Father’s Day Specials – What Makes It Special?

Many years have passed and still passing, people are into celebrating and commemorating every special day and holiday of the year. Whether it is a Valentine’s Day or Christmas, that day would be the most special day to everyone. It is highly distinct because of an air present in it. Ii is unrecognizable but it contains something. You can see people rushing around buying some gifts. You can see them in their favorite suits. What makes it so special when it is just the same day as yesterday? The same sun that rises and sets. The same ticking of the clock. What makes it so special then?

This question keeps rushing in my head as I saw fathers being hailed and honored by their children and wives every Father’s Day. Flowers, cakes and delicious foods around them along with broad smiles and applauses of their loved ones. How grateful are they upon receiving precious gifts and sweet kisses from their children. How happy are they when their wives embrace them tightly. Watching them I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks. How lucky are the children with fathers like that?

In my entire years of existence, I could hardly remember one unforgettable day I spent with my father. Nothing comes to my memory when I forced myself to think. Nothing. Only vague descriptions of what my father was like when he was still alive. Did I ever say to my father how thankful I was of bringing me to life in this complex world? Did I ever say I love you “papa” to him? I can’t remember any.

I was away from my father and my family for five years. I went to college in a different place away from home. When father’s day came, I used to send simple text messages to him to greet. Nothing special. Nothing new. I could hardly feel the true essence of it. I just did it because others did. To me, it was just the same customary practices handed down from one generation to the next.

But now, it came to my senses how I missed those days. How I missed the times to be spent supposedly with my father. My conscience told me how cruel, wicked and selfish I was for depriving the real feelings my father supposed to feel every father’s day. Now, he was gone. There is no way of saying “thank you” and “I love you” deep-heartedly to him. He cannot hear anymore. He cannot feel anymore. My tears rolled another bucket. I cried. It was like I was slapped with the truth.

Father’s day is indeed special. It is special to some who really knows the real meaning of it. It is one way of saying how their sacrifices are being acknowledged. “Happy father’s day” greeting is not just mere words. It is not a mere greeting. It is the words that contain underlying meaning of how one could utter the immense feeling and gratitude they feel for their fathers more than just saying “I love you.”#

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One Last Glimpse

So long I’ve been planning to return home and be with my family. So long I’ve been imagining to obtain a good job to support our living. So long for my desires to keep hanging. Nothing comes to become real. Nothing. Only faint and ambiguous vision of the future left. All were fruits of the ambitious subconscious trying to compensate the absence of the real thing. All were gone. All disappeared like tiny bubbles in the thin air. My plans were destroyed.

I was devastated.

I was mad.

I was squirming.

I went home with tears covering my eyes. I can barely see the people around me. I can barely raise one foot to step on the next stair of Cebu Pacific Air. It was my first time to board on a plane  but I can hardly enjoy every moment of it. My mind kept raising with the thoughts of the people back home. The feeling of a loss is difficult to comprehend. I was going to go home with the absence of one of the most important people of my life. This wasn’t my plan. My plan was to make my family whole again in my return. It was a mistake, a big mistake. My father was dead.

The last time I saw my father was way back five years ago. The time when he sent me to the ship’s departure area. I can see his sad eyes staring at me behind the iron gate at the pier. He told me I still have the chance to back off in case I changed my mind. I did not. Instead, I was very excited coming in Iloilo. It was like another adventure to me to go to school in the different place. Iloilo is the place of my mother. She was born and grew up there. “I am completely not a stranger,” I thought. “Don’t worry pop. I can manage.” Then, I headed through the hallway to the entrance of the ship.

After five years of continual hardwork to finish college and getting a job on my own, I went home with a diploma in one hand and medals in another. But the joy I felt was enough to make a slight curve on my lips then gradually faded. It was replaced with sadness and grief. I was supposed to make my father really proud handing these diploma and medals to him. I was supposed to tell him stories about the success and competence I had during college days. But I failed. How come I took so long to come home? Now, I’m late. All have turned out to a vision. A vision of failure and incompetence.

