to love the sea ♞

When my dad died, I remember feeling nothing. In retrospect, I was far more distressed at the sight of him in the hospital bed, alive but unresponsive. I had tried to wake him up, like I did every time he decided to nap in the most inconvenient places (specifically the nice spot on the couch that got the most sunlight in the afternoon), but I couldn’t rouse him from this type of sleep. I tried regardless. He died a few hours later, without any of us by his side. 

I was playing Minecraft when I learned of his death. My mother came out into the living room, haggard, and confirmed my assumptions. I paused my game, let myself be held, and allowed my mother and sister to cry. I didn't feel like crying then, and after a couple hours, I returned to my game. I fed my wolves and cats, and went back to collecting wood to build my house.

I attended his wake in my favorite yoga pants and old blue shirt. I didn't own a black formal outfit and didn't really understand why I would need one. After all, my dad was lying dead in his sky-blue coffin in a t-shirt in the most atrocious shade of neon yellow I had ever seen. I cited this to my grandmother, who spoke briskly about respecting my elders, and left me feeling more confused. My dad hated neutral and dark colors, I was simply dressing to his preferences. Wasn’t that showing my respect to him?

My mother took us every day to the wake, and I would amuse myself by memorizing his face and wrinkles. It was fascinating to see where my dad ended and where the corpse began. His veins were too prominent, his skin too transparent, and he usually snored when he slept like this. I placed a hand on him, and immediately recoiled. I thought back to his comments about wanting to be taxidermied upon his death, and believed for a second that my mother went through with his wishes. Its chest was too solid, and its skin was too cold. This was not the man I slept on top of every afternoon, or the one who woke up early every morning to cuddle me before we had to get ready for school. I didn't look at the corpse for the rest of the wake. 

I remember distracting myself by playing the piano, located to the left of the casket. The piano was situated to face the coffin, but thankfully, it was too tall for me to see over. I didn't know what I was playing, but there was a need to break the somber silence. I played major chords, which were reminiscent of his pop songs that he loudly sang every morning. I stayed there, hitting the keys with a numbness I couldn’t describe.

My cousins pulled me away shortly after their arrival, and I busied myself with hugs and condolences and Kingdom Hearts. I sat to the right of the damned open casket and was just able to make out the top of his bandana. I fought the urge to snatch it from the corpse and place it back in his drawers where it belonged.

When they closed the coffin, I felt my heart wrench. For the first time, I was struck with an unbelievable feeling of dread and pain. I wanted to scream and cry, and to fight off every priest with their stupid ringing incense and calm voices. I wanted to shake my dad awake, to tell him this was a horrible prank, and that I was sorry for giving him a hard time about kissing him goodbye earlier that week. I wanted to call him dramatic for this frankly extreme reaction to me complaining about how affectionate he was, that I wouldn’t interrupt his naps anymore, that I'd never laugh at his middle name again if he would just wake up. In the span of a few seconds, the coffin clicked shut, and every piece of me shattered at once. 

My mother said that I should have said my goodbyes before they closed the coffin. 

Click.

I should have said "I love you" before I shut his car door that morning.

My dad died on a Saturday, and it was just that. I didn’t grieve, not like how others might’ve grieved, and I moved on without him. I missed him though, I missed him horribly, but I felt no sadness in the way my family described theirs. I pretended not to notice the stares and whispers, and refused to put effort into deciphering any of them. If anyone asked, I missed the consistency and the routine. I did not grieve.

It boiled over on a Tuesday, nearly three years later. The breakfast and dinners my mother prepared didn't taste the same. She burned the eggs and bread that my dad would always make perfectly. She refused to put Vienna sausages and hard-boiled eggs in my chocolate oatmeal because she thought it was gross. There was no breakfast for dinner, no adobo or sinigang waiting for me after my mid-afternoon nap. In my frustrations, I left the dining room table, went to the bathroom, and sat on the sink, just like how I used to when my dad and I were getting ready for bed. 

The only thing keeping me company now is the hum of the fluorescent lights and the shaky rumble of the overhead fan.

I don’t remember anything other than the waves of dread, the rage at the unfairness, and the feeling of loneliness. Every memory rushed forth at once, and in clear, horrible detail, I watched my dad die again in front of my eyes.

 I left the bathroom silently, and grabbed his jacket, and wished it still carried the smell of his cologne. I cried into the ugly stuffed turtle he gave me and wished that it was me that died, or my mother, or anyone other than him that had to go. 

Grief made its home in my ribs, bashing against my heart and lungs, attempting to shatter what remained of me into smaller and smaller pieces. I fell into a restless sleep, wishing more than anything that these past few years were nothing more than a bad dream. I wished I was just sleeping in the back of his red truck, being soothed by the sound of his singing as he drove us down the highway near the Pacific Ocean. Any time now, I would wake up to him picking me up to carry me back to our home that overlooked the sea.

There will come a day when I will be older than he will ever be. I stood on his grave, taller than him now, and felt grief curling against my bones once more. I stared at his gravestone, with eyes like his, and wondered if he had to feel this grief too when his brother, my namesake, died far too soon. 

I offered a quiet hello, and wrinkled my nose at the amount of goose feces littering his grave. He once complained about all the crap we had laying around the bed, and if I was in a brighter mood, I might’ve cracked a joke about him being a hypocrite.

I don’t know how to grieve, and I don’t know how to cope with it.

But as I’m staring at my dad’s grave, over ten years later, I’m beginning to think I’m starting to learn.