Category Archives: Family

When Suzie and my therapist give me the same advice, I know it is sound and likely something that I should probably heed. In this case, it was putting some distance between me and my family, something that is directly anathema to the way I was raised, and to how I’ve tried to conduct my life over the past few decades. That’s a long time to indoctrinate the psyche into a routine, and all the more difficult to break because of it.

In the Philippines, nothing is more important than family. You stick together no matter what, bound by blood and living arrangements, and you do for family what you would never do for anyone else. In my own prickly, socially-anxious way, I’ve tried to do that for the past half-century, and it’s taken me all that time to realize that the idea of family has changed. 

Whether it was the example of Dad sending money back to the Philippines and supporting his siblings, or the opposite end of the spectrum of my Mom pining and wishing for a playmate as an only child, the notion of family was drilled into my head. Over the years, the addition of guilt, and the spoken and unspoken responsibilities and expectations of the first-born child, created shadows upon shadows, and I struggled with being a good son and brother in the face of often-disparate treatment. It manifested itself in various ways of acting out and deciphering how to gain unconditional love when I was so decidedly different. That cannot have been easy for any of us, and in seeing that now I am given a glimpse of how to forgive. 

Part of that is in the decision to step back at this point. While COVID may have contributed to a lessening of time spent with them, I’d slowly and quietly started to pull away from family for several years. After a big blow-out fight with my brother at Christmas one year, and the umpteenth time that my parents asked me to be the understanding one, I remember sitting at their kitchen table and just crying. It wasn’t so much out of sadness or injustice anymore, it was simple exasperation. In a scene that would be repeated again and again, my Mom realized it was wrong and apologized, but the words rang hollow because they’d been said before and would be said over and over in the years to come. We’re always sorry, and we always just keep on hurting each other. 

And so for my own mental well-being, I’ve withdrawn a lot over the last few years, cutting back on planning get-togethers, no longer insisting that I maintain some type of friendship with my brother, and I’ve noticed that no one has picked up the slack, which is its own message, and its own confirmation. If I feel excluded these days, it’s as much my fault as anyone else’s, but I now realize there is purpose and reason for it; people will find a way, no matter how convoluted or bizarre, to protect themselves from hurt, even if it’s all we’ve ever known.

My own head is adept at self-preservation, even when I’m not quite aware of what is happening. Like animals born in captivity, we don’t necessarily know what we’re missing, it just never feels quite right, and fitting into a typical boy’s mold in this world is trying enough for most boys. It was also a long time ago – another generation really, and things were decidedly different. There was so much we simply didn’t know. 

There are deeper things at work here, stories and situations that I’ve mostly held back, as much out of protecting them as for my own desire to move beyond and pretend they never happened. That’s not always healthy, and as much as I want to let it go, I also need to exhume and address them, if only to acknowledge and move beyond the hold and influence they continue to exert. 

The holidays have always exacerbated this; instead of being a healing time, they seem to bring out all the latent grievances, illuminating and highlighting the chasm that has grown between me and a family from which I’ve always felt, and been treated, as different. Too delicate for some, too harsh for others, and no way of winning or even being unconditionally loved or accepted. In turn, I’ve created my own ostracization – for protection, for prevention, for punishment – and for the preservation of my own worth. 

That is going to have to be ok for this holiday season. 

That is going to have to be enough. 

And it will be.

Yesterday would have been Dad’s 94th birthday. I was up early, before I had to start the work day, so I sat alone at the dining room table and waited for some sign that he was near. The stillness and quiet were strangely overbearing. Nothing moved, nothing made a sound. Outside, the trees were absolutely stoic, and there wasn’t the slightest movement of air. No birds or rustling in the garden. The occasional falling of the seven sons’ flower tree blooms was the only thing in motion, and even their landing in the pool was silent. The fountain grass, the tips of which are usually waving even when there wasn’t a breeze, remained frozen as if in a still photo. 

My Dad was often a quiet man. He could yell and scream and get riled up by the horse races he followed in the paper and on television, and he would happily regale dinner guests with stories boisterously punctuated by laughter that brought tears to his eyes, but the bulk of my time with my father was largely spent quietly sharing an observance of all around us, only occasionally partaking in the foolishness. There was a stoic calm in him that seemed both contemplative and cathartic, as if by his age he knew that things were no longer worth fussing about. For the last few years of his life, this was the state which Dad and I happily shared our time together. 

On this morning, the second birthday of his that we are commemorating without him, I find solace in the absolute stillness around me. In this quiet, I still feel my father. In this calm, I know he is here. 

