Forever Forty-Nine

Happy 77th birthday, Dad. I love you!

Today’s your birthday, Dad. It’s a day I’ll always remember and will always buy birthday cakes for. I ask Mommy how old you would have been if you were still alive. “Seventy-seven,” she tells me. “He was born in 1948.”

You’ve had two birthdays ever since you died: your life birthday (June 7) and your afterlife birthday (October 4), the day you died. Postmortem birthdays are unique. On life birthdays, we celebrate another year of life, but in your case, we commemorate the years that could have been. On days like today, I imagine what you might have looked like. Would you still wear your white undershirt and shorts at home? Would your hairline continue to recede? Would your hair turn silvery gray or snow white? For all our efforts to look young, it turns out I would have given everything to see you old.

I ask my Lolo, Mommy’s father, if he remembers you. “Noli,” he recalls. “Maayo ‘to mag-drawing.” (He was good at drawing). Would you still be drawing now? Would you still teach me how? We used to draw cakes and dolphins on my little study table. Would we read the same books? Would we borrow each other’s books? Would we watch basketball like we used to? At home? Live? Would we fight? Would we discuss politics?

I graduated from fellowship training last week, the nth graduation you didn’t get to attend. I remember my grade school graduation when I saw a man in a gray polo and thought it was you. I hoped it was you, even in spirit, holding a camcorder—the kind that rendered memories into VHS tapes—as I went up the stage, the same way you recorded every kindergarten school performance or birthday party.

I have a hundred what-ifs in my life, but the greatest will always be you. What if you lived? What if I didn’t need to blow your birthday candle for you? Today, you could have been seventy-seven, but I know that in reality, you’ll always be forty-nine, frozen at the time of death, not another day added to your life.

Our family reunion is next month, a tradition you started before I was born. You would have loved to come. You always brought the family together, attracting cousins and relatives like a hearth draws warmth. This particular reunion falls on my birthday, and I can’t get over how poetic that is – to celebrate my birthday, honoring the part of me that’s always been yours, the family, history, and legacy you’ve given me. For the last twenty-eight years, that’s how I’ve been filling the void you left, with stories of your talent, with memories of your jokes, with love from the people who remember you with me.

There are no answers to what-ifs. There’s no way to see into a parallel universe where you live instead of die. But for as long as I live, I will celebrate your birthday. I’ll celebrate that part of you that lives in me—how we both love books, how the stroke of the E’s in our signatures look exactly alike, how we bite our nails when we’re anxious or bored. I’ll celebrate the tired eyes, short height, the skinny legs, the horrendous eyesight, and the stubby toenails. You live in me, Dad. You always will. I knew you for only five years of my life, but you’ll be permanently etched in all the years I’ll ever live. Be it at your forty-ninth or what could have been your seventy-seventh, your life will always be celebrated.

I love you, Dad. Always and forever. Happy birthday.

Dad at the very first family reunion.