This morning my best friend, Tara, called me and told me that she had a dream about my dad. My dad passed away two years ago and I feel somewhat envious to those who dream about him…because so far, since he has passed, I dreamt about him for no more than 5 times.
I long to see his face once more but I guess all that I have right now are the pictures and my thoughts about him...
My dad was diagnosed with Lung Cancer July, 2005 and died last April 10, 2006. I never really knew him until my parents separated. Me and youngest my sister lived with him after the separation. I don’t really understand why we were left with him during the separation but, we did anyway. I never knew him in the sense that when we were growing up, there were only a few number of times that he was a father to us. Yes, my parents had a shitty marriage. They fought a lot and the separation was actually the time when they became friends. The separation was actually the time that we became friends. I hated him all those years while growing up and blamed him for the misfortunes that happened in our family. Then we started talking after the separation and I found out how he loved being an athlete, it was his one true love since he was a kid. You see, he played college ball in UST and Dela Salle. It was I guess his outlet, if some people drank themselves full if they problems, my dad swam. He ran, went biking and during the last days of his life was so frustrated with the disease because he missed playing golf. Oh how he enjoyed food. Most of the food that I love today is influenced by him. We loved trying new restaurants and we would end up making our own version at home. He would always tell me that when I went to a new place that it is imperative that I try new things especially food. During my Hong Kong trip last 2006 he insisted that I try the street foods, for those are the most authentic ones. But, most of all, one thing that I never knew about my dad was how he loved to read. I studied philosophy in college and we shared books and we would later talk about it. I realized how smart he was. We would have these little debates about the existence of man and religion and politics but most of the time we would talk about shoes. My family has been manufacturing shoes for the last 25 years and my Lolo always said that of all of his children, my dad was the born shoemaker. He talked with so much passion about shoes that he even dreamed about them and drew them later as he woke. He told me that he can easily figure out a person’s personality through their shoes. What they do, where they have been and how they live. I find it ironic though since I’ve never been fond of shoes. The only time that I find them interesting is when my dad would talk about them, the latest trend in shoe manufacturing (that he finds out through the annual shoe fare in Hong Kong), the new soles available on the market, and the designs that he comes up with every once in a while.
My dad also loved to travel. He was fortunate enough to go to different countries like China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Canada, USA and Europe. During his chemotherapy, he let me read this book about figuring out where your “heaven” is. Heaven in the sense that the one place that you have been in your life that gave you so much happiness, peace and contentment is where you will live after you die. He said that his heaven is in Europe. We would talk about it for the longest time and how much he longed for me and my sisters to go there and experience the Zen or the unexplainable satisfaction he felt as he walked the streets of Italy. The week before he died, as we were saying our goodbyes to him, I whispered in his ear that my heaven would be where he was. I was there as he roamed Europe, for I lived it through his stories. I have it pictured in my mind the way that he saw it. Experienced it. And I have been there. And I no longer fear death for I know that when I die, I will be living in my dad’s Heaven and experience the kind of contentment that I will never have in this lifetime.