Happy birthday Dad.

Wild thistle and purple loosestrife accent the edge of wilderness that borders the cemetery where my Dad’s ashes reside. It still holds true that I don’t quite feel my Dad’s presence at his final resting place, but there is one corner, at the bottom of the hill, anchored by a few ancient evergreens and a large poplar, where I sense his spirit. It would be more characteristic of him to watch quietly from a distance, his arms crossed and observing without comment or disturbance. This is also the prettiest part of the cemetery, far from the columbarium that actually contains him, far from the road where drivers unknowingly rush by such beauty. Invariably, I will stop the car at this space, and take a moment to walk around and see what is in bloom. 

Earlier in the year, there were sweetly-scented wild roses. Gone to hips now, there was still some summer lingering in the heat and humidity – the bold color of thistle flowers echoed by the invasive loosestrife. Moreover, there was a stand of wild raspberries, their thorny branches barely dissuading whatever pulled most of the fruit from these little cradles. 

I took a little more time on this day, walking further along the edge of where the manicured lawn ended and a bit of wilderness began. That little island of brush to the right in the photo below was surrounded by a path of mowed lawn, and I walked between the mounds of green. Within that island something rustled in the shadows. It sounded larger than a chipmunk or squirrel – I’m accustomed to their size and heft – and this was distinctly larger. It was substantial in the way it made movements and noise in the brush, and after I walked past it, as if sensing I wasn’t looking anymore, it made its move and bolted out of the island and into the wilderness, climbing up the tree before I could get a look at it. It had the speed of a squirrel, but I still don’t think that’s what it was. Scanning and searching the branches of the tree, I couldn’t find it. In a breeze, the undulating silvery undersides of leaves masked any movement I might find. 

Regardless of what animal skittishly ran away, I was clearly not alone, and there was comfort in that – comfort in the mystery of life, and death. On the night that my Dad died, I remember seeing a number of rabbits along the way – at least nine or ten from our drive from Loudonville to Amsterdam – and it seemed like they were seeing him off. I’d never seen so many in a single night. My Dad always loved animals – all kinds – and it spoke to his genuine care for those who needed help in some way – the very tenet of what made a doctor a good doctor. Since the night he left, I’ve had several encounters with animals that made me believe there was more going on than what I once thought I understood or believed. On this day, feeling that I was still being watched by something in the trees, I embraced the mystery. 

Dear Dad – 

It’s been a while since I’ve written to you. 

That’s a good thing, and I want you to know that I’m ok.

When I feel people are around me, I tend to write to them less, and for the past year since you’ve been gone, you’ve never been far from my mind. In some ways, the love I have had for you has grown. Somehow, you are with me always, and that’s the most surprisingly comforting discovery I’ve made since last August. I didn’t know it could be like that.

On the morning of your funeral service there was a deluge of torrential rain. The summer had been so sunny and beautiful that this weather felt suddenly shocking, albeit fitting. As we entered the church, I wasn’t sure how I would make it through the day, but as we walked up the aisle and approached the altar, a feeling of calm came over me. Your picture was there, beside the Wedgwood piece that Mom had selected to hold your ashes – a piece that matched the Wedgwood urn where Gram was. Around this was an arc of white flowers, like some healing moonlight garden. It was such a scene of peace and calm that I would look at it whenever the parade of people exhausted me. I had never imagined that there would be any calm or beauty in losing a loved one, yet that’s what I felt for most of the service. 

It was near the end when I realized that this would be the last time our family would be together. You, Mom, Paul and I had spent so many Sunday mornings in church together, so many Christmas Eves and Easter Sundays, and now here we were seeing you off on the final morning we would be intact as a family. That’s when I started crying, just as we had to walk past all the people and leave you in the hands of a funeral director.

The rain had stopped. Mom and Andy sat in the front seats of the car while I sat alone in the back. We would go to the columbarium next, but this is where it felt like I was saying goodbye, because I didn’t think we would ever be together as a family again. Our time at your resting place was blessedly brief, and then we went back to Mom’s house. After changing out of my black suit in the room where you transitioned out of this world, I didn’t know quite how to proceed. Yet family and friends trickled in, and what was now only Mom’s house was suddenly becoming Mom’s home, and still I felt you with us. We were all there – in fact there were more of us than ever before, all crammed into this cozy space, and spilling out into the backyard. All the love we felt for you was still there, perhaps even more resonant when surrounded by all the other people who loved you in your life. Even after everyone left, and in all the days that followed, whenever Mom and Paul and I found ourselves together, you were somehow still with us. 

