My father was never big on Christmas. He was always present, but we all understood it wasn’t his thing, and as his first Christmases with me would be happening at the same age that I am now, I can finally understand the lack of engagement and excitement about the season. For someone who’d lived through the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, then immigrated to this country to seek a better life for himself and his family, Christmas must have seemed like a silly exercise in gaudiness. He seemed most at home during the solemn moments at Christmas mass, when he would bow his head and I would wonder at what he might be thinking or ruminating.
That didn’t mean that Dad was not on my mind as we readied to prepare our first Christmas without him, and after dropping off gifts at my Mom’s new house, I found myself doing a U-turn to head back to the cemetery, just to visit his resting place before the holiday. Like my last visit to the cemetery, I hadn’t planned it, I simply went. Out of respect, out of loyalty, out of obligation, and mostly out of love, and missing him.
The day was cold – overcast in dismal shades of gray, and cut with a biting wind. I paused at the bottom of the cemetery and got out to walk beside the stand of cattails and wildflowers that were in bloom only a few months ago. They were brown and dead now, and still somehow beautiful. I’d picked a make-shift bouquet last time I was there, but no such trifles would be procured today. Dad was never one for such decoration, even if it was Christmas.
I got back in the car and drove to the site. Atop a stark hill, it sat near a road along which the occasional car would travel, reminding me that we were never truly alone. That didn’t stop the loneliness.
Looking up at the boughs of a nearby evergreen, I saw the pendulous future hanging in the pinecones, dangling like ornaments and decorating the cemetery in the only manner fitting to such sacred space. A multitude of future trees held their promise and possibility within – so much hidden life among so much quiet death.
I couldn’t feel my father lingering there, and I didn’t blame him. He would have hurried out of the cold, even if he’d made it his home far from the warmth of the Philippines, even if he was the one to snow-blow the driveway after every storm.
Later that day we would find out that Dad’s next-to-last surviving brother, who’d had similar struggles to Dad, and for years longer, had died. A sad and somber year takes another beloved soul. Perhaps he will join Dad wherever they might be, and have a Christmas reunion.
