Z-Mom-Bie Falling

Life lesson: When the bottom drops, the terror is not in the falling but in the unending break. 

There is no rest for my soul!  I feel like  my mind and emotions have been wandering nowhere… forever… and I’m now functionless.  I have become what my dad dubbed as a “z-mom-bie”; a zombie mommy.  I’ve even begun looking the role, as family/friends watch me fall apart. 

I hate being this way; I prefer happiness and all things that make me want to smile all the way down from my toes. Yet, I am not going to lie—I’m heart sick.  I am sick of crying; sick of stress; sick of watching loved ones suffer; sick of complaining; sick of ‘sucking it up’; sick of trying so hard to just live my life! Gee…am I depressing? Yah... I know…I’m sick of that too.

But wouldn’t you feel as crappy as I feel too—if you found out your father was dying and couldn’t travel half the world away to say goodbye in person because of fear to leave your son when he is fighting pediatric cancer? And just when you finally come to terms of inadequately saying goodbye in a written letter and accepting your brother’s good will to be the ambassador for both, you find out that—THAT dreadful plan may not be an option anymore because a typhoon that has devastated the Philippine islands…most majorly the island in which your father is too sickly to evacuate…and now you have no news as to his and the rest of your family’s safety and well-being!!!!

I bet you would feel just like me… Not only do I feel confused, sad, lost, alone, desperate, and angry, I also feel guilty and regretful.  I feel regret in not being more of the daughter of the best father in the world and guilt for having a life that is so incomparable to the one I would have lived if I never left my third-world country.  Ever since I was separated from my father, I vowed that I would come back and take care of him; I had taken the responsibility and burden to better myself through US opportunities, ultimately providing my family relief in every way that I couldn’t if I stayed.  Unfortunately, by the time I was able to give help, my father’s health was deeply negatively impacted.  Marko and I have sent money the past 12 years to help my father and brothers buy food, make repairs on their fishing boat, and address proper health care with medicine and specialty care.  Still…it wasn’t enough.  I could only send very little and he had compounding health problems that I could not heal.  Don’t get me wrong, my Tatay appreciated and took the help that I knew made him feel ashamed to be helped by his daughter.  It was and is the least I could do for the man that gave me this life…that I very much love: the family that I have created with my husband and my children.

And now…I scan the news and online websites fearful that I would glimpse at a vision of my father taken away by a typhoon.  I absorb the photographs of a destroyed coastal homes of Leyte and its non-operating airport of Tacloban city. With no power and no forms of communication available and working, I am frightened into silence and despair.  It will be a week before my brother and mother fly to Manila and I hope that we hear good news from my father—or at the very least, the airport is again in use… My greatest fear is that my brother will have to spend his time there in-search of our father…eventually, unable to have the moment to say goodbye. 

There can only be an empty finality if our father departs without either me or my brother by his side and the comfort of love that he deserves. The feeling of unrest will remain forever.

 I pray that God will be merciful.  Until then, I will be waiting for some good news to break my fall.

**oh and on a freaky side note…Roman has been taking the framed picture of my father, me, and brothers off the piano and studying it as he sits it on top of his dinner placemat, his designated area to sit and eat.  For the past few weeks, he has done this, before all the bad news has occurred. There was no interest before his sudden particular interest and I wonder if Roman has some sort of sixth sense...

I have included the picture.
salamat sa iyo kaibigan

My Tatay

Tatay Berto…my Tatay has been the one constant in my life that I placed on a pedestal to measure everyone, including myself, against. Tatay is the dearest to my heart, even though I have been far apart from him since I left the Philippines at a young age.  Roberto Martin, my father, showed me how to give and receive unconditional love. That was the greatest gift that shaped me to who I am.

I am—because I remember…

…a banyan tree.  There was a banyan tree on a land that my family owned.  I remember happiness.  I remember my father and me in happiness.  I remember dogs.  I remember playing and laughing.  I remember the sun and the shade from the tree.  I remember falling asleep against and under the banyan tree.  I remember thinking my father was the banyan tree; my protector and provider of belonging.

