Hello, Goodbye Father
by Jopy San Juan
by Jopy San Juan
“Ay!!! The old man was hit by the truck!!! Help! Help! Somebody please Help!” Someone from the group of bystanders shouted.
“Tatang…are you alright?! I’ll take you to a nearby hospital!”
“No son…I’m alright…Now that I finally met you…It’ll gonna be alright.” The man answered while his twisted body was laying flat on the middle of the street, blood flowing from the wound on his head.
***
That will be the way I’ll always remember my father. I’ll finish my college hopefully next year. Yet as I leave and move on with my life, the memory of the place where I first ever embraced my father’s twisted body seconds before he died will always remain etched as concrete as the façade of this school’s entrance. I lived with my mom and lola for 23 years. When I was young, I always wondered why I don’t have my father around to watch me grow. One Sunday morning when I was so curious why my friends would call it a family day, I asked my mother: “Nay, why does tatay was not here?” She would always answer: “Your father is working far far away.”
“But why he will not see us on Sundays? or Christmas? or during my Birthday?” I would innocently press. “He is too busy with his work. Never mind you little boy, I saved a treat for you. I’ll buy you some cotton candy later after we attend Mass.”
She will always dismiss our discussion on that issue that way. But the question kept lingering in my head until I went to college. I remembered when I had the chance to intimately talk to my mom on the true whereabouts of my father she related it to me with teary eyes.
“Your father is not here because it has to be that way. Your Lola disapproved our relationship then. He was too old to be my husband as for he was already in his forties while I was only in college. He used to work as a security guard in a school where I was enrolled when I met him.” Mom started.
“But why Lola should disapprove your relationship with him? Was he married then?”
“No, your father was a bachelor when we met. Only that with his meager salary, your Lola was not convinced that he can rear us and can give you a better future.
“Your Lola always wanted the best for me. The best books, the best school, the best clothes, and all the best things she and your Lolo can afford.” She reminisced
“But why father had to leave us then?”
“He did not leave us. I knew it. Your father was not that kind of man. The truth is, when your Lola found out that I was pregnant with you, she set your father up and accused him of raping me. With a good sum of money your Lolo and Lola were able to maneuver the case until your father was declared guilty. I was so confused and afraid during those times that when I was called to testify in court, I only cried and cried. I was not able to help your father. I was not able to disclose the truth.” Tears started rolling down her face.
“So it was a lie that he was working abroad? That he was so busy to see us?” my emotion slipped off my control.
“I’m sorry my son…I’m really sorry. But that was the only thing I could do to protect you.”
I stood up. “Protect me? Protect me from whom? from what? Or maybe to protect the truth about what Lola and Lolo did to us!?”
“Son, you don’t understand…I don’t want you to ruin your life or to hate your lolo and lola if you’ll find out what really happened to us. I’ve lost your father, and I don’t want to lose you anymore.” For the first time, I saw my mom in broken spirit.
Yet my anger overtook me sympathy.
“Ah! Don’t you think that they already ruined my life from the start? Don’t you think that from what they did to us, I‘m the one most affected?”
“I’m very sorry my son.” Mom almost begged when she said those words. “I’m very sorry why you have to experience all of this. That is why though it breaks my heart to see you going to your school everyday, I kept my silence for the second time around, for I’m hoping that you will find the answer to this questions there where all of these begun. There in that school where I first met your father.”
My mother’s statement was like a prophecy to me. I thought that that revelation was the most tragic moment of my life, but I was wrong. It was even tragic when I met my father here in this school.
I was going out of the campus after my four-thirty class when a man I often see there standing in the corner approached me. I used to pass him by there with his tattered shirt, worn out jeans and faded baseball cap. He used to greet me and asked me if I’m going home already or if my class is over. Until one day when he finally asked me: “Are you Dennis Dela Cruz?”
I was surprised and somewhat flattered of the fact that he knew me. I said yes, and tears fell from his eyes. Words raced from his mouth as his lips trembled when he talked. “I knew who your mother is…she is Naome. Your Lola is Carmen and your Lolo is Fernando. You might wonder why I knew them…you never knew me I’m sure, but I am your father.”
I was stupefied of what he said before me. I longed for this moment but now that somebody standing before me claiming to be my father is here, I don’t know what to say. He awkwardly offered, “I understand why you act this way, but I will not insist myself on you. What is important to me is to let you know that I am your father.”
Tears fell from his eyes once more when he turned his back on me. He started walking across the street away from me yet I can’t still move even just my lips. A rushing delivery truck wiped off my view of him in a flash, and the next thing I’ve heard was a sound of a human body hurled underneath the trucks chassis. My consciousness took me back when someone shouted. “The old man was hit by the truck! Help! Help! Somebody please help!”
It was then I realized what had happened.
I lifted his twisted body as blood flowed out from his head. “Tatang…are you alright?! I’ll take you to a nearby hospital.”
The last words I heard him said that will always linger in my mind was, “No son…I’m alright…now that I finally met you…It’ll gonna be alright.”
That was the moment I first met my father, and let go of him.
