Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

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. 

Once upon a happier time, my brother and I would pick up the family Christmas tree from Bob’s Tree Farm, winding through the back roads that lead out of then back into Amsterdam. It was something we started after I left for college, a small way of finding our way back to each other after the disturbing traumas of an average adolescence. Later, when he had kids, we would bring them along for the ride, and incorporate a dinner at the Cock & Bull. 

A few years ago we had a big fight on the night we went to get the tree, and haven’t been able to pick up the tradition again. It was, like so many fights among brothers, something that started off in silly and trivia fashion, then quickly blew up into something that must have triggered both of us, bringing up all 40 years of being brothers. There’s a lot of misunderstanding and hurt that happens over such a long span of time. A lot of love and familial history too. Somehow, we’re still ok, as ok as any brothers can be I suppose. I wish we could be closer, but I understand why we may not be – at least, I think I’m starting to understand. 

I texted him a few weeks ago to see if he wanted to go our for a dinner at the Cock & Bull with the twins again, as a way of reigniting our Christmas tradition. I never heard back, and I assume his calendar is booked with other events and obligations. Nobody texts back these days, and it’s simply something we can’t take personally. 

Our history came up at my last therapy session, and my therapist had asked whether we had been compared to each other while we were growing up. My memory on this was that my brother was often compared to me, particularly regarding grades and performance in school. It was a regular thing, and when you are on the ‘good’ side of such a comparison, you don’t take much stock in it. It didn’t feel bad on that side of it, but I never gave much thought to my brother’s reception of such comparisons. I do know it happened a lot, and looking back it makes sense that it might have left a mark. 

My therapist then asked if we had the same circle of friends, to which I replied we did not and never have. She said that might explain some things, as people who have been compared unfavorably with others tend to move away from those to whom the comparison has been made, finding their own circles and their own life away from the origin of such discomfort. 

A greater understanding and perspective clicked for me then. All these years of feeling like I had to instigate every get-together or engagement with my brother may not have been in my imagination, and while I still don’t believe it was overtly intentional on his part, perhaps this is part of an underlying reason why he seems less than interested in hanging out with me. After thinking of it that way, I can’t blame him. 

This isn’t the time of year for blame anyway, especially among families, and especially after losing our Dad. I don’t feel resentment for my brother’s apparent disinterest, and I can’t feel badly now for how we were raised. In many ways, neither of us had control over any of it, then or now. All I can do is be there if and when he needs his brother, and keep trying to be a better brother than I was the day before.