GIGI GOES GAGA

MY FATHER'S CAVE

"I have a hole in my heart," I said softly as I hugged my old friend, Mark. "I know. I'm sorry, I love you," he replied.

It's been two weeks since my dad died; everything since has been a blur. My sisters and I are all coping with grief in very different ways, as different as we are.

I go to his room almost daily -- his cave, as mom used to call it -- and I sit on his bed. I must admit that when he was alive I didn't spend much time there whenever I came home to visit. It was his space, his sanctuary, and although I knew he would have welcomed the company, it simply felt too much like it was his own private world. If he invited you inside, then you knew for sure you were welcome into his life as well.

But now that he's gone, it's where I go to try to see dad's world as he saw it.

On his left an old photograph of his parents; in front of him a framed photograph of our family. Behind that is a '70s-era black-and-white picture of him and mom, with the former President and First Lady, surrounded by more important-looking people, including my mother's uncle. To his right is one of my favorite photographs of dad: he is in his '30s, a wide smile filling his slightly chubby face, his right foot resting on his left thigh as he sits. He looks happy, and I think my body somewhat resembles his. More photographs of him with people I do not recognize, but who I know must be important in the architectural world.

Although my father didn't strike me as a particularly pious man, there were all sorts of religious relics surrounding him. A rosary hung on a crucifix to his left and right. When he would lie in bed he'd look straight at a portrait of the Madonna and Child, and in gold, one of Jesus Christ on the Cross with the apostles behind him. There are Santo Nino figurines, more crosses, more rosaries.

And all around him: countless videos, music CDs, and photographs. Countless. Dad always wore a camera around his neck when he ventured outside of his cave, and he was eager to lend friends some of his favorite music and movies. There were still books, what hadn't been donated to the University of the Philippines, mostly of general interest. Today I searched for books that we had purchased during our hours-long trips to bookstores together, but there were too many to remember. In the late '80s he had me hunt for a copy of Rachel Carson's classic, "Silent Spring," which I eventually found in an independent bookstore in Pasadena. I remember he talked to me about how poisoning the environment would eventually poison us all. When I eventually tended my own garden a couple of decades later, I didn't use pesticides. Dad's voice was still in my head.

I've gone through his closets a few times since I've been home, just to look at his neatly-hanging shirts and his many suspenders layered one on top of another. Under his bed are his three favorite pairs of shoes, all casual and comfortable. I touch his walking canes propped behind his bed, and unsheath the Moro Datu blade that was given to him many years ago by someone who had regarded him as a father figure. One of my father's closest friends, someone who knew about the gift, told me that the blade was a personal family treasure. Looking now at how close it lay next to dad, I know for sure it also meant so much to him.

As I walk around I'm reminded that dad lived quite simply. There is no ostentation, no sign of luxury. Just things he loved, even once, even if he had already forgotten about them. When I open the door of the small closet where his intimate apparel was stored, there is written in pen a chronicle of my youngest sister's physical growth -- dates, her height. When he had his closets repainted a few years ago, he asked the painter not to paint over the markings so he would always remember. My father was obviously quite a sentimental man. He recognized in me the same, although these days my mother's strong influence causes me to throw away more than I can store.

I know that one day all of my father's belongings would have been either given away, donated, or thrown. There will no longer be his room in the house he built that will reveal to all who visit what he chose to do in his most private times. There won't be a room for me to visit, for me to want to spend time in, when before I couldn't leave it fast enough because I thought maybe no one else belonged there.

There is a hole in my heart bigger than my father's room, bigger than the space needed to store all his belongings. I don't think anything will ever fill it, not even my father's huge memory.

He Is Not Dead

I cannot say, and I will not say
That he is dead. He is just away.
With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,
He has wandered into an unknown land
And left us dreaming how very fair
It needs must be, since he lingers there.
And you—oh you, who the wildest yearn
For an old-time step, and the glad return,
Think of him faring on, as dear
In the love of There as the love of Here.
Think of him still as the same. I say,
He is not dead—he is just away.”

