For My Father

I was 20 years old when my father said to me, “Write something about me.” He was a rather short man with a boyish grin and a taste for good shoes. He had turned 50 that year when I published my second short story, but the stroke he’d had the previous year had robbed him of the youth he deserved.

Maybe it was the way my name appeared on the cover of a teen magazine. Maybe it was the illustration for the story I had written. Or maybe it was just me – making my mark on the world. Anyway, it was a big deal to my father. Seeing my name in print twice in a single year gave him the assurance that I wasn’t just making a fool out of myself – I was actually doing something.

We were on the second floor of his new office building. On his desk was a framed picture of my brother and me when we were still very young, posing like superstars.

“What do you want me to write about?” I asked.

He shrugged, leaning back in his chair, both hands behind his head. “I don’t know. A biography, maybe. Anything.”

I laughed, simply because the idea of me writing his life story got me a bit giggly.

“Someday, Dad,” I told him. “You have plenty of years ahead of you; there will be more stories to come.”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he closed his eyes and smiled. To this day, that image lingers in my mind – mostly because the same smile was on his face, two years later, on the day that I arrived from Boston for his funeral.

Early on a January morning, during a dreadful winter, while half the city was still tucked up in their beds, my phone rang. It was my mother. I was at my desk, at 3.30 in the morning, writing. She asked me if I was asleep, and I said no. She asked me if I was sitting down, and I said yes. Her calm tone soon caught up with me. Sometimes, you can smell bad news is on its way when the messenger tries too hard to prepare you for it. A moment later, she told me, as if dictating a telegram:

YOUR FATHER HAD ANOTHER SEIZURE AT WORK. HE WAS IMMEDIATELY BROUGHT TO THE ER. PRAY FOR HIS RECOVERY.

For months I had been dreading this very moment – and there it was, staring at me with its large, bloodshot eyes. I promised my mother that I would get on the earliest flight home.

Once the call ended, I looked at my computer screen and found myself with the awkward sensation of memory lapse. I couldn’t remember what I was doing before the phone rang. I couldn’t remember why I was there, hundreds and thousands of miles away from home. Then it occurred to me that my father might die.

The next step was obvious: I called one of my closest friends, who was studying in China. When she picked up, I couldn’t say a word. I felt numb. Eventually, I got my voice back, enough to ask her to stay on the line no matter what. She did.

I paced around my bedroom with the phone receiver against one ear, and the other ear tuned in to the radio, which I had been listening to minutes before I received the news.

Suddenly, I felt cold. I was shaking. I looked at the thermostat, felt the heater: the temperature in my room was up to 24 degrees. I sat down on the carpeted floor, legs crossed, and tried to will the iciness out of my system. What is it like to lose the one you love?

The radio newscaster, at four in the morning, excitedly announced the day’s program: songs were selected, interviews were lined up and, once again, the sun would rise over the city’s skyline. After 45 minutes of complete silence, I finally told my friend what my mother told me.

It took a while before the tragic news hit the other end of the line, where the afternoon sun quietly set into the early descent of evening. She was breathing hard, holding back tears. “I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said. Trying to sound upbeat, she continued, “He’ll be OK, you know. Please, have faith that everything will be OK.”

I walked to the window and stood there for a moment. Below me, a carpet of snow covered the entire backyard. It was almost poetic, I thought, how dead it looked in the winter. I placed one hand on the window glass, felt a tinge of freezing air pierce my pores, and said, “I don’t think so. I think this is it.” The time had come.

For 22 hours, all I did was sleep. I missed nearly every meal that was served on the plane. When I arrived in Singapore for a 10-hour layover, I succumbed to hunger and went to get food at a 24-hour deli. Then, for no apparent reason, I burst into tears, barely touching the sandwich I had ordered. It was as though a veil had been lifted and there, in front of me, was the face of love bathed in mourning.

