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.” #