In Filipino culture, when someone dies you mourn them for forty days. The first nine days you practically live at the funeral home and pretty much pray all day long. It’s called a novena. Then on the ninth day, you bury your loved one. There’s a passage in the New Testament (not sure where) that tells of Jesus taking forty days to ascend to heaven. Filipinos take that (like many things) literally. So for thirty-one days after the novena, you pray for the soul of your dearly departed to ascend safely to heaven. And if you were a good Catholic and prayed just right, they make it just fine. So today, forty days after June 10, 2011, I hope my Dad made it ok, cuz I’m a jack Catholic. But I did my best.
Like a lot of Asian Americans, I spent as much time “reclaiming my culture” in my twenties as I did shunning it in my teens all in the name of Americanization. Now, as an adult, I know how to cook a handful of traditional dishes and speak broken Tag-Lish every opportunity I get (whereas in high school, I’d avoid bringing friends over to my house so they wouldn’t smell my Mom’s cooking and actively forgot Tagalog words and pronunciations to sound more American). As an adult, I’ve become Filipino-Enough. Filipino enough to appreciate a melodramatic teleseries that may or may not break into a musical number...but Americanized enough to still have to Google novena. I first heard it from my Mom when she Skyped me from the funeral home in Davao, putting the webcam right up to my Dad’s casket and having to explain why she was there for the next nine days. “The internet here is good,” she reassured me. “And I can send you the link to the surveillance cam over Daddy’s casket if I’m not on Skype. It’s on all the time.” Oy.
So I Googled novena. Derived from the Latin nove meaning “nine”. Nine days. Of mourning and prayer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sad that my father had passed. Devastated. But actively mourning for nine days?! Oy. But I decided I was going to be a good (ex)Catholic. I was going to be a good Filipino. And I was going to be a good son. NOVENA!
I found some prayer templates (seriously, prayer templates) but they were all for groups of mourners.
Plan B. Google found me a site for the solo mourner which prescribed a certain amount of rosaries to be said each night. Great. Except...
One night, when I was like seven or so, I woke up from a nightmare, ran into my parents’ room and couldn’t back to sleep. My Dad stayed awake with me and when it was obvious I wasn’t able to calm down (and when he was sure my Mom was asleep) he taught me: “If you can’t fall asleep, just pray the rosary over and over and over and trust me THAT will put you to sleep.”
So I’m ashamed to admit it here, folks, but this guy fell asleep after four rosaries on the first night. Because of my father, repetitive prayer had become my Ambien. And I wasn’t doing this right. What if he didn’t get to heaven?
The thing about my Dad is...he was a very spiritual man. He talked about God. A lot. In his prayer group, it was believed he had some healing abilities when he laid hands on you. Not like curing terminal cancer (cause if that’s the case, I wish he’d laid hands on himself) but like simple maladies. A cold or a sprained ankle. He was a man of words, he’d often be the one to speak or lead the prayer group. And god was he charismatic. But he wasn’t actually Catholic. He’d converted so he could marry my Mom. And we went to mass every Sunday and led a Catholic life. But in his heart and how he preached, he really didn’t adhere to a lot of the traditions (as you have probably surmised from his use of the rosary as a sleep aid). So day two of the novena, I didn’t feel as bad. They weren’t Dad’s traditions. Whenever my Dad talked about prayer, he’d say “How does a Hail Mary tell God what is in my heart? Those aren’t my words. Danny, if you want to pray, just talk to God the way you talk to me. He will hear you. He will understand.” So I did.
The rest of the nine days, almost every thought I had was directed at God. “Please God. Let my Dad get into heaven. Forgive him for whatever he needs to be forgiven for. And thank you...for giving me the time to make peace with him while he still knew what was happening.” And the thirty one days after...well, I still spoke to God about Dad but...
See, my father wasn’t a great man. But he wanted great things out of life. He invested every ounce of energy, time, and money in pursuit of that greatness. He wanted to be everything to everyone. And he encouraged it in me. And as each of his projects, each of his pursuits fell through or to the wayside, my father would just take all that passion left over and invest it into the next one. This is how I knew my father most of my life. But as the years flew by, his greatness alluded him more.
