Dear Ave,

Hope you and Papa are well. I am not quite sure what to write about. I dreamt about you, Mama, the other day. You were in your room, and the blinds were raised up and it was sunny outside. You were talking/playing with two children, one girl and one boy. I seem to recognise the girl, but the did not recognise the boy. I remember a feeling of jealousy, “oh you’ve adopted someone again”. But when I woke up, I thought maybe they’re meant to be your grandkids….from me. Or maybe it’s all in my head, or drug-induced. I don’t know.

Life is weird Ma. I can’t ever live in the present as I am always scared that something bad is going to happen. Much like when I was a child, when I never knew when things would turn sour at home. So I hold on to Tom, like a limpet. I tell him to promise me that he won’t die before me (which he does, the idiot!, as if he has control over it). I tell him I love him lots of times, in case today is the last time I see him. I fall asleep with my heart in my throat sometimes, thinking something bad is going to happen.

Yesterday I listened to the voice recording I sent Papa, when he was dying. His death finally caught up with me this year, and after that dream I had of him earlier this year (in it he was turned towards me, nodding–in approval, I would like to think, my whole life’s dream) it feels like I have just learned to accept and cope with his death. (I am wondering when yours will arrive.) I sensed a forgiveness in me, and a need to preserve him in my life. I thought of him all the time, of the way he was, and why he was the way he was. And when I think of him. this is what I think about:

A tiger tattoo on his arm. A crocodile tattoo on his left chest, because he loved Lacoste shirts so much. His Ma-cho necklace, his hefty gold ring, his gold chain necklace. His smell; he always wore fragrance and he always smelt good. How tall he was, how dark and handsome, strong and brutish. His big, dark brown eyes, His laugh, a rich laugh. Full. How we yearned for that laugh. How his eyes twinkled when he was being playful. How his wrath reverberated in the walls of the house. How generous he was, how charismatic. How people treated him when he walked in a room.

Coffee that he asks me to make at 2-3 in the morning, when he comes off work. He would always knock on my door and say “gawa mo ako ka-pe”. Him playing his computer in his room. The whole chicken he once gave me after getting angry at me, as a way of his apology. The time he slapped me hard on the face when I came home after a very late night out with friends. That one time I didn’t know if he was picking me up at the hospital after a shift as a student nurse, and I was so scared to call him and ask that I just waited and even vomited outside the hospital gate, late at night. The way I felt around him, the way I hid in my room when he shouted. The time he said he never knew what I was thinking when I was quiet/or been berated, because I would never say and would keep things to myself. The awkwardness and pain I felt, when I saw him at Harold’s wedding and he asked who I was. The last time I saw him, in his room, just the two of us, and I can’t remember if I hugged him or not, or what words were said. I remember leaving the room with so many words left unsaid, escaping. Like I always had to with him.

His last words to me, over the phone while he was in hospital, alone in a room because of covid, and how it mentioned another man’s name.

And I look at myself now, and how I have ceased trying to get approval from anyone else, and how no man scares me, because the only people I have always wanted approval from, and the only person who scared me, was him. And he’s dead. And I have not met any other man who has scared me. They all pale in comparison, next to him. Good training he did there. He raised fierce women, women who can’t be bullied, who don’t get easily scared. That’s what I like to think anyway.

I miss him, Ma. I miss him but I also don’t. He was special, Papa. One-of-a-kind. I have never met anyone like him. I wonder how you must have felt, in love with a man who had such strength in him. I bet the good days were really good, never a mediocre good day. Strong, handsome, charismatic, generous, dangerous…. he was the stuff of lore, of fiction, but he was our reality. It’s only now I realise how special he was, how not normal everything was.

How you loved him.

How we loved him.

How he made me who I am, hard on people, harder on myself.

How I still very much feel him, in the way I am to myself.

How our story continues, but only in my head.

In another lifetime, I hope we’d have more time, and another chance.

How thankful I am, that he was mine.

I miss you both,

Love, your daughter

Hershey