college, when I started dabbling with activism, this man who called me, his first-born, a "cutie-pie" and a "sweetie-pie," returned the favor and called him a fascist. He had tried to rationalize martial law and all that. Because this man, who always advised harried me "to plan your work and then work your plan" appreciates systems and order.

In high school, he and my mother would help me (actually, make) my practical arts projects. The papier mache dachshund and the flowers from the stems of the coconut fruit were so beautiful the teacher asked if she could take them home. He was a hands-on dad at a time when macho dads were the norm. I remember the nights he'd take me and sister no. 2 to the garden rotunda two streets away and have us learn balance, guiding us as we walked on the back of the concrete seats that fenced the roundabout. If it weren't for him, I would not be married, believing as I did that marriage is a male social construct that needs to be replaced with something less restrictive to women. He told my mother, when I was five months pregnant and not married, that he would not give my daughter his surname. What? Di ba apelyido ko rin yun? I know he wasn't being selfish. He was looking out for me, who took some of his stubborn nature.

And today is Christmas Day, the holiday he loved most. When we were younger, he would bring out the missallette from the previous Christmas, the one with a thick sheaf of lyrics for carols in the middle, and we'd sing. His favorite was the "Little Drummer Boy," the poor boy who had nothing to give the King but his music. Or, he'd play the carols as sung by the Vienna Boys Choir. He loved their angelic voices. He would prepare a bottle of coins for the carolers. No matter if these children came back over and over, singing their unintelligible songs, he'd have something for them. One Christmas Eve, returning home from mass, a group of young kids from the shabbier part of the neighborhood greeted us outside our doorstep. We shared our noche buena with them. "Inubos nila pagkain natin," a younger sister complained. But my dad, whose mother died of childbirth when he was seven, knew how it was to go without and knew how to give.

Before he died, my mom tells me he checked the Christmas lights, planning to replace the busted bulbs. Last night, unlike the many Christmas eves I've spent, the Christmas lights were off, my mother choosing to go to bed early so that we'll be able to go today to the memorial park and spend it with him.

I miss you daddy. 

(This first came out in InterAksyon.com, 25 December 2013, with the title "This is my first Christmas without my daddy".)