Category Archives: Family

My father left us during a full moon – the Sturgeon Moon – and as a full moon appears now, Mom says she feels Dad’s presence then. There is comfort in that, and when our last full moon – a Beaver Moon – ascended, I stepped outside to see what I could feel.

It was cold out, and a threat of snow was only a couple of hours away. There were stars out too, and the sky was lit a gorgeous shade of blue – the kind of blue you don’t often see at such a gray time of the year. It felt like a glimpse into the winter ahead of us. 

I hope it will be a healing winter.

When my Dad’s health aide was working with him, back when he still had good days here and there, she would get him to engage in various art projects, some of which involved him drawing and painting – things he would never have done in his younger years, but which he took to with his usual precision and perfectionism, making sure each was just right. She also got him to work on letters to me, as she saw the letters I’d written coming in every week. One of these she gave to my Mom to mail many months ago, but my Mom had put it away in a bag and forgotten about it until it resurfaced the other week. She gave it to me when I last stopped by, and I put it on the passenger seat of my car as I left her house. 

My first visit to Dad’s resting place was sadder than expected, and as I drove out of the cemetery I was feeling empty and forlorn. I couldn’t feel my father there, and I wasn’t ready to let him go. It left my heart aching and my head struggling to keep him alive somehow. Driving out of Amsterdam, I passed the same route we used to take to church on Sunday mornings and Christmas Eve. Those days and years felt far away, yet I still needed my Dad. As I drove over the bridge that connected the banks of the Mohawk River, the sun was nearing the end of its descent in the sky. Instead of taking the left to the Thruway, I continued on the road that would lead into the rural areas near Florida. This was the way to the veterinarian who used to treat our first dog, a German shepherd named Crystal that Dad had raised when she was only a puppy. That dog, like my father himself, would protect us religiously until the day she died, not allowing harm to come to any of us on her watch. There was still an animal hospital where the vet’s office once stood – a small comfort to know that some things carried on. 

I started to feel my Dad’s presence again, on these back roads flooded with late afternoon sunlight, banked by fields of corn and the odd pumpkin patch. Super-saturated with the colors of autumn, this humble section of the world kept its beauty and its grace mostly to itself, content to simply exist and provide a backdrop to the scant intermittent parade of cars that sped in search of more exciting destinations. Turning onto a side street, I suddenly remembered the card my Mom had given to me. I pulled into the empty parking lot of a little library – closed for the day and empty at the late-afternoon hour – and slowly opened the envelope. 

“Hi…” it said on the front, over a collection of birdhouses and their inhabitants. I knew my Dad hadn’t chosen the card, and yet somehow it came directly from him. I began crying a little – the simple declaration of ‘Hi’ felt like a message he managed to send in the most unexpected way, at the moment when I needed it the most. Inside, a generic message, “Hope everything’s going well in your little corner of the world!” was written above a  picture of two birds near their home. 

Beneath that, in a scrawl not far removed from that of a child, my Dad had valiantly attempted his signature, connecting his spirit to this page, connecting his heart to this letter – and a letter was always the way I connected to someone most profoundly. My Dad knew that, understanding and recognizing the love in all the letters I had written to him over the years, and in the occasional ones he would write back to me. In some ways, this last letter to me was probably not unlike my first letters to him. Our circle had been completed, and once completed, a circle continues on forever. 

After feeling that my Dad wasn’t here anymore, I held a card he once held, a card that he meant to reach me, and I felt him near once again. He was in this letter, he was in my car, he was in the land and the sun and the sky and the trees. Mostly he was in my heart, and I felt the reassuring comfort of that, as if he was still here guiding and supporting and loving me. 

A sense of gratitude washed over me then, whispering that it would be ok, reminding me that Dad would never truly leave my side. 

Everyone deals differently with death. For most of my life, I’ve shied away from it, changing the topic whenever it came up and actively dismissing it from my mind. The thought of losing someone I loved was too terrifying to do anything else. It was my way of coping with something that felt insurmountable. When Dad started to decline several years ago, I had to face it, whether I liked it or not, and it wasn’t easy.

His journey was a long one, and in many ways that helped. We had time together – time to become closer and talk before it became impossible, time to confront what was happening as every door closed and options dwindled. I had a good few years of dealing with impending death, so when it finally happened, I was as ready and prepared as one can be, even if one can never truly be ready for that. During his last two weeks on earth, I embraced the process as best as I could, managing to find the beauty and grace in what was happening, and finding solace in family, and the love that would continue even after his physical form departed.

Last weekend marked the two-month point since he died – something I hadn’t taken notice of – and I found myself in Amsterdam dropping off some food for Mom. Dad’s cemetery marker had been engraved and up for a few weeks, but I hadn’t been to visit. It was something I was consciously avoiding. Part of me was waiting to make it meaningful, to visit with intent and purpose, but as I left Mom’s, dirty and sweaty from putting up some fall decorations, I found myself turning down the road to the cemetery, almost without thought.

The afternoon sun hung just above the tree-lined horizon, dappled and divided through evergreen boughs. It was warm, and it was the last day of September. Turning into the cemetery, I passed rows of gravestones, looking at the various names, wondering at the families and the people who carried those names onward. There were names I recognized, though I’m sure not all were related to the people I knew. At the bottom of the hill, I stopped the car and got out. Along the edge of the cemetery a section of unchecked growth allowed for a little bit of wilderness to establish itself. In this wild area, stands of cattails stood tall in the wet ground, while groups of asters and goldenrod lent a surprising jolt of color to the end of the day. Wild roses gone to seed gave off a fainter warm glow in their bulbous hips. It was a trio that only God could have put together, so I made a little bouquet of asters, goldenrod, and rose hips to bring to Dad. As I plucked the rose stem, my thumb met a thorn, tearing the skin and releasing a tiny drop of blood. A primal reminder that I was still alive, that my body’s blood still pulsed through its veins. It pricked a bit of my heart too, as I realized with full certainty that my Dad was not physically alive.

My little bouquet procured – no extravagant calla lilies or protea or hybrid roses – I got back in the car and drove back up the hill to where my Dad’s ashes were interred. Mom had already sent me photo of it, so I knew what it looked like, but it’s different when you see it in person. At the bottom of the columbarium, I found the engraved names of my parents. I ran my fingers over it, cool to the touch even in the dying light of the sun, and left the simple flowers beneath it.

Time twisted then, and I remembered my only trip to the Philippines, 27 years ago, when my cousin took me to the cemetery to visit her recently-deceased husband, and the markers of my grandparents. Seeing the Ilagan name there was jarring – not only because I never saw the Ilagan name anywhere in the United States, but also because it was on a gravestone in my father’s homeland. It struck me then, when I was only 21 years old, that one day I would be burying my own parents, and seeing their names engraved in stone. It was something that would haunt me forever after, right up until this present moment, as I knelt down and again felt the cold stone and the carved letters of my lineage. The moment I’d been dreading and fearing all my life was at hand, and though I’d always envisioned it blaring and announcing itself in frightening fanfare and debilitating noise, here it appeared in quiet, marked by distant birdsong, and the occasional rumbling of a car along the nearby road.

My Mom has said that she feels comfort visiting Dad here. For me, it was the opposite at first. As I backed away from their marker, I felt a profound sense of loneliness, a realization that my Dad was definitely not here. I knew his ashes were there in a piece of Wedgwood that once stood in our family home, I knew his name was forever embedded on the small square of stone I just touched with my own hands, and I knew his spirit lived within me, but in that moment I only felt his absence. It was the emptiness of being left behind, and as I got back into the car, I started crying.

Rather than fight it or try to collect myself instantly, I let it happen, allowing the grief to come over me in waves, catching the tears in the last tissues of a box I kept in the car for just such occasions. The sadness didn’t end, and the feeling of missing my Dad didn’t depart, but eventually the overwhelming sense of loss subsided, enough for me to start the car and begin the drive home.

Dear Jaxon ~ 

Hello little guy. This letter comes with no significant meaning or purpose, other than to mark this day in time. Yesterday our family gathered for a brunch two months to the day that we lost your Lolo, and you slept through most of it as you tend to do. You awoke when the eating was done, and you joined us for some crawling and almost-walking. I don’t blame you for taking your time – you have a whole life of walking ahead of you; make the most of these days when you can lounge and crawl – some of us spend our time figuring out ways to do those things, and most of us find it impossible. Hang onto your childhood days as long as you can. 

I took the featured picture of you from outside Lola’s door. You were looking out at your brother mowing the lawn on a summer day. I took a similar photo of your brother and sister when they were about your age, standing behind a glass door at their first house. Now they are thirteen, and I wonder where the time went. One day many years from now I’ll try to tell you about this past summer, if I’ve made some sense of it by then, and I’ll remind you of how much you were a source of light and healing in a dark time. 

This little song is a message to you to hold on, no matter how much the world may rock you – and it’s a reminder to myself to hang on too, because when you go through a summer such as the one we’ve just had, you sometimes want to give in to the sadness. 

YOU GOTTA HOLD ON
HOLD ON THROUGH THE NIGHT
HANG ON
THINGS WILL BE ALL RIGHT
EVEN WHEN IT’S DARK AND NOT A BIT OF SPARKLING
SING-SONG SUNSHINE FROM ABOVE
SPREADING RAYS OF SUNNY LOVE

It dawns on me that while I have promised to be your guide and guardian whenever you may need one, you may be the one guiding us as we fumble our way toward healing, finding our footing in an uncertain time when it feels like we’re slightly unmoored without Dad. It’s difficult to be sad when we see your smile and hear your laugh, and if you’re gently nudging us back to happiness, I’ll lean into that and try to feel the joy of the moment. 

AND SO I HOLD ON TO HIS ADVICE
WHEN CHANGE IS HARD AND NOT SO NICE
IF YOU LISTEN TO YOUR HEART THE WHOLE NIGHT THROUGH
YOUR SUNNY SOMEDAY WILL COME ONE DAY SOON TO YOU

Dreamt of Dad again last night. Brief but powerful – in the dream I was picturing him at last year’s Christmas dinner – his last here with us, and one where he wasn’t quite aware of what was going on. His look in the photos from that night is distant and unfocused, slightly unsettled too – and I wept for the long battle with his illness, and how it had robbed all of us of so much. The scene shifted, as dreams do, and suddenly I was sitting on the edge of my current bed next to him, and I rushed to hug him. “Daddy I love you…” I cried like a little child (because I have not referred to my father as ‘Daddy’ in decades), sobbing through tears again, shaking and half-waking myself. “I love you so much…” I repeated, and then his arms were hugging me back and I heard him say, “I love you too” in a soft voice.

I woke up, face streaming with tears. Looked at the clock and it read 4:44.

Perhaps early morning is the time he likes visit. It’s a time I remember from my youth, on those nights when I’d crawl into my parents’ bed unable to sleep for fear or terror of some unnamed worry, and in the earliest stirring of the day, my father would sometimes get up to use the bathroom, and I’d sleepily see him coming back to bed in the grey shadows of a day barely begun. 

On this morning, all these years later, I walk out into the dark living room and sit on the couch to prolong the moment. It is at such a time that I feel my Dad’s presence most keenly, and strangely, as it comes with such profound sadness, such powerful moments of missing him. 

Maybe that’s all it is: my overwhelming grief providing the perfect combination of wanting and wishing that in these early hours it feels like he is here beside me. 

And maybe it’s something more.

My very first lessons in gardening came from my father. More than a book or any actual experience in the world, my Dad is the one who taught me how to begin. It didn’t start with the plants themselves, it started with the earth: the land and the dirt beneath our feet. Before we even thought of heading out to the garden center to procure any living items, Dad showed me to prepare the bed for planting. 

Tilling and toiling over his vegetable plot, he worked the soil skillfully, painstakingly removing every stone or unwanted piece of detritus, until it could be raked through cleanly. He turned over the top layer of upstate dirt into something of deep richness, making the hospitable space for roots to take hold and flourish. He dug in manure and fertilizer, showing me how to enrich the ground and prepare the proper home for good root growth. I learned patience there and then, and the importance of preparation.

By the time it came to actually planting, much of the hard work had been done. What came next was the careful process of planting, and how it differs from plant to plant. He taught me the technical things specific to tomatoes, like how to plant a tomato’s stripped stem sideways in the ground so more roots would grow and it would have a stable structure. He taught me to pinch out early side shoots, allowing the plant to focus its energy upward. He taught me to carefully tie a tender young stem to the support it needed early in its journey, and then to release it when it could stand on its own. Later in the season, he would show me when and how to harvest the ripened results, twisting them off and leaving them on the sunny windowsill of the garage until perfectly red. 

I would take these lessons and apply them to our flower beds – vegetables weren’t as pretty or frivolous as flowers – as that’s where my interest resided. I didn’t see it then, and maybe he didn’t either, but he was actually carving out a way of showing me how to survive in the world. Not in any literal way of feeding myself with homegrown vegetables, but in teaching me that the path to anything good and worthy was in working slowly in service of the end goal. I learned not to hurry things, to take my time and invest diligence and care in every endeavor, being patient and careful, and properly preparing without rush or haste. 

When fall and winter came, the tomato patch wilted and crumbled and fell back into the earth. The wire supports stood forlornly bare, the remaining metal exoskeletons of what they once held high against a summer sky. And every spring, Dad would clear the plot, begin the soil preparation, and start all over again – a circle of life that generations had done before him. 

