We tried to postpone planning for our homecoming this Christmas for as long as possible – in hopes of avoiding the usual headaches that goes with it. Tried anyway. We couldn’t proscrastinate for too long. It is the end of August – we would be lucky to find cheap airfares this time of year.

Last year, we took the 10-day ticket offered by Northwest, which was valued at almost half the price of the other available tickets. Since Aya was already two years old, she had to have a seat of her own, and so we have to buy tickets for all of three of us. We chose to go home on December 19, then went back to Japan ten days later, two days shy of New Year’s Day.

Belatedly, we realized that the vacation was too short, and the New Year’s eve we spent here at home ogling each other for lack of something to do was enough for us to carefully plan our vacation the following year. Not again, we promised.

We tried to exhaust the options available for us, including booking for a one-way flight using reward miles accumulated in our Northwest card (not a chance, we learned), and booking for a roundtrip ticket in the Philippines. The cheapest flight we could find is worth 100k plus – multiply that by three – this adds up to a rather hefty sum. Argh. 🙁

We could go to the US on that price alone. (Surprisingly, flights to the US are quite cheap that time of year.) Or visit some place we’ve never been before. Heck, even to Europe if we had enough guts to endure winter there. Why spend all that money going back to the same place we’ve been to many times already? Why go back and endure the heat, traffic, stressful Christmas shopping at the malls? And consider this – it’s the one single vacation that wins the honor of being the grandest spending of the year. Everything goes out, nothing comes in. No thanks to the commercialization of Christmas. If there’s one thing we hate doing in January, it’s looking at the credit card transactions of the month before.

Well,the answer is simple: our family. How many times in a year do we get to see them, anyway?

Since Daddy died, I have viewed homecoming in an entirely different light. I could have been home that last December (the year before he died) – and we could have spent one more Christmas together as a family. But I decided to forego our supposed trip in December because we had already gone home three months earlier to attend my sister’s wedding. Little did I know that he would be gone in five months’ time. What makes me think that my family will always be there when I go home? What assurance do I have that every time we go home everybody else would be present? If I knew that this particular meeting would be our last, wouldn’t it be worth any effort, time and money? Money can be earned in the coming days. The opportunity, if not seized, is lost forever.

For us, Christmas is more than just a holiday or celebration. It has, and always will be, family time. Try putting a price tag on that.

Last Friday night, I was able to watch a special documentary at NHK channel regarding the “world’s worst single-aircraft accident in history,” which happened 20 years ago (read more about the story here). That incident involved a Boeing 747 operated by JAL. The aircraft crashed somewhere in Gunma prefecture. Five hundred and twenty persons perished on that ill-fated day. I have harbored such a high regard of JAL all these years – making the erroneous judgment that the more expensive airline usually implies better service. Pity. I didn’t know about the accident until now. In that TV feature, there were at least two surviving relatives whose stories made such an impression on me. One of them was a lady who lost her 9-yr old son. The other one was another lady who lost her husband. She was pregnant at the time of the crash. Her now full-grown 19-year old son remains as the only living remembrance of her husband.

My heart goes out to those people who are still clearly in pain after all these years. I do emphatize with them. Such is the lot that is assigned to us, those who survive after the death of a loved one.

This heartbreaking story has barely begun sinking in (though quite belatedly, given that it has been 20 years since the accident) when just last Sunday, another plane crash grabbed the headlines. A Boeing 737 operated by Helios Airways crashed in Greece, killing all 121 persons aboard. Among the casualties was a yet undetermined number of children. Being a parent, I couldn’t begin to imagine the pain their parents (if not with them inside the plane) are currently going through. No parent ever deserved to see their children die.

While checking for related stories to this recent incident at CNN, to my horror, yet another plane crashed somewhere in Venezuela today, this time with 152 souls aboard the aircraft.

Why so many fatal errors in aircraft safety lately?

Flying is always risky business, but it is usually the only means to get to wonderful, exotic places in the world.

Aya has already flown so many times with us. As soon as she is buckled up on her seat, she would lean forward and grab the safety instruction card inserted at the back of the front seat. Together, we would go through each illustration and I would explain to her the meaning of each one. Like what to do when the aircraft lands on water. What to do when the oxygen masks drop down. Where to find the emergency exits. It is a habit which started the first time during a long-haul flight to Hungary. She was getting restless and was making a lot of noises. Quite unprepared, and not having anything else of interest to divert her attention, I grabbed the safety instruction card and explained it to her. Apparently, she never forgot about it, and every time we flew she always remembered to take out the card out of the seat. How could I ever make her understand that it’s no fun to actually see oxygen masks dangling in front of our noses, if and when such a situation ever happens? How can I tell her that for the life of me, I could never, ever be so enthusiastic about having to pull out that life vest under my seat? What good will a life vest do if the plane crashes on a mountain?!!

It seems to me that every parent who flies is fearful of only one thing: that of actually having their children aboard with them. It takes courage to move out of the home’s comfort zone. It takes sheer determination and patience to put them on a flight, especially on long-haul ones. There’s always a risk in everything, transportation certainly one of them. We have never traveled anywhere without travel insurance, not since Aya began her globetrotting with us. It’s such a helpless feeling, to be at the mercy of the pilot’s skills and training, the maintenance crew, the weather, the aircraft itself. The check-in counter is not just a place to check-in your luggage. You are practically checking in your life as well. What happens henceforth is out of your control. I think it’s no coincidence that we use the same word – departure – to refer to both airplane flights and, well, the one we all take: the trip of no return.

If it’s your time, then it’s your time. Any adult would probably have no qualms about that. But for a child…it is simply unacceptable; it runs counter to any human reasoning. Any loving, caring parent will forget about self-preservation in a heartbeat when their child is in the slightest of danger. For the slightest turbulence we experience while flying, I always find myself reaching out to Aya in panic and grabbing her hand in desperation. Talk about being a paranoid mother.

We will be leaving in four weeks’ time. Aboard an aircraft which, hopefully, would safely make the trip, as with all the previous ones we’ve taken. In the meantime, even in the light of the recent aircraft disasters, I would try to convince myself that the probability of the plane crashing is ridiculously small. For the safety of my daughter, I would very much like to believe that to be true.

What else is there to do? Que sera sera.

This past week, we were on our own again. After being pampered like small kids for almost six months, we are back to the juggling act again. The so-called juggling act between domestic and work affairs, that is. If you asked me why I’ve been so productive at work, I would tell you that it’s because my mother was around all this time to help me take care of my daughter, and that she had practically managed all of our household affairs. For instance we didn’t have to worry about taking our daughter to the daycare in the morning and picking her up in the afternoon. Mom took care of that for us. We didn’t have to worry about what to eat for dinner. Again, Mom made sure that there was always something hot and delicious waiting for us when we get home. She took care of logistics, food, and cleaning. Aya is the litterbug of our home, as any toddler is I suppose, but Mom made sure to clean up after her, every time. What more could you ask for? Indeed, life was a bed of roses. 🙂

Sayonara for now Lola. Aya gave her Lola a goodbye kiss at Narita.

Well, all that has changed. Since last week we were back to cleaning our own mess, making our own meals, and taking care of our daughter. As it should be, right? It’s going to be a difficult adjustment for us, but in time I’m sure we’ll be humming along with the rhythm just fine.

That’s the downside of living here in Japan. In absence of household help, you have to do everything from housekeeping to taking care of the children. That’s no easy task – just ask any homemaker or stay-at-home wife and mother. If both parents are working, then at least it’s possible for them to put the kids in the daycare while they are at work. The good news is that at least the daycare system here is efficient and trustworthy, and they still involve parents in various ways and organized activities. I mean, you just don’t haul your children to the daycare and leave them there like that. There is a daily checklist of things to provide and submit. Everyday involves bringing clean, dry towels, bibs and clothes, and taking the same used items back home at the end of the day. There are monthly height and weight measurements, and occasional health and dental checkups. Everything is recorded in the kid’s health booklet, which is submitted to the parents for signing as with a student’s report card. There are dozens of handouts written in Japanese – enough to give you a headache if you didn’t know enough Japanese. And before I forget to mention, everyday I have to write in Japanese in Aya’s “renraku no-to” – a some sort of written form of communication between parents and daycare teachers. It’s like forced writing in Japanese, everyday – argh! If it’s any consolation for me, the daycare teachers probably have a more difficult time making sense of my bad Japanese grammar and childlike scrawlings of kanji characters. Hey, at least I try to write something. The very first few days when Aya attended daycare, I left my portion of the page blank – until I was reprimanded for it. So now I write whatever comes to mind. Mundane things like if Aya’s pooping fine or not. 😛 No, seriously. It makes them feel better that I am paying attention to my child’s condition.

For working parents, it is inevitable for “work” to continue all the way home, and parents don’t “clock out” until their kids are fast asleep. I don’t know that it’s more advantageous, in the long run, for a child to grow up under 100% parenting at home. At any rate, this is not a possible option for us, with both of us working. Aya has been attending daycare since she was 10 months old. The advantage is that she is growing up to be quite a sociable kid, and even bilingual at that (Nihongo and Tagalog). Years from now she would probably be speaking Japanese much better than us. Already she is picking up a lot of English words from the cartoons she watches on tv. I’ve also started communicating to her in English. Her learning rate is tremendous.

Tomorrow is Monday. We will be waking up early in the morning to prepare breakfast, Aya’s things for the daycare, ourselves, and everything else to start another working week. Oh yes, tomorrow is also “obento no hi” at the daycare, so that means that we also have to prepare Aya’s packed lunch.

Time to buckle up, indeed.

When my youngest sister visited us last year, I asked her to bring me some family photo albums so I can start digitizing our photos before they succumb to inevitable decay and fading. Thanks to the efforts of our parents, most of our early photos were still intact, and so we all have a pretty good collection of photos taken during our growing up years. As far as I could remember, we didn’t own a camera until I entered high school – but somehow we managed to borrow from friends and relatives just so we can take pictures.

Tres marias v.1982

I found this picture of us three girls taken at our first “house” in Navotas, sometime in 1982. No, that house did not belong to us, we were merely squatting there. 🙂 That photo brought back a lot of good memories. Heck, seeing that green sofa makes me so nostalgic all of a sudden. I remember crying my heart out when my Dad passed out on that sofa after some drinking binge. When I tried to wake him up, he didn’t stir, so I thought he died. I was probably 5 or 6 then. He used to drink a lot when we were young, but finally called it quits on alcohol when he started getting heartburns and chest pains. He posted a message on our refrigerator: “As for me and my house, no more BEER.” And so it was for the years that followed.

But I digress. Anyway, when we were in Pinas last April, my sister Karen suggested that we have our photo taken at a studio and give it to our mother as a birthday present. This is probably the most recent photo of us now, with four more additions: husbands and daughters. Needless to say, my mom loved it.

Tres marias v. 2005

We missed going out last Monday (July 18 ), a national holiday here in Japan, called “Umi no Hi” or “Marine Day.” Last Sunday, we finally had the chance to visit the beach in Chiba, Hasunuma Kaigan, about 2 hours away by car from Tsukuba.

Seems like they were the only two persons having fun on the beach. Watch out for those nasty waves!

There are two reasons why I am not so keen about going to the beach: 1) I hate the sun, and I don’t like being baked under the sun; and 2) beaches in the Philippines are way much better than here in Japan. This side of the Pacific ocean is not tamed; and I would much rather stay on shore and build sand castles. And I just recently discovered, there is one another annoying thing – they ask everyone to stay away from the water from 12:00-12:30. For safety reasons, apparently. Hey, just look at those nasty waves, anyone would be crazy to jump in the water anyway. It was just like that time when we went to a public swimming pool in the park. We were in the middle of enjoying our swim, when they asked everyone to leave the pool for about 30 minutes. Duh.

Aya enjoyed the beach, anyway. She had fun just running away from the waves, screaming her heart out. She had fun stomping all over the sand structures we made. Mommy made her “singhot” of the “fresh air.”

I love this photo I took of her and Baggy. Father and daughter having a great time at the beach. I remember those times when as a kid Daddy would bring me to Antique. We would swim in the nearby lake (or something like a murky pond hehe) or go to the beach.

We went back home with sand sticking to our toes and with a bit of a sunburn. I have to make Baggy promise me that we will visit a damn beautiful beach when we go back to the Philippines. 8)

I was most certainly surprised to find out that this is the first entry for this month, and the last entry I made was almost a month earlier! Busy? You bet!

I had been gritting my teeth since the start of this month (not literally, of course), in anticipation of the conferences I will be participating in. I was not so worried about the conference in Singapore, because I had the data and analysis of my results pretty much wrapped up. Also, I was finally able to submit the paper dealing with those results so I need not worry so much. Still, two conferences in a month, that’s tough. The other conference in Kyoto, was a mere one week right after coming back from Singapore. However, it was not as big as the materials conference in Singapore. It was a workshop where most speakers were invited from different parts of the globe. Big names. Mostly men. Experts in the field. Even as I entered the conference hall I felt a little bit insecure – I had to ask myself over and over what exactly I was doing there. Adding to my anxieties was the fact that I was all alone, I would probably not feel as pressured if there was somebody in our group accompanying me.

Well, finally that was done and over with. Yesterday I presented our paper, and got some positive feedback as well. Well, okay, I didn’t quite get to answer properly the questions that were thrown by me, especially that one question from a professor who is most certainly one of the experts in the field of flux pinning. I have been dabbling in pinning mechanisms for less than a year, and admittedly there’s so much information that I do not know yet. I haven’t done much of a homework either, because I wasn’t able to write a paper on this yet, and most of my efforts were concentrated on the earlier conference in Singapore.

I don’t know if I like small gatherings like that workshop I attended, or bigger conferences like the one in Singapore. Smaller meetings provide more in-depth discussions of ideas and you can get to interact with the big names in the field — but if you haven’t had enough introduction to the subject, or if you were a relative unknown in the field, it’s so easy to feel out of place. And my presentation was in the last session. I would have preferred to be among the early speakers so I would have been “introduced” that way – people won’t talk to me obviously if they still haven’t heard about my work. It’s not like my name precedes my work like most of the guys there.

On the other hand, the presentation made a pretty good impression on one of the guys working at the International Superconductivity Technology Center – Superconductor Research Laboratory (ISTEC-SRL) that he immediately went over to me to invite me and give the same talk in their group. What a real surprise!

Well, for now I can rest awhile and get back to experimenting. 🙂 Just for now, anyway. The next conference is in Vienna, but that’s still a good month and a half away. Plenty of time to prepare my materials. After that, in October I attend one more international symposium, and that’s it for the year.

Hahh…I can’t wait until November! Too many conferences this year!

We are finally back to Tsukuba. Glad to be finally home. Crossing 13 time zones back and forth in just a week is no joke, and in fact, the two quitters who took the trip me are still sleeping right now, still on Toronto time. I decided to blog first before I join them. 🙂

The day before our departure, we decided to spend exploring the “underground” path (appropriately called “PATH”) in the city, starting from Eaton Center at Yonge St., finding our way to the CN tower. It’s no mean feat, I tell you, especially if you’re just a tourist. We were wondering where all the people went, because the streets were relatively devoid of pedestrians…guess what, most of them could be found traversing the underground pathway. We learned from the tour guide (in an earlier trip) that the pathway is an excellent way for people to move around during winter, and the path stretches for a few kilometers or so. There are shops everywhere, and the food courts can be found at every “block” or so.

We got lost, of course, and we decided to surface and find our way outside. The CN tower (they claim to be the tallest building in the world, although I’m not really sure it really is) was relatively easy to find once we were on the streets again. At the viewing deck of the CN tower, we were treated to a wonderful sight of the entire city, the harbourfront, and the Toronto islands.

Back to the hotel at last. When we got on the elevator, two other persons rode with us. One of them looked Asian – could even be Pinoy, for all we knew. The elevator stopped on the 12th floor, but when the doors opened, nobody got on. The next stop was our floor. On the way to the 13th floor, we heard a loud trickle of water, and when I looked down, there was a growing puddle of water at the floor, around the feet of the Asian guy. Luckily, the elevator had gotten to our floor by then and it was time for us to go. As soon as we were outside, it then hit me that it was not water that I saw, but pee! The man was peeing inside the elevator! Whadduh! We were laughing all the way to our room. It was gross, but it was kinda funny, too.

The bad thing was that Aya saw it all, and I think that was the event that precipitated her behavior from there on. When we got to the room, she happily announced, “Umihi ako.” You know, she is already toilet-trained, and in all our travels ever since she was toilet-trained, she never had this episode. Ok, fine, at least we were already in our room and there was no need to panic. The second time happened when we were on the plane. She peed right there on her seat! I tell you, this was the very first thing that it happened, ever! Of course I gave her more than the usual scolding. I gave her the cold shoulder. Fortunately, she got the idea and she never did it again during the entire trip. But I think that if she hadn’t seen that man pee on the elevator, she would never have gotten the idea that it was OK to pee anywhere.

Oh, I hate that man, whoever he is.

We’ve only been here in Toronto for less than 48 hours — but it is an understatement to say that we are immensely enjoying this trip. So far, no glitches of any kind, no sorry tales to tell, and in spite of the jet lag and exhaustion, we are in such high spirits. Even Aya is enjoying herself, surprise surprise. I’ve been to the States quite a few times already, but compared to the States, I don’t feel as if somebody is lurking in the corner to snatch my wallet, or as if I have to bitch my way to anyone. Canadians seem friendly and polite, and so far we haven’t met any disagreeable persons yet. Not that we’re expecting to, anyway.
.A funny anecdote here: when we arrived at the airport, a Pinay walked up to us, took a good look at Baggy, and after deciding that he definitely looked Pinoy enough, summoned her courage and asked us for 50 cents. She needed it to call on the public phone. Sorry na lang siya, because we just got there and all we had were bills. When we got to Hilton hotel, a guy named Vicente took care of our baggage. When he heard Baggy talk to Aya in Tagalog, he brightened up and of course introduced himself as a kababayan. Aba’y naglipana pala ang mga Pinoy dito sa Toronto. Feels like home!

An experience to remember

We went to Niagara falls yesterday. No trip to Toronto would be complete without visiting the famous waterfalls. I’ve seen the falls on pictures, but nothing would have prepared me for the enormous sight. We took the tour offered by a tourist company here, and we were definitely treated to a great experience of this natural wonder. I told Baggy, after seeing the waterfalls, that I would never, ever, look at any waterfall in the same way again. Maria Cristina falls in Iligan was the biggest one I’ve ever seen before this, so you could just imagine my surprise at seeing a waterfall of such gigantic proportions. Maybe Niagara falls is about 50 times the size of Maria Cristina falls.

We took the “Maid of the Mist” boat ride, which took us near the Canadian falls (there are two, American and Canadian falls), right smack in the middle of the rapids. As you can see in the picture, we all wore ponchos so as to keep us from getting wet. Well, I still got wet, and our camera got wet. It was all worth it!

More on the Canadian adventures (that is, if we could manage to get connected on the Internet again) in next entries

Two weeks ago I was finally able to finish Sagan’s ‘Cosmos’ book. I had immensely enjoyed myself reading that book, in spite of the obviously political propaganda (all for a good cause, of course) painted by the author towards the last chapters. I am all for space exploration – by all means let’s bring all our resources together to launch space vehicles to ‘widen our horizon.’ But I do not agree at all that the plight of human beings on this earth are any better, neither are the children of the world today living any better than their ancestors. I think of the 9-11 tragedy, the continuing war in Iraq, the recent Asian tsunami, and I shudder. The book was written in 1981, a few years after the successful launching of Voyagers 1 & 2 – and way before all these global disasters ever happened.

Anyway, I’ve picked up another book gathering dust in our book shelf (Baggy has a collection of geek books I’ve never read before, because most of them were with him in Osaka all those years). The one I’m reading now is “The Large, the Small, and the Human Mind” by Roger Penrose. I was intrigued by the title. I only know Penrose through my EM classes in college, and of course through Stephen Hawking’s book, “A Brief History of Time.” But this is the first time that I actually get to read a book he wrote.

Angels and demons scattered all over the ‘world’ (Escher’s Circle Limit 4)

The first chapter is on space-time cosmology. More like a time-warp for me, because suddenly I am again reading about all those lessons we first learned in undergraduate Physics. Lobachevskian space, Minkowski space-time – I could almost hear Jerrold Garcia and Dr. Chan! When I was a 16-year-old learning about those concepts for the first time, I felt overwhelmed and scared. Sixteen years later, and I read about these things all over again, I feel a sort of odd connection, and simultaneously an unexpected, sudden clear understanding of those concepts. Perhaps because this time some concepts are being relearned, and perhaps because this time is unencumbered by unnecessary burdens such as passing or failing grades. I was scared to fail my course, and so I studied like crazy, but I doubt it if I had any understanding of what I was studying. Maybe I just didn’t appreciate it that time.

Back to the book – I was fascinated by the illustration of Lobachevskian space using Escher’s artwork. I thought he was just an artist? I saw some of his sketches on t-shirts sold in one of the shops in Huis Ten Bosch in Nagasaki (Escher’s Dutch, by the way). Circle Limit 4 is more than just a collection of angels and demons, but a perfect way to illustrate how distorted Lobachevskian space would be when illustrated on 2D. Do you see angels first, or demons? 😛

More on this book in upcoming entries!

I vowed not to let this day pass without writing anything here. Today happens to be the first death anniversary of Daddy. When Aya was born, my life was changed forever. When Daddy died, my perspective about life was changed forever. There is a reason why our lifetimes are finite.

I am posting here an essay which I wrote a few months after Daddy died.

To live again
By Katherine Develos Bagarinao

He gave me my name. He called me “Katherine,” after Catherine Marshall. When I was about to be born, he was reading a book by Catherine Marshall, “To live again,” who wrote it after her husband Peter Marshall died. Family members have always called me “Lilet,” the nickname my cousin gave me. But as far as I could remember, my dad had always called me “Katherine” or simply, “Anak,” depending on the mood or circumstances. “Anak” was reserved for affectionate moments; “Katherine” seemed to be more favored in occasional bursts of exasperation.

Daddy and his beloved dog, Cush. They will always be loved and remembered.

He was no ordinary person. One can easily notice how we, his daughters, towered over him. Standing at only around 5 ft tall, people often wondered how someone like him would have daughters much taller than him, kanino ba raw kami talaga nagmana? He was afflicted with kyphosis (curvature of the spine) at a very young age, and way back in the 1940s, right smack in the middle of the World War II, medical treatment for such a kind of disease was virtually unheard of in the obscure rural town of Hamtic, Antique. Not that such a treatment could even be afforded by their family at all. Dad could only recount the pain he felt, how he heard his bones “cracked” when the “manghihilot” tried to push and press the growing lump at his back. Then his mother died of throat cancer, leaving all three of them without maternal love for the rest of their lives. His father, however, was a tough, hard-hearted man who did not spare any pities or compassion for his only son. He made it clear that he wanted no freak child. Sayang na bata raw siya. Dad received both verbal and even further physical abuse from one of his uncles who could not accept his being different. It was as if someone like him would be immune to whips and bad language. One time, amidst the protests by his eldest sister who tried in vain to protect him, Lolo in his anger tied Dad’s feet together, hung him upside down and whipped him. Daddy never recounted to us what spurred Lolo to do such a thing, but whatever the reason was probably did not deserve such a cruel treatment, especially for a child. He ran away from home, and went to stay alone in a mountain hut in a remote place called Badiangan all by himself. He felt lonely, unwanted, and most of all, unloved. He vowed to prove them wrong. The freak child they all considered “only be a waste of food” would someday prove them all wrong.

Daddy survived that ordeal in his life. The truth is, I have never met anyone more self-made than him. He left the province and went with his elder sister to Manila to try his luck. He worked his way through college, taking fine arts at FEATI University while working in the literature department of The Salvation Army in Leon Guinto. Though he was not educated in journalism, he managed to become the editor-in-chief of The War Cry, the official publication of the organization. Daddy became a painter and illustrator, gardener, businessman, writer and journalist, poet, Bible teacher, and even boxing trainer – all in one! The one thing he detested most of all was for people to look at his deformity as some sort of disability. Whatever “normal” people could do, he wanted to surpass. “Always do your best,” was the oft-repeated phrase as he admonished us to excel and strive beyond what we thought we were capable of doing. He challenged us. “If I had normal bodies like you do, I’d be doing more than you’re doing now.” The day when I first received my medal for academic excellence in elementary school, he was probably the happiest parent there among the crowd. Each time I won a competition in school I would proudly show off each medal or certificate to my dad, who would then challenge me to “show them what stuff the Develos is made of.” But each time he refused to go up the stage with me during recognition ceremonies. He always wore his best clothes and combed his hair in that pompadour style. He carried himself with the air and pride of someone who had received the same honor and recognition. But not even once was he ever seen with me on stage. Not even with my sisters, during their turns. He hung all our medals and displayed our trophies at home. It didn’t matter that he was not honored at the stage. It’s enough that we were proud bearers of his name.

He showered on all of us the love and affection that he was deprived of when he was growing up. He would pamper us and not let us do any household chores, especially if we were studying or doing homework for school. Our mother would always scold him for letting us get away from such responsibilities, but he would always chide her – what is so important about washing the dishes or cleaning the house compared to gaining knowledge? “Wala akong ibang maipapamana sa inyo kundi edukasyon,” my Daddy would always remind us.

There never was an idle moment for Daddy. To our young eyes it seemed as if he were always rushing to accomplish so many things at the same time. He did everything from raising chickens in our backyard to organizing a boxing event in Antique. For Daddy, time must not be wasted; every day he would be found reading a book in his study, writing something using his rusty old typewriter, or discussing Biblical concepts with his students (disciples, we would call them). During his brief stay in Japan, he delivered sermons in the Sunday fellowships and led the discussions in weekly bible studies. He wrote a short story, Sad-to Anay, begrudgingly using my computer at home, and promptly submitted it for publication in Hiligaynon when he returned to Manila. The gist of the story? It’s about a little boy who grew up alone, and against all odds, became a self-made man and had a family. His children grew up happy, finished their studies, and are on their road to eventual success in life. This was his revenge, his struggle that has borne fruition, his ultimate achievement in life. He told me more than once, puede na akong mamatay anytime, seeing that you’re all on the right tracks. To which I always retorted, “No, Daddy, you’ll grow up to be an old man and see all your apos.” “No, he always replied, “I don’t want to expect more than a few years.”

The last time I ever saw him alive was during my sister Karen’s wedding in September of last year. Our last family picture was that of us in the garden, Karen in her wedding garb, us in our finest gowns and Daddy in his finest barong. He used the same barong that he wore during my wedding, two years earlier. The next time I saw him, he was lying peacefully inside a coffin at Samson funeral homes at Imus, Cavite. He had been struggling with pains due to his kidney since February (2004), only to finally succumb to pulmonary infection in early May. He was cremated two days after we got home. This was his final wish, that his remains be reduced to nothing but dust and ashes. It is as if he wanted to punish the very bones of his affliction to signify his final escape to freedom. In heaven I will have a glorified body, I remember him telling us during our Bible devotions.

When I finally had to chance to talk to his attending physician, he told us that Daddy was lucky to have reached such an age (he was 65), and very fortunate to see all his daughters grown-up already. It was bad enough for old people to get lung infections with their immune systems down; kyphotic patients don’t even stand a chance at recovering. “It was meant to happen,” was all he could tell us.

Where does one find the courage to live again after the death of a beloved parent? My father, to whom I’ve dedicated my life’s achievements, is now gone. Where does one find the heart to go on? Going through my dad’s things afterwards, I found something that I’ve totally forgotten about all these years – every single one of my certificates received in elementary and high school, were carefully collected and kept in a folder. No parent was ever prouder.

In his last letter to me, he wrote the lyrics of a song he had often sang to us when we were children:

The things of earth will dim and lose their value
If we recall, they’re borrowed for a while
And things of earth, that cause the heart to tremble
Remembered there will only bring a smile

But until then, my heart will go on singing
Until then, with joy I’ll carry on
Until the day, my eyes behold the city
Until the day, God calls me home

As a child, I could not understand why Daddy would sing this song with so much passion. As a child, I thought that parents live forever.

As an adult and a parent myself, now I fully understand.

As I stood at the podium to talk about God’s faithfulness in our lives, I looked over where my Daddy was lying and I understood what he had been telling me all these years.

There is only one way to live again – and that is to know, to affirm, and to live with the assurance that in spite of the temporal things here on earth, there exists the ultimate hope of the life beyond. While death necessarily punctuates our existence here on earth, there is something that death cannot conquer. That is something that I learned from Daddy as well. It is the same hope that I will give to my daughter when my time comes.

Indeed, we can only begin to live if we are prepared to die.

– June 2, 2004