For the Fatherless This Father’s Day

There’s a movie from the 2000s that not a lot of people have seen called Frequency. It stars Dennis Quaid as a fire fighter and family man, and Jim Caviezel, who plays his son. The action happens in two different timelines—when Quaid’s character is a young dad with his six-year-old son, and years into the future when his son, now played by Caviezel, grows up. It’s tough to describe the film without giving too much away, but while there are fantasy and sci-fi elements, at its core, it’s about the special bond shared between a son and his father. 

I love Frequency and always watched it when it was showing on TV, like on HBO or something. But ever since my own father died, I haven’t mustered the courage to watch it again. I used to bawl my eyes out at that one scene near the end; I don’t think I could handle it now. Too on the nose, I keep thinking. 

ALSO READ

I Never Got to Find Out if My Dad Was Proud of Me

The Extraordinary Journey of Raising Queer Kids as a Straight Dad 

I used to consider myself lucky that I’ve never really had a great tragedy in my life. All of my grandparents passed away when I was fairly young, so I never got the chance to develop a close connection with any of them. No close relative, classmate, or friend passed away during my growing-up years and perhaps the most emotional I ever got was when Pope John Paul II, after whom I was named, died in 2005. I remember watching nonstop coverage on the news channels and suddenly getting teary eyed seeing the faithful all over the world mourn his passing. I kept thinking back then: if I’m getting all worked up crying over the death of someone I didn’t even know personally, how much worse would I feel if it were someone who was actually in my life?

And so my bedtime prayers back then were nothing but pleas to keep the people closest to me safe, happy, and healthy. Every year, for Christmas and my birthday (which were just two days apart), I’d wish for nothing else but to have everyone in my life alive, at least for another year. Somebody Up There must’ve liked me, because I got my wish year after year.

But luck, and the divine, apparently, could only last so long. My father died suddenly, unexpectedly, one Wednesday morning in February 2017. When I got the call, he was already gone. There wasn’t a prolonged hospital stay that gave me a chance to say goodbye, no opportunity to chat with him one last time. The last time I saw him, and spoke to him at length, was when I was home for the holidays. How unfair, I kept thinking, that that was all the time I had with him. Thirty-seven years, including the years when I couldn’t lift my own head up or wipe my own ass, and so had no clue that I was being taken care of and loved by this great man. It just felt so hopelessly, excruciatingly short. 

I was on the way to an interview when I got the call. I held myself together long enough to finish what I needed to do, but broke down almost immediately right there on the street just outside the venue, just minutes after I took my leave. There it was—I was finally living the day I was dreading since the pope died. And it was even more painful and gut-wrenching than I could have ever imagined.

Most of the arrangements had been taken care of when I drove home to Cavite that day, but I remember my mother telling me that they had left my father’s wallet at the funeral place where they got his body ready for the viewing. It didn’t occur to me to ask what his wallet was doing there; it’s not like he had time to grab it the day he died because I was told he passed away in his sleep and they had to rush him to the hospital that morning when he wouldn’t wake up.

Ever the dutiful son I drove over to the funeral home to retrieve my dad’s wallet. The attendants placed it in a plastic bag and handed it to me. I had to suppress a grin because it was a typical dad’s wallet: fat and bulging not with thousand-peso bills but with an assortment of random papers and IDs and cards. There were receipts from years ago whose ink had long since faded I couldn’t even tell what it was for; some scraps of paper with what looked like phone numbers written on them; and crusty old bills that had long since been demonetized. 

But then, buried underneath all of that was a photograph of all of us as a family. It was an old one, taken at our old house, just us five—he and my mom, and the three of us siblings. This was before my brother got married and before my sister had her kids. It must’ve been during Christmas, or during his birthday, I can’t remember now. I was wearing a shirt that was too big for me, my mom had on a striped gray dress, and we were all sitting together on the sofa smiling.

That’s when I absolutely lost it. Hot, salty tears poured down my cheeks and there was nothing I could do to stop them. I sat in the car for almost an hour just staring at the photo, and the wallet, numb from the realization that the father I knew and loved was gone. 

No, I was hardly the first child ever to lose a parent; plenty of others have gone through the exact same experience; but the sheer pain and anguish coursing through me at the time felt gigantic and unique, and more real than I thought I could bear. Even though I knew grief was a universal emotion, what I was feeling at that moment felt intimate and exceptional because they were mine and it was happening to me. And the thought made me feel even sadder. 

It's been seven years since my father’s passing, and if I’m being completely honest, it HAS gotten better. I’ve learned to live with the idea that he’s no longer with us. But then, days like the holidays, his birthday, and Father’s Day roll around and the hurt and the anguish return. To be fatherless on Father’s Day, especially, is its own level of grief and heartache. You’re exposed to and maybe even join the celebrations for the number one man in your life, but privately, you yearn for the embrace and the comfort of the first man who made everything in life seem better. It takes courage to live life now that he’s gone, but I like to think that courage is just another thing my father taught me. 

So yeah, maybe I’ll look for that movie Frequency and watch it this weekend. I’m due for a good cry anyway.