Home with God in this Father's day

[Behind father Ben's old photo was a poem 
addressed to my mother. ]
Be with me always
Take any form.
Drive me mad if you will.
Only please, don't leave me
Alone in this dark
Where I can't find you,
I can't live without you,
I cannot die.

I was in a kitchen, in a conversation with a colleague, when the latter reminded me of an instance when a friend was disheartened that she wasn't informed of the reason why I returned home. 

This was many years ago. I received a call asking me to return home; to go directly to a hospital. No, to a morgue.

I said, I was sorry that she wasn't informed. Touching the laptop’s keys in razed for a deadline, I related, I didn't even had the moment to grieve my heart out.

When my colleague left for an errand outside, my mind recoiled on those cold bare feet, the only part of his body visible to me from the seats of a funeral parlor where he was cleansed and readied for his coffin. He died of myocardial infarction. Sudden. My mother was seated on an edge, pouring her heart out. No amount of comforting could stop her from crying.

“What will be the color of coffin you’d prefer?” the man asked. I couldn't reply.

I excused myself to buy coffee, sugar and some picky food, thinking that my father will be concern too of what will be offered to his guests when his body will be brought home. At the market, I opened my purse yet my mind lurked on our last conversation.

“Will that be enough?” he asked after giving some thousands for my fare back to the university and some allowance.

“It’s more than enough,” I said.

“Good. I cannot send you to the bus terminal now. Will that be okay?”

“Yes, it’s okay,” I replied though that was the only instance when he begged not to send me off to school.

Night covered the urban center when I reached Davao city. I spent some hours with colleagues in the research industry who were also in the office where I waited for the 12^th hour when an airconditioned bus leave for Cagayan de Oro. I indulged in a serious conversation about some issues while heavy rain unceasingly poured outside. It was about 10 pm when the phone frantically rung. The conversation was brief; in an emergency. An officemate informed us that flood inundated half of their residence. Driven by deep concern, we rushed to her village only to find hopeless helplessness because the road became gushing river of murky flood in throat-deep. They were already on the roof and us, soaked down, unmindful of possibilities that we could be electrocuted in case any of the electric post fell. We returned to the office unable to rescue or help them move out. That situation made me decide to let the night pass and to help monitor the flood and evacuation.

The following day, my brother called and asked me to return home. No detail, just return home. Outside our former residence, my sister met me without any sign of tear. Everything however seemed unusual. We traveled to Digos city without much conversation.

There. 

“Heto na po ang bayad ko manang sa kape’t asukal.”

“Uy day, bakit ang daming puting harina ang pantalon mo?”

“Hindi ko po alam.”

Retracing back to the funeral parlor, my mother announced that father’s coffin will be white. I nodded.

The days went with tears from mother, siblings, neighbors, friends, relatives, and children—the latter are my father’s constant cutie conversation allies beneath the santol tree when he was still alive. Every night was litanies and saying of rosaries in Latin. My grandmother Arcadia was good in Latin, something that I don’t inherit.

“You should be crying. I think I am expecting you to cry,” said Father Tito, a spiritual director and priest once assigned in our town’s parish whom I asked to bless my father’s soul before his burial.

Maybe, I was just too busy on what should be done next that I do not have enough emotion to grieve. But I cried. I cried when I called my father’s sisters in Hawaii and in Davao city. Perhaps, because I live with his stories about his sisters he rarely sees and the distant one will not be able to see him on his last day (although in thought, she’s with us.)

We were already in the cemetery, in a final prayer, when my colleagues texted me to join them in a travel elsewhere. And I replied back, “I’m sorry, I can’t be with you. It’s my father’s burial today.” My friend, my company to a park, my personal adviser, who’d buy me books, solve my math, repair my shoes, the first person who’d be frantic when I’d be late home, the man who’d wake me up from my study table when I slept with lessons, who’d look forward to see me every Christmas season, and whose letters are worded in few but is quite touching—has returned home to God.

“Ha? Why you aren’t informing us?” text.  I couldn't reply.

“Nakaka-hurt ka rin kasi,” my colleague blurted, “but di mo sila na inform na burial day na diay.”

“I just forgot. I was too busy for the interment and I was too absorbed thinking on what to do next.”