~ James Whitcomb Riley

 

EULOGY FOR MY FATHER

My father passed away a little before 10 am on Wednesday, January 29. I'll post more about that next; for now, I'd like to share the eulogy I gave at his state funeral on Sunday. I had written a draft the evening prior -- but decided to throw it out and just start writing what came from my heart to my head. I couldn't stop typing, and it was all done in just a little more than an hour. I can write about dad for the rest of my life, and it still wouldn't be enough.

 

There's a man I've recently just met, but whom I've known my entire life. For the past three days I've heard stories about this man, about all the friends he made and all the lives he changed. He was so many things to so many people: a teacher, a mentor, a colleague, an architect, an artist, a friend. These people say how much he did for them. And yet, despite all he accomplished he managed to be home at 6 in the afternoon on workdays and all day on Sundays.

I know quite well the man who came home. that man was the one my sisters and I knew as our father -- the man I'm here to tell you a little about this morning.

I'm here to tell you about the father who was so highly protective of his daughters that he feared the thought of us moving out and about outside the home he built. How worried he was that we would be harmed or hurt by those with bad intentions or careless actions. And yet, despite those fears, how he encouraged each of us to move across the other side of the world so that we would learn how to find ourselves, explore our passions, and learn to be best at whatever we chose to be so that we could each make a living, but more importantly, a life.

Our father was a man who once chased after a bus through the city and stopped it mid-traffic, only so he could come onboard and present his lady love with a bouquet of flowers that he didn't get to give her before she left town for the weekend. My mother passed away eight months ago, and my father chased after her as an old man as he once did in his youth, and finally caught up with her just this Wednesday morning.

I've always been convinced my father could communicate with all the creatures of the earth. Dad found nothing unusual about playing with the fire ants that reside in the tree outside his bedroom. He would let the potentially lethal insects crawl up and down his arm, and then back to the tree where they lived when they were done playing with him. My father not only was unable to harm a mouse, he even fed the few that visited his room with the snacks he always kept at his bedside.

Just outside the kitchen, dad created a safe haven for all cats that sought refuge. He once berated a veterinarian who thought it wasn't worth saving the life of a stray whom my dad found half-dead on our street. "What kind of an animal doctor are you, to choose which animals to save?" he demanded. And despite being warned that doing all of the above would backfire on him somehow, I can attest that the ants never hurt him, the mice never bit him, and all the cats treated our home as theirs.

Once, not long ago, I asked dad why we had so many fake flowers and plants in our house when he was a landscape architect. Shouldn't we have real ones, instead? He just smiled and then tried to convince me that they brightened up the place. When I complained about the plastic foliage again, our family driver, who assisted my dad every Saturday when he visited the local tiangge, explained to me privately that dad bought the "plants" and other seemingly useless things to help out his sukis there. These small things made him happy because they reminded him that he had made other people happy, too.

It really is no wonder then why, the first time dad met his eldest granddaughter, who was about two years old at the time and just starting to speak, she climbed on the couch beside him, looked at him in the face -- and then and there decided to call him only "Magic."

These past few weeks, my sisters and I have seen and heard all kinds of people from all walks of life express their love for our father. There was a tiangge vendor who said that dad taught her the scientific names of the plants she sold so that she would appear as an authority to her customers, which would help her sales. There was a young sculptor who almost gave up his art, but who was instead encouraged by dad to keep going and has never stopped since. We've heard so many people say they wouldn't be what they were if dad had never been around. I'd like to think that wherever dad was he sprinkled a bit of magic in the air.

I have no doubt that at this very moment, I.P. is whispering into God's ear how heaven can use a little more green space.

On behalf of my sisters, we thank all of you who have comforted us these past few days with your kind words of sympathy. We thank all who have shared your personal stories about life with I.P. Our dad lives on inside of us not only as we remember him, but as we continue to get to know him as only you did. On behalf of my father, thank you for all the love and honor you bestow upon him today.