REMEMBERING AN OLD LOVE

I stumbled across this website some months ago. And I bookmarked it, because the story felt so close to my heart. It broke my heart to shattered little pieces, brought tears into my eyes, even now as I'm writing this down. Ah.


I remembered last Sunday as I was sitting in the church, waiting for the mass to start, I heard a tiny voice of a sweet little girl with a dangling pony tail and a pair of apple fresh chubby cheek, calling for her papa to reach for her arm, as she was carefully sliding to the side, wanting to sit on the pew next to her papa. And he embraced her reaching little arm with the warmest and most beautiful smile a father could give to his daughter, all sparkly eyed and happiness in the world.

How I miss that smile.

I lost mine over a decade ago. He surrendered in his three-year battle against cyrocis. It involved a lot of pain to see him slowly consumed by the illness, and to suffer along with him.

I can still vaguely recall the last time I ever saw him before he finally gave up for good. I remember looking at a big void in his eyes, the expression of being lost, of wanting to cheat death to buy some more time to live, which HE KNEW would take all the impossible miracle in the world. Dear Lord, it was painful to see. I was in pain. And so was he, I am sure. He fell into a deep hole of coma the day before he was gone. He woke up the next day just to lose it, after a straight couple-hour long of death-and-life bargain. I wasn't there by his deathbed when he farewelled the world. He was always a lone fighter, my father, and he was until his last minute. As am I today: his eternal legacy to me.

I miss him. If he still made it to this day, he would turn 65 last April.

And I would love to find hims arms to seek the reliable comfort that was always mine, the way I used to do whenever I was troubled. When I was a little girl. Ah, long time ago.

If he still made it to this day, I would take his photographs, on his old days, on his dying days, for whatever days we had left together, too.

img credit: Philip Toledano