Far beyond the stars

Far beyond the stars

My soul is longing to go

Where beyond the stars

To a better place I know

To the darkest night

I can see the heavenly glow

Far away, far away, beyond the stars. — from ‘Far beyond the stars’

“Huwag ka na umiyak,” Dad told me one nippy day in October 2009 in Anaheim, California, where he and Mom had been living for over 15 years. I was taking the late-night flight back to the Philippines after visiting them. My bags were lined up by the door. It was time to say goodbye, which I had done many times before.

But that day was different. Dad had just undergone surgery at the University of Southern California, where his late-stage pancreatic cancer was confirmed. He was supposed to have had “Whipple” surgery, which would have given him a few more years to live. But his surgeon did not proceed with the Whipple because Dad’s cancer had spread. The surgery was what some would refer to as “open-close.”

“Six months to two years,” the surgeon said after Mom asked him Dad’s prospects. So when I said goodbye a week later, I knew the goodbye could be my last. Dad was watching TV and I knelt in front of his chair, took his left hand and laid my tear-drenched cheek on it. “Huwag ka na umiyak. I will be okay,” he assured me.

Dad with my sister Valerie two weeks before he died on July 6, 2010.

The surgeon was spot-on. Dad died nine months later on July 6, 2010 (at around 5 a.m. of July 7, Manila time), exactly a week before he turned 78. I was still able to visit him in Anaheim two more times before he died. But the October goodbye was the only time I let him see me cry. And just like he did all my life, his first instinct was to protect and comfort his daughter…

* * *

When we (my sisters Mae, Dindin, Val and me) were little girls frolicking on the beach on Sunday outings, Dad would race with the waves toward the ocean. He would disappear into the depths of the sea, till his head and the white crests of the waves near the horizon were indistinguishable. Just as we were almost tempted to ask the fishermen to search for him in their bancas, fearful as we were that he was lost at sea, Dad would re-emerge from the waters, energized and exhilarated. Triumphant. He had finished the race, and he had won.

That was Dad — though “WAS” is a word that runs like a knife through my heart up to now. He is still as vivid in our minds as he was on the days when he would still go to the gym (which was just a few weeks before his cancer diagnosis). Mae would remember the funny way he sneezed. Val would catch herself framing her plate with both hands after meals and she would say, “This is so Dad.”

To reach his goals and to fulfill his dreams, Dad would swim the extra mile, conquer both the depths and the distance, and though buffeted by waves and winds, would always emerge triumphant.

And now, he has not only conquered the depths and the distance of the ocean. He has gone far beyond the stars.

Dad had the looks of Elvis, the sterling work ethic of his post-War generation, and the strength of Hercules. His looks were but a bonus — after all, he won the heart and the hand of my beautiful mother Sonia — because he worked like all he had as capital on this earth were his education and his hard work.

If he could swim to the horizon with hard work and determination, Dad raised his daughters to believe they could reach for the stars with hard work as well. When as children and during the hard times we sometimes went through, we would express our hopes and dreams to him, he would say, “Why not? Study hard, work hard.”

Dad faced his illness like he was going to conquer it. When told of the grimness of his cancer, and the life-threatening options open to him, his first question was, “After all of that, can I return to work?” Work to him was not a sacrifice. It was a springboard to his family’s dreams.

When in his hospital bed he was told that the operation to take out the tumor in his pancreas was not successful, and that he needed several rounds of debilitating chemo therapy to live, he immediately asked, “When do I start?”

He never blinked, never flinched even when we asked him the month before he died, when he was reeling from the effects of chemo, “Dad, gusto mo pa bang ituloy?”

He looked at us sternly and said, “Of course. Is there any other way?” His doctor then told us, “If chemo is what Frank wants, chemo is what he’ll get. Frank is a fighter.”

He was going to fight it out, my brave and strong Dad.

Did cancer win over him in the end? No, Dad triumphed over cancer because he showed us that life was worth going the distance for.

Dad’s remains were flown home to Manila. His epitaph, from Timothy, reads, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

* * *

The other day, two days before Dad’s first death anniversary, Mom visited his grave. She and the driver stopped by a flower stall near the cemetery and she bought a bouquet of assorted blooms to lay down on Dad’s granite headstone. After she got into the car and just as the driver was pulling away from the curb, the flower vendor ran after the car and tapped on her window with three red roses. “Para sa inyo,” she smiled at my pleasantly surprised Mom.

I told Mom, who related the story of the generous flower vendor to me yesterday, that the roses were not a gift from the vendor.

They were from Dad, from far beyond the stars.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected])