Life After Dad

DEATH.  Life’s change agent.

About twenty years ago, on January 30, 1999, my dad unexpectedly passed away.  He had liver cirrhosis but his death was due to a heart attack.

He was 51.  I was 20, turning 21.    

I was on my OJT term that time and I was going to graduate from college later that year.  Too bad, he didn’t see me walk up the stage in my toga.

I spent my 21st birthday at my dad’s wake.  It was not the most pleasant of life’s experiences.  I felt alone, lost, and in shock, even if I was in the presence of family and relatives.  Only a handful of classmates, friends, and org mates were able to visit.  They may not have heard of the news as we didn’t have regular classes in school on our OJT term.

Three days before he was hospitalized and breathed his last breath, I was with him.  He had fetched me from my OJT workplace in Binondo and we did some shopping at an appliance store nearby. When we returned to the car, he started to break into a cold sweat and he had some chest discomfort. Little did I know that he was already experiencing symptoms of a heart attack.  I drove us home and my mom, seeing my dad’s discomfort, suggested he visit a TCM doctor.  Although he found nothing particularly alarming, the TCM doctor recommended, as a safety measure, that my dad check into the hospital that night to rest.

We thought it would just be a “regular” stay at the hospital, but he suffered a heart attack the next morning, fell unconscious, and on the third day, after another heart attack, passed away.

That year, I did not only graduate from college, I also graduated in life and entered a new stage — life without dad.  

I woke up.  It was a painful awakening. I was no longer a teen-kid sheltered under the protective care of my dad.   

I had to grow up.  I was forced to grow up.  I had to be strong.  Everyone in the family had to be strong.

I was close to him. I missed him.

He had that sense of curiosity and wonder. He was fascinated over cool stuff and would, from time to time, bring home his latest finds, such as the wiggly puppet worm on string — whatever caught his eye on his walks in the Avenida or Raon area in downtown Sta. Cruz-Binondo.  

He had an insatiable desire for knowledge.   Not finishing high school due to his family’s financial situation back then did not prevent him from educating himself through books. He would bring home books and literature on various topics of interest — encyclopedia, dictionaries, foreign language and other dialect guidebooks, world maps, roadmaps, health, medicine, and science books.     

He was a handyman, carpenter, and electrician, with no formal education.  He was our family’s  resident “MacGyver”. He learned his repair works through DIY books and a few vocational courses.  As an electronics hobbyist, he would “heal” and repair broken electrical and electronic appliances — radios, TV, electric fans, refrigerators, etc.  Friends come to the house to have him check on their broken gadgets. He would fix whatever he could.  He knew how to wire intercom and CCTV systems, construct bookshelves, install furniture stands, and fix broken lights and plumbing.  He built and designed a heavy-duty aluminum tube-cutting machine in our construction hardware production floor.  To this day, this machine is still being used in the business.  

He was forward-thinking.  He would keep himself up-to-date with technology — constantly upgrading our household with new appliances that he could afford — betamax, VHS player, Apple computer, IBM PC, fax machine, photo and video recording equipment, remote control racers, intercoms, CCTV, etc. 

My choice of college course — Electronics and Communications Engineering — was largely inspired by my desire to connect with his passion and to understand his world.

My dad also liked food and travel.  He was my food and travel adventure partner.  Amongst us four siblings, I would always be the first one to volunteer to join him on his mini-adventures.  He would sign us up for family trips organized annually by his alumni association. He would bring home food for us (mostly fast food), like Jollibee yumburger and fries. 

I felt safe and secure whenever I was with my dad. He was a great provider.  I never felt a lack  — in material things — whenever he was around. He was good with handling money and he thought long-term.  He was rather thrifty and would splurge only occasionally.  He had a generous, giving heart.  I recall him driving home association mates after meetings and events, even if it was out of the way.

It had been a major life-changing blow to our family when dad suddenly left us.  We were in shock.  My mom assumed all the responsibilities left by my dad’s passing on — from running the family hardware business to taking care of us kids, and managing the household.   My 26-year old brother had to leave his job and assume the void left by my dad. 

After my dad left, I formulated my own perspectives and philosophies on how to live my life – and made the following decisions:

• I stopped going to Sunday mass and church choir.  I loved music and, as a choir member, the part that I looked forward to the most was the singing and companionship.  When my dad died, no choir mate visited the wake.  Well, they did not know.  But I must have taken it against them. More than that, I think I was angry with God for “taking” my dad away.  It was only in 2016, some 17 years later, that I had an opportunity to really get reunited with my love for music, in the form of Nia, a mindful movement practice done barefoot to uplifting, energizing music.

• Bought into “Y.O.L.O.” (“You Only Live Once”).  I felt that my dad had been deprived of a full life because of his working too hard to secure our family’s future and he didn’t get to reap the fruits of what he had sown.  So, when he died, I decided to adopt this mindset of “living in the present” and not worrying too much about the future.  It turns out, I went to the extreme, living the Y.O.L.O. life.  So off I went, collecting life experiences — exploring one corporate job after another, earning income and blowing most of it away on my travels (my goal was to make at least one foreign and one domestic travel a year), seminars, workshops, and other learning adventures, leaving little money to fund my retirement.  This would later prove to be a detrimental decision, as I had ushered myself into a state of “broke-ness”. I would then find myself enrolling in financial literacy programs in an attempt to re-wire my unsupportive belief systems around money so that I may rebuild my financial foundation and work on securing my financial future.

• Tried to “maximize” life.  Being the sibling with the “poorest” state of health (at least according to my perspective), I feared my life span would be like my dad’s and I would only live up to 51. I thought, If that’s the case, then I technically only have 30 productive years left. With this mindset, I proceeded to pack my schedule with as much learning activities and adventures as I could, collecting seminars, workshops, and learning experiences on diverse topics of interest.  I would eat tasty food that was not necessarily healthy but gave me comfort — mostly junk food and fast food. I ate like there was no tomorrow, with no accountability, because “tomorrow”, I die anyway.  This was my idea of “living life to the fullest”. I made myself overweight, and eventually, obese (Obesity Type I).  Health complications propped up here and there. It would later take meeting well-meaning plant-based eating friends and my life force nutrition teacher to educate and inspire me into believing in the possibility that if I “change my gut”, I could actually “change my destiny” and go for longevity with quality living. I began to open myself up to eating and preparing life force-filled plant-based dishes, and learning cooking from various plant-based chefs.  I began to make serious investments to “atone with my gut” so that I may go beyond 51 and use the “bonus” time to live my soul mission work. These include going on solo apartment living near my workplace in Las Piñas (two hours commute away from my mom’s home in Manila) which would serve as my weekday home and setting up a mini “life force” kitchen, experimenting with life force cultivation practices through cooking and gardening, joining a 10-day detox camp at an organic eco farm in Malaysia, and deciding to quit my stable IT BPO job to take a 3-month health revamp break. 

• Resisted involvement with “business”. I felt that my dad’s working too hard on our family hardware business six days a week (and sometimes even on Sundays) in order to provide security and comfort for our family cost him his life and his quality time with family. I wanted the freedom and the quality time to bond with family, so I never got involved in “business”, whether it be our family business, or starting my own. I kept going for corporate jobs, eight in total, so I would have weekends to go for my trips or learning adventures (i.e. seminars and workshops).  Ironically, I didn’t get to spend that so-called “quality time” with family because I was always away. I would later awaken to the reality that my corporate life was not really moving me closer towards achieving the time and money freedom to spend on what matters most to me, such as being with my mom and participating in family activities with my siblings and nieces.  I would sign up for business and finance skills enrichment programs to show me the means to transition out of employment and to create the life that I desire and deserve.  As I didn’t have enough savings, I had to borrow an insane amount of tuition money from family to enroll in a business coaching program to help evolve and modernize our family construction hardware business to be more relevant to the times.

My dad’s death was my life’s change agent.  

Looking back at how his death had impacted my view of life, I saw that most of the past twenty years had been about living in reactivity to his loss, rather than seeing his life and death as a gift so that our family may learn to appreciate life, take good care of ourselves, and be empowered to create the quality of life that we all deserved. 

I saw that I had been coming from fear, avoidance, and woundedness — these had not served me and I do not want these anymore.  I would like to move from love and wholeness and only from love and wholeness.  

There is work to be done to restore harmony and balance.   I am ready to do the work.

Thank you, Papa, for your precious gift of life.  I love you. We love you.