…rain and thunderstorms.  I can close my eyes and still hear the hard rain pattering against the tin roof tops of the houses I lived in.  There were numerous occasions that I sat upon a window seat and watched the rain pour, behind wooden slatted windows.  At the age of 3, I remember feeling caged in and trapped by the rain.  At the same time, I remember feeling like the rain outside the glassless window seat felt like freedom.  Knowing nothing but the secluded life that I lived, I did not know what freedom meant.  My mom gave birth to my brother in the house and what I remember most of the situation was my pregnant mom getting carried away into another room, me sitting on the window nook, and the rain. That window belonged to my father’s family.  The cry of a baby being born pierced the air and I continued to sit by the window.  Most times, whenever it rains, I remember running and dancing in the rain…it reminds me of freedom.

…carpentry.  My Tatay, before he succumbed to a series of illnesses, was an expert carpenter.  Whenever his job didn’t have him making furniture, he was making these beautiful wooden flowers, detailed with petals, stems, and leaves. I had always thought he would make these flowers forever and gave away to my favorite teachers my own pieces.  Now, I have none and my father is too ill to ever work with wood again.  I remember visiting Tatay at work.  I was young, but I was inquisitive so I remember asking about the pipes throughout the warehouse and questioned their purpose.  With a white mask on his face, he explained that they were to vacuum the sawdust and wood particles in the room.  I remembered listening earnestly to hear the pipes working and my father shaking his head and saying that they have been broken for some time.  I remember hearing my father cough and remembered when he became too ill to work there.  At a later age, he had to switch careers.  I mourned the art that my father had to give up and the life he had to endure…I wish to take back all the wooden flowers that really belonged to me.

…puking. Yep, I ate so much fruit that I loved until I made myself sick.  .  There are times that I have flashbacks of fruit that can only grow in the Philippines and I torture myself with the memory of its uniqueness.  Yumm! Oddly, I also remember my father handing me a handkerchief to wipe the vomit off my lips.  Yep, I threw up on a ride of public transportation and then the handkerchief.  Actually, I remember many Filipinos with embroidered handkerchiefs and was shocked to find that disposable tissues and napkins really didn’t exist there.

…houses that danced.  Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur often.  The sound structures built in the Philippines provided me with entertainment.  In my fearful experiences of the earth shaking, I found humor in the swaying homes that family members tried to cover my eyes from.

…my father’s family, near the sea.  We lived in the country by the water and being kept sheltered from the city life…and the sun.  I remember looking beyond the farm fields and the endless sea, knowing that my Tatay was working in the city somewhere to bring back money that would feed and clothe me.  Every year, the trodden paths on the fields were lined with palms and religious reenactments for Easter.  Men, without shirts, would beat themselves as they marched and mimicked the punishments given to the Lord Jesus.  I also remember hardcore Catholics that volunteered themselves for the crucifix. Religion and passion seemed to be rooted in all Filipinos.

…transportation on wheeled railroad handcar.  The handcar was made of some sort of wood and a man pumped the crank to move it along the tracks.  I remember my father and I traveling on this handcar into the mountains to visit my brother, who stayed with my mother’s uncle’s family.  For the longest time, my brother didn’t know he had a sister.  I don’t know why I was with my Tatay and my mom took my brother but it forever made me love my father and strained the relationship with my mother. I discovered automobiles, boats, and planes when I traveled to the States. It was magic to me.

…Tagalog as my first language.  I think everyone can remember when their parents were teaching them how to write or read and to sing the alphabet.  I remember this for my language and I loved making my Tatay proud.  I do not speak my native tongue now, even though I can still understand most conversations.  Like my language, I have sort have faded from the original me.

…the heartbreak of separation.  My father never said goodbye to me.  The day I left the Philippines, I had waited and waited for my father to come and get me or say goodbye.  I was told that he would not be coming.  As a child, who absolutely saw her father as her world, I didn’t believe anyone.  I desperately waited for my goodbye but I walked unto the plane in silence.  I felt betrayal but I couldn’t blame him.  I loved him too much.  I later learned that my father could not handle saying goodbye to me and that giving me up was the hardest for him to do.  My father channeled his heartache as best as he could.  Tragically, he would visit my cousin, who looked very much like me, and was born in the same month.   

Now...I understand by what he felt. 

How can I say goodbye—after I say I love you? 

So I won’t.  

I will say goodbye when he is gone and all I want him to remember is my words of love.

 All I want to remember are the memories of his love.