“Were it not the case that life stretches out in a straight line, she might at some point become aware of having rounded a bend. Bringing, perhaps, the realization that nothing of that past could now be glimpsed were she to cast a quick glance over her shoulder.” - Han Kang
We passed the bungalow house where my father used to live. It is where they used to do their firing, my aunt said. The walls are white as new, and behind it is another 600 square meters of land. I could only glance from inside the car, slightly extending my neck to peer beyond the gate. I imagined the casual low belching after a few rounds of beer during conversations where deep hoots of laughter surrounded the house. Someone else lives there now, and to my disappointment, the house has already been renovated.
My aunt pointed to another house a few blocks away. She said before the house was renovated it used to have the same style—simple and old-fashioned, with olive green walls that looked like it was made of hardwood. It was the kind of house I always see in decades-old photographs in our home where nothing yet signified the beginning of another century. I looked back at the bungalow and felt it tug at my heart. There it was again, the impermanence I have been familiar with all my life. Even as the car moved, I fixed my gaze on the gate as if anytime soon I would hear the metallic screech of the hinge as it broke open, and there, papa would be smiling in anticipation of our arrival.
We stopped at a roadside pizza stall nearby. After a man in the open kitchen had taken our orders, I watched the other spin the dough with his alternating knuckles. I thought of how life expands as it spins like that until it lays flat on a surface—until it stops. But does it really? Life goes on, they said. The street was undisturbed before it got crammed with an entire family awaiting their turn. Not barren, not seeming abandoned, without a sign of hostility. A neighborhood that has long established its serenity among the lush greens. I did not want to leave just yet. I wanted to hold on to that moment, to embrace the entire history of the house, of Venus Street—the landscape where somewhere in time the life my father lived continued to spin and expand, inhaling the same fine air I was breathing at that moment.
In every gathering, word of mouth would always hint at papa’s goofy disposition. One time when we met with his brother’s family last year, my uncle told us the story about his wife asking my father in a letter if my uncle was truly legally single. “Your papa responded, ‘How can you be sure that I will tell you the gospel of truth? Now you have not one but two persons to doubt.’” Everyone laughed. The stories continued and my heart continued to race as I try to follow their recollections. “He was really good with words. When your papa got asked what his greatest asset was, he immediately answered, ‘My greatest asset is that I know my liabilities.’”
I remember leaning against the door frame as I watched my uncle mimic my father while tapping his sister on the shoulder, his lips forming a smirk—a mixture of pride and longing. I was jealous. Because I couldn’t feel the nostalgia they all seemed to share. Because I have nothing to add to the conversation. When the talk branched to another topic, I swiftly drifted from the circle to get my phone and typed everything down into my notes app. Some bits and pieces were told countless times before, but I never got tired of hearing them. I collect stories about him the way a treasure hunter gathers clues. Each one is a brick I cannot afford to lose. I am building him a monument of memories within me, even if these memories are not my own.
My cousin said he loved giving piggyback rides. Two years ago I saw a picture of them while doing general cleaning. They were at a beach probably in Dagupan with my mother and sister. There was also a photograph of him sitting on a hollow block beside a bunch of kids spread out on the floor, his arm wrapped around a kid sitting on his lap while his other arm held a square book. “I remember that whenever there was a brown out we never got bored because your papa always knew how to make the situation fun.”
I have seen his handwriting in blue ink on the back of some photographs. He created witty dialogues out of the images—something I also tend to do digitally for fun. Mama would also say I inherited from him my penchant for interpreting lyrics. I know people do these things all the time. It is not unique to me; it is not unique to my father either, but I wanted to believe these are parts of me that are made of him. I wonder what else. If the main creases of his palms form an M too, if my papa being a graceful dancer like my uncles used to say is the reason why I always have this impulse to randomly dance around the house even if I never properly knew how to, if my love for reading was not solely influenced by the environment I grew up in but was in fact ingrained in me the way papa used to read whatever book he could get his hands on and that is why my mother said when I was still a toddler she could leave me for hours without trouble by the trick of surrounding me with books. Sometimes our mind forms these biases to perceive natural and common things based on how we would like to make sense of them, but I am stubborn with my longing. I’d rather believe we are deeply rooted, that we are bound to each other by these roots that not even death can sever.
I remember running my fingertip over the words my father wrote in those photos, over the edges of the photo paper, thinking he did the same thing while he chuckled at his dialogues. Didn’t I, in a way, touch him?
There are many kinds of distances, but the impossibility of ever holding someone and being held in return always stabs the deepest. These are stories I can only hear but never witness. Streets I can only walk but never with him. Pizza sauce I can never wipe from his face, selfies we can never take, phone calls we can never answer, messy emojis to send in which he could never be the recipient.
While looking at how the sunlight lathered on the asphalt, I remember a line from The Kite Runner where Khaled Hosseini wrote, “...it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.” I did have him for four months, but that was long before I took my first breath. The simple truth that I cannot even tell anyone stories about him without saying they said hurts. It dwelled on me that I cannot write this letter in selected fragments the way I did for my mother because I have no moments to show, no memories to share. I can only write of these imagined scenes, the reels inside my head where papa might have been reading me bedtime stories while I was still in mama’s tummy, papa holding mama’s hands while I was taking my first baby steps, mama correcting my mistakes and papa telling her to take it easy and not the other way around because mama would always say he had a pusong mamon (a sensitive heart), papa teaching me darts, papa reading with me, even asking me to teach him how to e-sign. When he knew he was dying, it must have been painful. In that instant, we probably shared the same grief. He must have thought of me, right? His daughter he could only be with for four months, placing his hand on my mother’s skin, hoping I could feel his touch. His daughter whom he will never be able to give a piggyback ride.
I am aware of myself taking away the bad stuff, the possibility that in an alternate reality where papa was not taken away too soon, he and I wouldn't have always agreed and that by this time, we could’ve hurt each other already with our words, our actions or inactions. The permutations run endlessly. His death is that of a butterfly flapping its wings, I cannot tell if the reality I have now is less torrential than the other. But regardless I would have chosen to live it through with him. I would have chosen the hurts and arguments, traded this patched-up figure of a father out of the stories I gathered for even a single firsthand memory of him.
To never have in the first place is a loss of its kind—a lifelong learning of how to live with the immensity of an absence, of forever holding on to these imagined scenes as a way to soothe the longing for what has never been physically present in my life, to cover up the grief I was born with. This is the void within me that no one can ever fill, a love that death had robbed us both of experiencing.
Because of him, I learned to see the world through the lens of impermanence. Perhaps, after all, grief is a gift. That this, too, is a part of me that is made of him. That out of these imagined scenes and secondhand stories is him telling me, “Kid, look at just how far love can go, how boundless it truly is.”
“Did papa use to walk here?” I asked. When they said yes I felt the past dissolve into inexistence—no death, no distance, only a continuum of the here and now where love is lived, and I am living it with him.
But pa, you keep me dancing still in this transient life… When we meet, tell me your story—the world you’ve seen, and how you’ve seen it. Until then, I’ll be your eyes. Until then, I’ll keep living to someday tell you mine.
June 20, 2021
speechless... a true labour of love 🤍
Wow, what an incredible and moving piece ❤️❤️❤️