I HAVE this recurring dream about my recently departed lolo. We’re sitting at the dinner table like we used to in my childhood. This time, instead of watching him eat his food with gusto (I did this until I was 10), I’m talking to him and just unloading. I’m anxious that I don’t do a good enough job at work. I’m frightened about sabotaging my own life with the choices I make. I’m afraid I fall short of the measure people put on grown-up #adulting Chinoy guys. Every time this happens, he never says a word and looks at me the way he always does when he tries to gently (but firmly) steer his grandchildren in the right direction. And then the dream ends.
I don’t know if this is a common theme among people with loved ones who have passed on—sometimes too soon. I can only surmise there’s some mental (and spiritual) alchemy when we desperately want to feel them near us again, even if only in our unconscious minds. Whatever the case, the past few months have been filled with too many goodbyes for too many departed. My heart goes out to friends and family who now have to live with that overarching feeling of loss and absence daily.
Yet it’s through these departures that we realize life is worth living. Not all eulogies are made equal, but when you personally know someone and hear other people talk about the good that the departed have done in their lives, it restores your faith in humanity. You realize that it’s in the small, seemingly insignificant things that the departed made the most impact in. And then you see that it doesn’t take much for you to honor the departed’s legacy—just kindness and tolerance in the little acts that don’t make it to IG or Snapchat.
It begins to dawn on you how short life is—and how precious each second, minute, and hour you spend is. You entwine the beauty of taking in every moment life has to offer—to “stop and smell the roses”—with the urgency of moving quickly so that your moment in the sun does not pass you by. Then you spend the rest of your life trying to strike that balance. I’m 30, and I don’t have the slightest idea how to stay balanced for longer than a week at a time.
Which brings me back to my dream. I sense my lolo nudging me forward and reminding me that life goes on. That I don’t have to “get it” all at once but can do so along the way, so long as I keep one foot ahead of the other. That there are going to be difficult and dark days—a lot of those—but that I should keep trusting my story and how it will write out.
Let’s hold up and hold on—in loving memory of all our dearly departed.