And one day, this man who was full of life and laughs, a man of words, one day this man with big dreams and big heart, wakes up in a modest house and retired in provincial Philippines, unable to form the words and thoughts that were there just the day before because of some fucking stage four tumor weighing on his brain. Any last chance of greatness he had was gone. And he knew it. He knew he was gonna die before he truly achieved anything great. And that single thought pissed him off beyond belief. That single thought grieved him more than life itself. He just couldn’t articulate it to anyone.
When Dad was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer in March, my siblings all staggered trips to the Philippines to be with them. It became the family decision to not tell him he was dying. Why stress him out in his last few months? He’d been given six months to live if we’d chosen to do chemo, but the family decision was to not make him suffer anymore than he had to. So that was that. I had planned to go in June when the rest of the family was going back. But he kept getting worse. Mom said I’d better come while he still knew who I was. So that was it. My trip was planned for two weeks starting at the end of April.
My siblings warned me that he wasn’t the Dad I would’ve remembered. I hadn’t seen him in two years, when he and Mom were in the States from November to March. Christmas 2009, I’d begged him to move back. They were getting old. Something could happen and we wouldn’t be able to make it there in time. He told me, “Danny, God will tell me when it’s time, before anything happens.” All I could feel when I saw him for the first time in two years was deep anger at him and God: He didn’t tell you. Something’s happened. Now it may be too late.
My siblings were right, I hardly recognized him. My man of words, the Dad I knew full of life and passion would spend his days in bed sleeping, only rising to eat and take his medicine. The first two days were awful and awkward. I’d try to joke with him at the table, but he just looked at me blankly, his face so swollen from the drugs with steroids for his cancer. Mom, who could brighten up the darkest room, was always so somber. I had never been the obedient and censored son. My Dad raised me to speak out, that I should respect him out of love not fear. We had always joked around and spoken frankly and naturally. Because of his condition, what conversation we had was forced, polite and robotic. And I think seeing me, it sunk in for him: this was it, everyone was coming to make peace with him. What he feared and could not articulate, was true. But no one was confirming it.
Day three in the Philippines. Tuesday, April 26, 7AM. We’re eating breakfast. I can’t help but stare at Dad. Finally, he looks at me:
Dad: When I look at you, you feel nothing.
Me: Why do you say that?
Dad: I feel you feel nothing because I feel nothing.
Me: You feel nothing?
Dad: I feel lonely.
Me: I’m here for 10 days. Hopefully you won’t feel lonely.
Dad: 10 days?! That’s not enough.
Me: Are you happy to see me?
Dad: Yes. Very happy. But I’m still lonely.
We eat.
Dad: Why are you looking at me?
Me: because I love you and miss you and haven’t seen you in two years.
We eat some more.
Dad: why are you looking at me?
Me: Because I love you and I don’t want you to feel lonely.
We eat some more.
Me: Why are you looking at me?
Dad: Because you’re looking at me. You want me to love you. You want me to live forever with you.
And just like that...he goes quiet. Finishes his food, takes his medicine and goes back to bed. And we wait. Mom takes a nap. I go over the script for the play I’ll be starting when I get back to the States. Dad has lunch. Says nothing. Takes his meds, goes back to bed. And we wait. In the afternoon, Dad gets up for a snack. Mom’s asleep. I rush to cut him some fruit and pour him some ice water and sit across the table. Just being there. He eats in silence. He looks at me. He looks up. He looks at his hand. Same mechanics for fifteen minutes.
Finally he looks up at me. He says (and he struggles for fifteen minutes to even get this out) “I’ve been thinking, love… Love is the most important thing. For friends or if your gay, or whatever. Love is what makes the world. You cannot cheat love. If you don’t feel love, you are nothing. Danny, you cannot deny love.” And he starts to sob saying that no one loves him. I hold him and tell him that I do. And he sobs. And I have to hold it together or I’m going to lose it and with the state that my parents are both in, I have to stay strong for them. They say that you become an adult when the parent-child roles reverse. And at that moment, I had never felt more helpless.
On Saturday April 30, Dad wants to go to church. His church is a forty-five minute jeepney ride up into the mountains. And it’s an outdoor church. Very small congregation, very welcoming and neighborly. I don’t know why Dad loved this church so much, but I’m not having the best time: the service is in a different dialect, the hymnals have no actual music, and I’m getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. I saw a five minute exorcism though. Very trippy. And then the congregation gather all around and lay hands on my Dad and begin to pray for him. And they all cry. And my Dad cries and rises and tells everyone that they must love and take care of each other, that soon he won’t be there to help or advise them. And I see the respect and reverence they have for him. Here, every Saturday, he is a great man. That’s why he loved going there.
My dad wasn’t an easy man. In fact, he was very stubborn. We took him for a routine checkup Monday, May 2 (five days before I’m meant to leave). Doctor says he has pneumonia. We have to admit him. Fuck. Dad gets fidgety. Won’t let the nurses put in his IV. Won’t let them take his blood. He keeps getting out of bed because he’s sick of being stuck there, arguing how can he know if he’s getting better if he can’t test out his weakness. He’s yelling, screaming, telling doctors, nurses, my mom that they don’t know what they’re doing, that they don’t know what he’s feeling, he knows what’s best. He yells at me because my Tagalog is so broken up with English “AREN’T YOU EVEN FILIPINO?” No one speaks up to him. No one says “lay down, rest, it’s what’s best” because A) everyone respects and fears the elderly in the Philippines and B) then they’d have to tell him he’s dying. He’s fighting the doctors, fighting the nurses, trying to get up, pushing them away, hobbling to the other side of the room, taking out his IV, until I finally explode
“Dad, you’re dying. You’re full of anger cuz no one’s told you, I get it. You’re scared because you don’t know how to handle it. I get it. But you have to help us help you. These doctors and nurses are trying to help you. Mom’s trying to help you. But you won’t help us. So please, take this time, let us be there for you like you’ve been there for us our whole lives. Let us take care of you. And make peace with what you need to while God is giving you time to.”
And he becomes very quiet. And he looks at me very plainly. And I say, “Now, are you ready to go back to bed?” And he simply nods. And the nurses go about their business. And he lays back and I kiss him on the head. And my mom starts sobbing because he won’t listen to her like that when I’m gone. And I have to keep it together for them.
He’s quiet the rest of the time in the hospital. Mostly. He is still stubborn after all. But when I’m there and watching over him, he holds my hand and just looks at me. Very simply. I make my mom go home and I spend nights there, so that he feels safe. One night, I hear him crying for his grandma like a lost little boy and I go over and I rub his head. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.
Friday, May 6. I leave the Philippines. I go back to the house, pack my stuff and come back to the hospital. I know that this is the last time I’m going to see my father. All I can say is that I’m very lucky to have spent the time with him that I did. And that I finally got to sob in his arms and tell him how much I love him. And how much he’s meant to me and how much he’s taught me. And his last words to me were “I love you.”
For a month and four days, all I can think of is my father. The play I worked on right when I got home to Chicago deals with a lot of great themes, but at the heart of it, it’s a play about a man and his dad. In the first act, the father delivers this inspiring speech about the American Dream and the real you is the one you imagine yourself to be. In the second act, however, dying of cancer, his dreams having never come true, we see quite a different father, one who allows his dream to become shattered, who’s essentially given up on life. At times, working on this piece was quite therapeutic. At others, that minute and a half in act two was the hardest part of my day to experience. After his dad’s funeral, the main character says “because that’s what you do after your Dad dies...you make his dreams your own.” A month and four days after I got back from the Philippines, June 10, 2011, the day of our first dress rehearsal, I had to begin making my dad’s dreams my own.
My dad wasn’t a great man. But he always wanted to be. He tried his best, inspired some people along the way, and if he loved you, you felt it one hundred percent. He taught me that I cannot deny love, that when it’s there you have to take it and give it forth. God is Love. He made some mistakes. We all do. I miss him every day. I no longer think forty days is too much to mourn, it’s probably the right amount. I miss him, but now I can celebrate him and hope that he is moving on after forty days. And that I can too.
Ricardo Bernardo. He wasn’t a great man. But he was the best man he could be. And he was my Dad.