Yesterday would have been my Dad’s 93^rdbirthday. He came up just short of that milestone, but we honored him with a Filipino dinner last night. It’s a small consolation, but a consolation it is, and it reminds me how he is still here in some way – in spirit, in laughter, in memories, in food, and in family. Our year of marking firsts without Dad has begun – first with my birthday, and now with his – and I’m finding comfort in still celebrating these dates. It brings him back to us, in a strange way. I thought I would be sad or upset by it, and there is an element of missing him that pervades these days, but mostly I’m happy for the reminder of him. Missing him is tangible evidence that his spirit remains strong, that his presence hasn’t dissipated. It’s strange the way some pain provides proof of significance and import – an emotional badge of honor that indicates love was here – and more importantly that love is still here. 

In some ways, our little celebration didn’t differ from the usual dinner gatherings we had for him – my Dad was never one for gifts or hoopla or celebrating one’s birthday with bombast or excitement, and he’d have been the first one to escape from such attention immediately after dinner was finished. He didn’t even need his favored lemon meringue pie – sometimes I felt he was humoring us more than himself during birthdays and holidays, and the older I get the more I think I understand his ways. 

And so our year of firsts continues. Slowly, and a little unsurely, we are finding our way. 

Back in the fall of 1995, my father graciously gave me the go-ahead to find a place to live in Boston – something that would suit me while finishing out college and beginning whatever line of work I would begin, and which would also serve as a landing space for when the family visited the city. Within days, I had set up visits with a real estate agent, and within a couple of weeks we’d located our current place on Braddock Park. 

Because of that, Dad had always been the impetus and charge behind me finding my home there, and I remember him visiting once when I was working at John Hancock, when we stayed in the condo and had a weekend together. Of course he was present for when Andy and I got married in the Boston Public Garden, and told everyone of how I had found the condo for them as soon as I get off the phone from him giving me the go-ahead. That was the last time I was in Boston with him, and I’m so grateful we have that happy memory. As I readied to return to the city for the first time since his death, I wondered if I would still feel that connection. 

For Labor Day weekend, I had promised to take the twins to Boston, and it felt right to have them with me – they are in ways both literal and figurative the seamless continuation of my father – his blood runs through their veins and the memories of their childhood carry him through to this day. They also provided a happy distraction for me: it’s impossible to keep an eye on two thirteen-year-olds who more often than not are going in different directions, and still be pre-occupied with missing my Dad. On our first night, we went to bed fully spent and exhausted from a day of walking. 

In the early hours of the morning, right before I woke up, I had a dream.

I was at my parents’ old house while my Mom was out. On the side porch, an early Christmas present had arrived for me – flowers and a Betty Buckley doll – the random and bizarre details that let us know it was only a dream. Slightly confused about the gift, I left it there so Mom could think that I was still surprised. I went back inside and heard someone in the downstairs bathroom.

Looking in, I saw two people – one facing me and one with his back to me. The man facing me was my father, in his much younger years – hair entirely black and brushed back in his usual style, and without the glasses that would become a mainstay later on. He was talking intently but happily with a gray-haired man whose back was still to me, until he turned around and I saw that it was an older version of my Dad, the way we knew him as adults. 

I rushed in, confused but happy that somehow he had returned. I started crying immediately, and reached my arms around both of them. And then something that has only happened to me once in all my life occurred again in what I then fully understood to be a dream: I physically felt his arms around me. He held me there as I sobbed.

My crying was messy now, and I was hysterically trying to tell him how much we missed him and loved him. Still, I felt his arms enclosed around me, tangibly and physically embracing me and somehow letting me know that he was here. I asked him to please watch over us, especially Mom, and kept crying. 

It must have been my wailing that woke me up. I felt for my face, rubbing the actual tears away. Through my hazy, tear-stained vision, I saw a double figure move off into the distance like some floater that sometimes moves across one’s gaze. At first I was devastated by the realization that it was only a dream, and then I was comforted by my Dad’s arms around me, still here in his own way, still loving me, still silently supporting us and letting us know he was ok. 

This was my first trip back to Boston since Dad died, and I had been unsure if I would feel him there. While he was integral in purchasing our condo and he visited a handful of times, I only have those few memories of him being there with us. Yet on this first night back, this is where he chose to visit me. A sign that this was still home. 

On the morning that we were set to depart, Emi called me over to the window. A cardinal had landed in the tree in front of the condo. I watched its scarlet feathers as she remarked that Lolo was visiting. Smiling softly, I knew that he already had.