The First Birthday of Your New Life

 

Dear Dad,

It has been a year since you passed away from this life and transformed into your new one.  I hope you are enjoying the presence of God, of light, and of love there.  Gosh, I really miss you Dad.  But that's okay, I can deal with it.  I believe you are not suffering any more, and are watching over our family better from up there. 

What did we do this past Saturday?  Surely you could see from where you were:  We gathered together to have a mass for you, to eat dinner, and to visit your grave.  Weren't  you proud of us, Dad?  All your children and grandchildren who were in town showed up for you and for each other.  Mom was doing fine the whole time, except right before we were about to leave your grave, she seemed pensive and subdued.  Maybe she was missing you more than she could hide. 

I know she was not the only one missing you.  But we were just better at suppressing it.  When we were saying the rosaries at the cemetery, I recalled all those rosaries we said with you on the Sundays that you stayed at our house.  Everyone came and brought "Mass" to you.  We brought God, love, and energy.  So much so that enabled you to sit up through the entire prayer sessions with your leukemia weakened body.  Did God send us to strengthen you or was it through God that you had made us strong the whole year battling your illness?

Dad, your physical life has passed but I know you still live within each of us.  I think of you often, mostly at the least expect times.  Many times during my work or just doing mundane daily things, I caught myself thinking about you.  Just random thoughts such as:

You didn't have a big ego.  You listened more than you talked.  You didn't have any temper.  You rarely got mad.  When someone said or did something hurtful or unfair to you, you didn't react on the spot.  You didn't get even.  You knew how to forgive and forget.  You loved and accepted everybody the way they were. 

You didn't have the best children.  But you nurtured the best in each of us.  You asked us to do weird things for you, like putting together a Christmas show or pulling off a New Year's dragon dance when you knew we didn't have those talents.  Were those requests simply for your entertainment?  Not really, because we were the most amateur of all amateurs.  Then, were they for us to get together to practice and perform, to get out of our comfort zone?   Little did we know, we had so much laughter and bonding just trying to do things that we thought would please you.  We learned to be humble and to not take each other too seriously.  Silly little things that not until way later that I realized signified your quiet wisdom and meaningful teaching.

I recalled the nights I had my shift to stay with you in the hospital.  We talked and talked about anything and everything.  Your favorite topics revolved mostly around philosophy.  But when you started to feel your physical energy running low, you would always saved the last of it for our nightly prayers.  Those were the most touching prayers for me.  I realized how much you were a man of deep faith.  And I begun to understand how that faith had carried you through so much adversities in life, and how you had overcome everything with such grace. 

Dad, you were never loud or domineering.  You were never the star of the show.  You simply sat back and relaxed in that chair at the end of the dinner table watching us play or hearing us talk.  But in your quiet ways, you had always been the source, the anchor, the glue, the vitality of our family.  Your legacy was never power, status, or material things.  It was always the indestructible abundant richness we feel inside. 

Thank you Dad for the huge inheritance you had given us. 

Love you always,

 

Huyen

 

Sunday, September 20, 2015