Father’s Day

I was malling just after the sun set today.  And that Father’s Day is very soon is signalled more effectively by the signages in every walls in the mall — e.g., gifts for dad, shop for the wonderful father, fine dining with daddy, etc.

Before 2008, Mother’s Day to me was more meaningful.  It was because I was a self-confessed mama’s boy.  For a set up in our family that had made me drawn more closely to my mother than to my father we had — and for which I no longer blame anyone of my parents.

However, in 2008, Father’s Day to me has begun to have an altogether new and — I would say, deeper — meaning.  It was the day when we brought my father to his final resting place.  He died 11 June 2008, and was buried on the immediately next Sunday.

I remember an SMS that I sent my friends as we were walking our father through to the cemetery: “As you are celebrating with your father, I am burying my father.  Happy Father’s Day!”

This year, I took my time off from my job just to visit my father’s grave as we mark his first death anniversary.  For reason of practicality, we attended a Eucharistic celebration where we prayed for the eternal repose of his soul and dined together in the 9th of June, 2009 in Manila.  In the following day, I took an afternoon flight to our province to personally do a ritual in my father’s grave.  As we were doing so — as I was accompanied by some Church people-friends — the significance of rites, which I remember we were discussing in our religion class, became very concrete.  Rites are structures through which we can express our sentiments about the here-and-now.  And it indeed pays to “borrow” the same words that one’s ancestors in faith used in expressing the cries of their own hearts.

On the day of my arrival in my place of work, it will the day before this year’s Father’s Day.

For this year, though, I have paid my homage to my father.