2011.. for once, I cannot claim that 2010 just slipped by considering all the life-changing events that took place in my life in 2010. The most jarring of all being my Dad’s passing.
(pause)
There are many, many other positive things that happened, too, but somehow the most painful is what makes the biggest mark. So can I end there for now?
I miss Dad. It’s my first Christmas without him. It’s my first New Year without him. For some strange reason, I can remember snippets of last year but I cannot remember how I spent it with him. Selective amnesia? Perhaps.
But I have found that it is easier to move on if you are willing to take the step forward. I am still officially mourning. My reds and hot pinks (my favorite fuschia pink included) are still in the not-to-be-worn zone. I didn’t think I’d last this long but last I did. It may seem immaterial to some but to me, it’s a personal effort at going through my own grieving process.
Yesterday I had to put away some knick knacks and stuff lying around my dresser in the bedroom, and I grabbed a memory box in my closet that was still mostly empty. Well, except for Dad’s old letters to me. I didn’t quite have the heart to go through them just yet except to tear the stamps off the envelope and then soak them in warm water later for my “collection”. (I am an ambivalent philatelist.) One day soon.
Dad wrote with a beautiful cursive script. My own penmanship came from those graceful strokes. Even when his hands were ravaged by Parkinson’s disease, he tried.
I miss you, Dad. I pray you are in a peaceful place somewhere where the coughing and the trembling hands no longer ail you. I know your robust laughter now fill the hallways up in the heavens.
Pinay New Yorker 