Unable to stay calm, I made a few panicky phone calls, none of which was to my family back in Jakarta. I was sobbing like a little girl who had lost her way home. Friends patiently waited at the receiving end until my cries softened, and quietly spoke to me of hope. It wasn’t until hours later that I went into the nearest Internet café and wrote a note to another friend:

It’s the most horrible pain one could ever feel, and I do not wish it to happen to anybody else – but, I think that as I’m writing you these words, my father has passed away. If it should set him free from the pain he was suffering, then I shall embrace his departure from the world with as much grief as relief.

Upon my arrival in Jakarta, my mother held my hand and gave me the news: my father had died the day before my plane landed – the treatment could do nothing to sustain his life.

“Did he suffer?” I asked.

“No,” my mother said, shaking her head.

I nodded. “I’m glad.”

The last time I saw him, he was lying in a coffin all dressed up as if for a big ceremony – exactly how I once imagined he would look when attending my future wedding or my brother’s. I bent down to plant a kiss on his forehead. It was odd that after all the conversations we had had, every minute of them, we never got to say goodbye. We were so close even when we were apart, yet on that fateful day I had lost him forever. Was there anything I could do to bring him back?

The first few days after his cremation, I begged my father to leave me alone. I was not angry, but afraid. I couldn’t spend more than five minutes reaching back into my memories of what life had been like with him in it – I felt as if I was running so far ahead of time it would be impossible to retrace all of my yesterdays. I needed closure, but it was easier to escape.

It has been five years since I received my mother’s phone call. At times, I still feel my father’s presence around me or see his face in a crowd, and there are times when he comes to me in a dream. I used to think the hardest thing about losing the one you love is letting them go, but now I realize the hardest thing is letting ourselves go.

“Write something about me,” he said.

He was a rather short man with a boyish grin and a taste for good shoes. He was a crowd-pleaser, an entertainer, a best friend to everyone he knew. He loved his children with a frenzy that could set the whole world on fire. He was a son, a father, a brother, a friend, a husband and more. He believed life ought to be lived in the best possible way, and that hearts are made to love.

He liked to be left alone, but couldn’t bear the sight of an empty room. He loved like a poet, but was in constant fear like a child. He was a miracle worker to most of us, especially to his children, because he had done so much in his life while receiving very little in return. He wasn’t the most perfect father figure in the world, but he was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

“Write something about me,” he said.

He was a rather short man with a boyish grin and a taste for good shoes. He liked to watch action movies, play tennis and eat grilled bacon. He disliked wandering through crowded places, eating Western food, being lied to and holiday seasons because they gave him a reason to step out of his office.

He wanted, more than anything else, for his children to experience life the same way most other children do; therefore, he saw to it that we were loved as much as any other child. He hated, more than anything else, to be separated from his children by oceans and continents – but he learned that loving is also about letting go, so he sent my brother and me abroad for better educations. He accepted God as a greater being, the master of the universe who exists in the hearts of the faithful.

“Write something about me,” he said.

He was a rather short man with a boyish grin and a taste for good shoes. He kept in a drawer every single letter, postcard and email I had sent him. We used to go to the movies together on Saturday afternoons, and he would unfailingly miss two-thirds of the film as he snored beside me.

He told me stories of growing up, of living against all odds, and of how both luck and misfortune had journeyed in and out of his life. He told me the secret of living a happy life is to live it honestly and fully. We both believed he would live forever, and we made a pact that we would one day travel the world together. Unfortunately, our paths would sooner separate than cross.

“Write something about me,” he said.

He was a rather short man with a boyish grin and a taste for good shoes. He once told me that death is as natural as the tree that grows from beneath my feet; now I’ve learned that death is like a twister – it comes and goes without a warning, but when it does come, it leaves a mess on the Earth that will take years to clean up.

And when it goes, once you escape its threat, it leaves you breathless – giving you a second chance. I wish I had been there during the last hours of his life. I wish he had seen me for the last time. I wish there was a way that I could say goodbye.

Most of all, I wish I had told him that I could never write about him simply because there aren’t enough words.

+ Maggie Tiojakin

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