ALLOW me to indulge. It’s been almost a year — a year of not having been able to call someone Dad. Although come to think of it, I stopped calling him that even before he passed away.
I will spare the details as I know it won’t do no good to dwell on the past’s pain and difficulties. It was also never my nature to talk about it, not because it was too agonizing to discuss but because I simply chose not to deal with the issues.
Normally, tributes to a departed would highlight how one has touched the hearts of people around him when he was still alive. I wish I could do the same. I wish I could narrate how he epitomized the perfect father figure. But I just can’t. The ideal this or that remains to be just ideals because they never truly materialize. Much like the ideal dad I would have wanted will never have existed because I longed for someone who could at least manifest those much wanted attributes and characteristics. Sadly, he didn’t.
I will spare the details as I know it won’t do no good to dwell on the past’s pain and difficulties. It was also never my nature to talk about it, not because it was too agonizing to discuss but because I simply chose not to deal with the issues.
Normally, tributes to a departed would highlight how one has touched the hearts of people around him when he was still alive. I wish I could do the same. I wish I could narrate how he epitomized the perfect father figure. But I just can’t. The ideal this or that remains to be just ideals because they never truly materialize. Much like the ideal dad I would have wanted will never have existed because I longed for someone who could at least manifest those much wanted attributes and characteristics. Sadly, he didn’t.
But I don’t hate him for that. I have long since accepted the sad reality that people do lose their ways. And much as we do something to help them if they don’t try to help themselves, nothing would really come out from all the efforts. But this is the part where I would like to kick myself for not doing the extra effort. Acceptance is not enough. The cliché that we should go the extra mile should have been what I did. It’s too late for regrets though. The best I could do now is think and reminisce on the good moments that we were able to share.
I was once daddy’s little girl. Growing up changed that when I realized that I didn’t like what he had turned out to be. That’s when we drifted apart. I simply stopped talking to him and I sincerely loathed myself for doing that but I just could never bring myself to look at him the way I did when I was younger, naive and innocent. But I honestly thought all along that when the right time came, I will be the one to take care of him. I just needed more time to work, earn, save, and do something for him someday. But that was my biggest mistake. I always thought he could live longer. I somehow never realized that while I was working on this goal of doing things not just for myself but for him as well, his years were about to end.
If I wasn’t so focused on the things I was doing and perhaps did the extra effort of doing something special for him, no matter how small and trivial it might seem, then maybe it would not have been so bad. It’s sad that the last thing I was able to actually do for him was to look up for a good epitaph for his tombstone. Now isn’t that just tragic.
And so it has been a year. I wasn’t able to properly say goodbye. But Daddy, I still whisper you in my prayers.
I was once daddy’s little girl. Growing up changed that when I realized that I didn’t like what he had turned out to be. That’s when we drifted apart. I simply stopped talking to him and I sincerely loathed myself for doing that but I just could never bring myself to look at him the way I did when I was younger, naive and innocent. But I honestly thought all along that when the right time came, I will be the one to take care of him. I just needed more time to work, earn, save, and do something for him someday. But that was my biggest mistake. I always thought he could live longer. I somehow never realized that while I was working on this goal of doing things not just for myself but for him as well, his years were about to end.
If I wasn’t so focused on the things I was doing and perhaps did the extra effort of doing something special for him, no matter how small and trivial it might seem, then maybe it would not have been so bad. It’s sad that the last thing I was able to actually do for him was to look up for a good epitaph for his tombstone. Now isn’t that just tragic.
And so it has been a year. I wasn’t able to properly say goodbye. But Daddy, I still whisper you in my prayers.