I suppose that’s why I don’t write to you as much as I did when you were here – I still feel you with me, closer than ever, even if you’ve been gone for a year. That doesn’t mean I don’t miss you, and maybe it’s just some mental trick that keeps me from sliding into despondent paralysis, but I genuinely believe our loved ones don’t ever leave us, they simply exist in different ways – in the making of a batch of asado, in a Harry Belafonte song, in the planting of a tomato – in all the ways you were a father to me. 

I love you Dad.

The room where my father died is not haunted in the way my childhood self envisioned it would be. It holds no frightening ghosts or terrifying memories, strange as that may seem. It is a place of calm, the space where we shared our last moments with Dad, where he took his final breath and left his physical form behind almost exactly a year ago. After serving him for 92 years, it was time. 

In his final rally, that sacred period of time in which someone will return to their usual self right before they’re about to die, Dad sounded like his old self. He engaged with us all, making mostly coherent sense, even if the topics varied wildly, as if dictated by someone anxiously waiting for him on the other side. ‘Please wait,’ I prayed to myself and whomever might be listening, ‘Please give us a little more time.’ On one of those last days, I sat beside his bed, holding his hand and gently talking. As was most often the case, just being beside my Dad was all the strength and comfort I needed. 

He was talking about Sister Margaret, who was one of the nuns he worked with when he first started at St. Mary’s hospital. He had always been equal parts annoyed, at odds, and in awe of those nuns, whose religious affiliation proved both impressive and problematic. Somehow, he managed to get along with Sister Margaret, despite how difficult others sometimes found her to be. Mentioning how she didn’t always talk to everyone, but would engage if someone spoke to her first, he remembered how they had never had a fight. Sister Margaret has been gone for many more years so I have no way of knowing how true that statement might be. At infrequent points my Dad had occasional run-ins with certain people, even though he was mostly adored by all the hospital staff. In these last hours, he seemed to be reliving his early days at the hospital, which was one of his favorite places to be. Dad enjoyed work the way the rest of us enjoy vacation – he was just wired that way, from the moment he and his brothers were moved during the Japanese occupation and separated from their family. You don’t grow up in the Philippines in the time that my Dad did without learning about work and drive and dedication to bettering yourself and your family. 

Without any transition or prompt, he moved into talking about a parade. Something about an MCU parade, and I thought he was talking about the Macy’s Day Parade, so I brought some images up on my phone. He saw one with a flag and said it looked like the Philippines. Mom would later explain he was probably talking about Manila Central University (MCU) and their parades. Later, I showed him a few more parades from the Philippines, just as he was easing out of his brief rally. “Wow,” he said quietly. And when I showed him another one he repeated it, “Wow…” in a hushed reverence.

Andy would later tell me that when people are nearing death they sometimes see parades and it’s a way of welcoming them into their transition. When it was time for me to leave for the day, I held Dad’s hand and let him talk for a bit, but it looked like he was tiring out. I told him it was ok to close his eyes and take a nap. I told him I would see him tomorrow and then said, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he said with a small weak voice, and I smiled back at him.

“Thank you,” I managed to stammer through tears and a forced smile.

“For what?”

“For giving all of us such a good life.”

I told him he could take a nap, to which he agreed. Before he closed his eyes he looked at me and said very clearly, “What are you waiting for?”

Jaxon Layne turns two today, and we celebrated with the family on a mostly beautiful day in which he was mostly awake. Not even an afternoon rainstorm could dampen my godson’s enjoyment, and seeing him run and frolic in the summer rain was a healing moment, illuminating all that is good and hopeful in the world. He seemed to have a fine time, and any happy reason to bring the family together is a good thing these days. 

While he has only just turned two years old, he occasionally exhibits some hilarious old-man poses and traits, such as in the post-birthday-cupcake stance – which he adopted for just as long as the phone could capture this shot. Glimpses of an old-soul prove there is more at work in the world than we can ever know. It’s a comfort to think about that, to see the next generation just beginning their journeys. 

Happy birthday, my precious godson – you are loved and cherished, and I look forward to seeing where you head into these not-so-terribles twos. 

Twodles!

The last Japanese iris of the season just bloomed, its form skewed slightly sideways from all the other blooms that rose and bloomed before it. A tinge of sadness accompanied the end of this plant’s bloom – it started its banner show on Father’s Day – our first Father’s Day without Dad. When they bloomed I took that as a hello from him on a day that I needed so badly to hear from him in some way. Mom wasn’t feeling well that day, so we didn’t do our usual Sunday dinner at home – instead, I dropped off some food to her and made a short visit to the cemetery.