I found my father lying lifeless in the long white coffin. How could his usual happy face remained the same even up to his last breath? His face never changed from the last time I saw him. The place where he laid was still the same old place where I used to play hide-and-seek in my childhood days. It was like it was just yesterday I set my last foot in that house. I looked around. The people were mourning and crying of my father’s loss remembering how kind my father was while he was still alive. Children were sobbing, reminiscing how my father had been so good to these innocent ones. And they were not my relatives. I can hardly recognize them. I found my mother in the corner. Seeing her was enough to restore the joy on my face. Oh, how I missed her. My mother remained to be calm as always. She never went hysterical. Yeah, that’s what Christians should do. I saw my sister marching behind my two beautiful nieces. They grew so fast. I hugged them, then my sister. She never changed too. Other people had mistaken us to be twins. I did not know that we look much alike. Maybe because I changed. I became slimmer.

On my father’s burial a lot of people came. All of his relatives I guess were there trying to catch one last glimpse of him. Two different church pastors came to offer the necrological service for my father. Piano, violin and guitar were playing up to his last journey. I took one last look of my father before they close the coffin. I heard everyone was crying. One of his nieces went hysterical. They pulled her away the coffin, she never let go. She was sobbing. She was nearly cannot afford standing on her knees. “Poor girl. She really will miss you pop.” I turned my back following my cousin, my mother and my sister. “I too, will surely miss you pop as everyone else’s does.” #

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The Unexpected Nightmare

Gone is my dream for a perfect reunion. Gone is my plan to fulfill a mission. All my aspirations are gone to complete destruction. Gone is… Gone is… My dreams are shattered. My promises are broken. I was like holding a handful of water slipping  through the sieves of my fingers. I was struggling. I was in a poignant horror when I heard the news.

March 12, 2011

12:00 pm, Saturday

My phone was ringing. I was in the midst of completing a task at work. I grabbed the phone expecting an emergency call from my relative in Davao, which at that time on a tsunami alert after a huge tsunami hit Japan. I answered the phone despite the company rules and regulations.  I was disgusted that my mother was just telling me petty stuffs about my sister transfer to a new boarding house. What a useless and senseless conversation. I was irritated and told mother to call me after 7:00 pm every after work thinking not to disturb me anymore.

March 13, 2011

8:00 am, Sunday

                                                

My sister and I were exchanging funny jokes and teases through text messages when we got to the point of discussing death. “I am not afraid to die,” she told me. And I replied, “So do I.” Then, we laughed on the unsual joke.

March 13, 2011

10:00 am, Sunday

I was in the bathroom finishing shower when my phone rang. I ignored it knowing mother was calling again. I was tired of attending the phone and hearing mother’s unending discussion relay. Until it rang four times. I had no choice but to pick up the phone. I was really in shocked when mother uttered the first few words of the story. I completely understood what she was trying to say but I kept on asking ignoring the real thing of what was really taking place. My mouth was partly open in awe. My mind stopped functioning. I can hardly breathe. I forced myself to cry but I couldn’t. My head hanged in the mid-air. It was like all of my senses were paralyzed. I can’t think. I didn’t know what to do. “My father is dead.” I can hardly believe it.

A mysterious incident happened while my mother was on the phone and about to tell me the bad news. It was not mother who spoke to me after all. I can hardly recognize the voice. The voice was like an edited voice of the DJ trying to get through the noisy static hiss on the radio. It was a male voice speaking an alien language or some kind of an exotic dialect. I couldn’t understand. Then, a familiar voice of a man came into the background speaking the familiar phrases my father used to tell about me. Children were laughing and playing on the background. All were clear except to the alien voice of a man whom I spoke to . I kept shouting and spoke to the mouthpiece. The conversation stopped. The line was dead. My mother called up again telling me how deaf I was for not hearing what she said. I can’t believe my father was dead. Then I realized he was the man with an alien voice I spoke to through my mother’s phone. He was the one sending the message – that he was dead. #

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