Chapter 1: Your Tears
To the man I dearly love,
When I saw you crying the moment you finally saw your own father inside the casket, I also saw you in my mind carrying my own disabled father in your back. I saw you as you gently took his full weight throughout the distance of their house along the rocky but muddy road to the main block. A 200- meter–distance where you could hail a taxi that would take you all to the physical rehabilitation facility or wherever he was going to.
When I saw your shoulders moving as you sobbed, I, again, saw you in my mind helping him out of his couch to his wheelchair or his bed.
When I saw your tears rolling down, there you were in my mind with food and medicine in your hand for papa in a hospital bed.
I watched you as you were silently wrestling out from so much pain and regrets, and I knew very well that all those things that you did for papa were now your desires to do for a father you have not seen for so long even in his sickbed.
If only I had been able to cut through the barriers of finances and distance, you could have carried him, too, on your back. You could have carried him in your arms. You could have fed him with your hands and rubbed his aching back. You could have given him joy in the warmth of your presence.
Most of all, you could have knelt by his side, and you could have, in return, seen those tears in his eyes as you plead the Father for his life. You could have listened to his last whispers and felt that faintest beat of his heart. Or, you could have held his hands and placed them close to your heart as that last precious breath faded away.
No matter how much you wished to do those things you should have done for your father, you could only helplessly watch him wheeled out from the house you called home. The home where he stood as your strength against the storms in your lives, the hero against the battles of hardships, and the victor in raising another seven pillars of new families.
You could only look back how this man lovingly treated those wounds in your knees when you were young, how he carried you in his shoulders. How he first taught you how to hold a ball and how he cheered for you on your first shot. You could only recall how he trained you on those menial tasks that made you now a responsible husband and father.
Now, as a father yourself, you understood more the pain he must have felt in longing to have you by his side on his deathbed. Just as how much you were hurting to see your son wheeled into the operating room during his surgery. You now understood more his wish to gather his children around before he would close his eyes forever. Just as why you would refuse any request for your kids to sleep in someone else's home.
Your kids whom he never had the chance to play with. Neither the opportunity to make them wooden tops you once was so fond of as a child. Neither the chance to let them sit on his lap, wherein the next moment, would suddenly lay limp and asleep in his arms. Yet, these kids, whose veins run his very own blood, now looked at him as a stranger. I knew this was beyond your deepest regret as you remembered him walking down the aisle with you. You knew that deep in his heart, as he watched you in that altar, he wished we would soon raise beautiful kids he would cherish during his golden years. But now, he's gone.
Up that hill where we sent him to his final rest in that depths below the ground, the atmosphere was lonely. The breeze was crisp and cold, pressing the sense of melancholy in everyone's hearts who gathered around in sympathy.
Stretching out before his tomb, was the magnificent display of the beautiful artworks of hills and plains, entwining with the intricate beauty of lush greeneries and mists. Such was a great reminder that God placed him in a beautiful resting place. Someday soon, your tears will be silver drops of utmost joy and happiness as we meet him again in that grand reunion day!
As those tears dried up, I felt those drops welling up inside me, which I was just trying hard to hold back. It was because I realized how great was the gift I received, the moment I decided to say, "I do."
___
When we descended from the hill, he was silent. He never talked about his regrets, nor spoke about his unspoken desire. He never complained, nor blamed me. And I just didn't know how to tell him that I also cared. That I was hurting for him and that I had regrets.
If only I tried hard enough, there would be a million ways, but I was too afraid that I would push myself more into a bottomless pit of financial setbacks. Or, of financial struggles.
I didn't think much that I could no longer retrieve the chance I wasted and allowed to slip away while I could still found the money.
It was not his fault for relying on me financially. Three years ago, I let him leave his job. His job, which was was our primary means of survival.
It just so happened that we had to make a choice. Our children's nanny died, and no matter how we tried to look for someone to replace her, we were just unfortunately unable to find one. In far and remote provinces, the ladies who used to find household jobs instead of finishing up some educational degrees, were already scarce. They became scarce because of the government programs forcing the families to send their kids to schools. And finding jobs, which offered fairer salaries than domestic employment, became easier.
My first child was six, and my youngest was one year old. One of us had to make a sacrifice and leave our current job to take care of the children and the household. Since I had a more promising career, I assumed the responsibility of a breadwinner.
Part of the responsibilities which our nanny had left was the household chores. While he prepared the children for school in the morning, he also did the duty of bathing and feeding them, pressing their uniforms, and cleaning the house. After sending them off, he would do the laundry and ran for some errands I asked him to do. Then, at lunchtime, he would go again to school to feed the kids and bring the little one home.
Before he would come back to school later at four in the afternoon to pick up our eldest son, he would also attend to the needs of my hemiplegic father. Those routines, such as assisting him in his commode, transferring from his bed to his wheelchair, and accompanying him to the rehabilitation center, were not easy tasks.
On that day, as I watched him, I recalled everything that he did for all of us. And all those sacrifices he gladly did, would have been, in return, worthy of my effort to provide him his needs to go home.
I regretted it, but I couldn't turn back the time. I was so ungrateful all because I had this notion, that because I was the provider, therefore, all the respect and pride should be mine. He should wait for my decision, and I should have the final say in all the plans we had to make.
His being jobless made me now look at him with contempt. Worst of all, I felt he deserved all his labors and responsibilities. I did not realize that in doing so, I had robbed him off of his manly dignity and pride.
At this moment, his silence was killing me. It was sharper than the deadliest cutting weapon, tearing my conscience apart. I was ashamed, too ashamed of my selfishness and dirty pride. All because I could not turn back the time.
With this, as a pen can express better the language of the heart, I left him a letter. A letter that would tell him how sorry and ashamed I was. After all, despite my mistakes and shortcomings, it didn't change the fact that he still is, jobless or employed, that man I dearly love.
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