It’s strange, but so far I haven’t really felt my Dad’s presence at the cemetery. If he is there, it’s at the bottom of the little hill where his site is, far from his columbarium and in a quieter space where the manicured lawn blends into a patch of wilderness. There, wild roses bloomed, their perfume lending a charm to the little bend of the smallest stream that goes almost dormant in a dry summer. Later, goldenrod and purple asters will nod in unison at the autumnal breeze. In the soft mossy ground beneath an old evergreen, a little place of respite exists, and if my father is present there at all, that’s where I feel him – but it’s faint, like the memories I have of his early days in that beautiful section of town. Obviously, I don’t have anything real or substantial as I wasn’t born then, but somehow I feel those days, from the way Mom speaks of them, and from his own stories, faded and faint. 

On Father’s Day, I wanted a quiet moment with Dad, but it was not to be found at the cemetery. Foolishly, I hadn’t counted on others being around, but of course they were there, and my preference for grieving has always been one of solitude. I briefly got out of the car and paused before Dad’s name, then I got back in and drove to our childhood church. It was later in the afternoon, and St. Mary’s was already closed and locked. Still needing some time with him, I drove over to St. Mary’s hospital, remembering a day when I was sick at school and Dad had to pick me up. He brought me to the hospital where he was working, and let me stay in a room right off of the cafeteria. A nun would pop in to check on me as Dad finished his operations for the day, and he would check on me too, asking how I was – trying to figure out if my sickness was physical or emotional. Back then, it was a combination of the two – stomach problems coupled with an extreme and undiagnosed social anxiety that left me terrified of being in school with other kids. I remember feeling the inability to explain what I was going through, as much as I felt his frustration swaddled with compassion for his first-born son’s string of sicknesses, and whatever mental state I had gotten myself into that made the school call him from the hospital to pick me up. 

I wanted to see if the room was still there. 

I wanted to see if my Dad was still there. 

I knew he wasn’t, but there was a little spark of comfort to think of how many hours my father spent in those hallways, the crappy sandwiches he got at the vending machine, the laughter he brought out from all the nurses. I found the room – at least I think it was the room – but it was locked. And that’s how it should be. Some doors to the past aren’t meant to be opened – they are designed to exist only in the past, and to open that door today in that day would only be disappointing. It would only have been empty.

My father would not be there. 

Instead, I feel him in the last iris of the season, the way I felt him in the first bloom. He is there in the unforced times when he visits to let me know he is still here. It doesn’t always come on days designated for fathers, and it won’t find resolution or ending when this first year without him finishes next month. 

Skipping over my parents apparently, I’m turning directly into my grandmother, or so it seemed the other night when I was bending over to pick up some pieces of lint on the carpet. It brought me instantly back to my childhood, though with a decidedly more strained pain in my back and stiff legs. This was how my grandmother used to go about cleaning the carpet floors when we were kids. Back then, I marveled at her patience, and unwillingness to simply drag out the vacuum, as much as I marveled at how much cleaner the floors looked when she was done. It was my first lesson in the importance of a clean palette, and how lovely a spotless floor appeared, especially when we were accustomed to it being cluttered with toys and debris. 

Like my grandmother, I find a certain satisfaction in cleaning things with thorough and detailed purpose, and as I bent down to pick up another piece of lint from the carpet, I felt her fastidious spirit flow through my Virgo hands. The magic of this carpet moment was merely, and magnificently, a memory – the mundane action of life reminding me of those who had gone. 

When Jaxon Layne was born, it struck me quite profoundly that I was roughly the same age that my Dad was when I was born. It offered a greater glimpse of understanding into how my father operated when my brother and I were kids, and of course that perspective was missing as we were growing up – a rather unfair thing for all parties involved. What could he possibly have made of a new baby in his mid-to-late 40’s? He had already set his ways in strict and organized fashion as any proper Virgo would have done by that age. My arrival, and the strange child I would prove to be, no doubt disrupted the regimented existence he has crafted for himself. To his credit he never loved me any less for it.

I will keep that in mind as I step up my godfathering; I tend to hang out in the background for now, as I did with the twins when they were this young, watching him from a distance. It’s a wonder to witness as he navigates his way in the world, and it calls back to my childhood, returning me to days with my Dad and my Mom, in the same house, in the same rooms, with the same slant of afternoon light…