I remember him being so tall and me being so tiny. That is honestly the first thing that comes to mind, although it is not really one memory but all of them at once, like one long feeling that stretches across my entire childhood in Catbalogan. Sharolyn and I would wake up from our afternoon nap, and we would wait. I do not remember what we did while we waited. I just remember the waiting itself, the sound of the house in the late afternoon, the way the light would shift, and then the moment he walked through the door. I remember wanting to make him happy. I remember thinking he could do no wrong. And I remember being small enough that when he stood next to me, he was the entire world.
Papa was a Civil Engineer. He worked his way up to assistant District Engineer for the Department of Public Works and Highway, which in the Philippines is a position where a lot of money flows through, and where a lot of men make decisions that benefit themselves more than the people they serve. Papa never did that. He could have climbed higher had he played the politics, had he gone out more on weekends, had he made the kind of transactions that move careers forward in a system that rewards those who participate. But he came home. Every day, he came home. He changed into his house clothes right away, as if the office was something he left at the door, and then he was just Papa. That was it. That was all he ever needed to be.
I keep coming back to that. He was just Papa. Always had some house project going on, always tinkering with something. And after a full day of work, he would head to the market to pick up fish or whatever ingredients he needed, and then he would come home and cook. I can still see him in that kitchen, the way he moved, the way he handled the pan when he fried fish. He taught me how to do that. He taught me how to cook most of the Filipino dishes I know how to cook today. And after dinner, he would sit down in front of the television to watch his Filipino dramas and TV Patrol, the evening news, and the house would settle into this quiet rhythm of a man who had done everything he needed to do for the people he loved, and was now just being there. Present. That is the word. He was present in a way that I did not understand at the time, because when you are young, you think that is just how fathers are. You do not realize until much later, as an adult, just how rare that is.
I have to tell this one story because it says everything.
One time, Papa came home so proud because he had tried a dish called Sisig during a work lunch meeting in Tacloban. He could not stop talking about it. He went to the market, got the ingredients, and decided he was going to cook it for all of us. Now, Papa was an amazing cook.. I need to make that clear. The man could make anything. But this particular dish, when it came out and we all sat down.. this was not one of his best. My oldest brother tasted it and said so, pretty directly. Sharolyn was more discreet, she took a bite and then just quietly did not take another. And I looked at the plate, and I looked at Papa, and I could see how proud he was, how excited he was to share this with us, and I could not do it. I could not say a word. I told him it was delicious. I had a second serving. And then a third. All the while forcing myself to swallow every bite, my face doing everything it could to look like I was enjoying the meal of a lifetime. If a son had to show his father just how much he loved him, I think eating three servings of terrible Sisig would be somewhere in the top ten acts of love. I am joking of course, but that is just how much I cared that he was never disappointed in me. Because, for all the things he had done for me, how else could I ever repay him.
I say this all the time.. the biggest turning point of my life was coming back home to Catbalogan. Before that, I had been in Michigan, suspended from Catholic school, and honestly just did not have someone like Papa to steady me. Not someone to lecture me or fix me or tell me what I was doing wrong. Just someone to be there. And when I came home, that is exactly what he was. He did not sit me down for a talk. He did not lay out a plan for how I was going to turn my life around. He was just there, every morning and every evening, the same steady presence in that house, and somehow that was enough. I had a good high school life after that. I went on to study Chemical Engineering in Cebu, made the Dean's List, became president of the Chemical Engineering Council. And I know, with everything in me, that none of it happens without him.
He yelled at me once. I had been going out too much with friends and coming home late, night after night, and he really let me have it. It shocked me because in all the years I had known him, he had never once raised his voice at me. I do not even remember what I said back, maybe I mumbled something. But whatever he said that night, whatever was in his voice, it must have landed somewhere deep, because I never gave him a reason to yell again.
And then I left.
I came back to the United States to build my career, and I called a lot at first, and I visited a few times, but I was so focused on what I was building that I lost sight of what I was leaving behind. I always thought I had more time. I always thought Papa was invincible, that he was going to be there forever, in that same house, in those same house clothes, cooking the same meals, watching the same evening news. I never felt that urgency, never realized that the moments I had with him and Mama and my brothers and sisters were becoming fewer, and the stretches in between were becoming longer. And I was too busy moving forward to notice.
I look back at it all now, and the heartache is not that I was building a life. The heartache is that the man who gave me everything, who showed up every single day of my childhood, who chose his family over a bigger career, who went to the market after a full day of work and came home and cooked for us and sat with us and was PRESENT in a way that most fathers never are.. I could not give him the same thing in return. I could not even give him a fraction of it.
To think that the one thing I never wanted was to disappoint him. And that I would disappoint him the most with my very own absence.
Papa passed away on May 7, 2025. I was not there. Just like with Mama, I was not by his side. I have carried that with me every day since, not as guilt exactly, but as a quiet ache that does not go away, a knowing of what it costs when you are too busy building to stand still with the people who built you.
He was the greatest man I will ever know. Honest, hardworking, simple, and a true family man. He came from humble beginnings and he worked hard and he got to where he got, and he never once betrayed who he was. He lived a life that kept him humble, and he was as great a hero as anyone will ever know.. and as quiet and as humble as one too.
I only hope to be a fraction of that. And I carry him with me every day, and my heart aches, and I wish I could see him one more time, to tell him I am sorry for the time I wasted, to tell him how much I miss him, to tell him how much I love him.. and to tell him that for the rest of my life I will try to be the man he already believed I was..
