The Hug I Never Got to Give
There is a sentence I never thought I would have to say, “My dad died while I was living thousands of miles away.”
For years, I believed that leaving away from your family and friends was the hardest part of being an immigrant. I was wrong, the hardest part wasn’t leaving home. It wasn’t missing birthdays or spending Christmases on video calls or watching my parents grow older through a phone screen.
The hardest part was realizing that one day, the distance I had learned to live with would become the distance that kept me from hugging my dad one last time.
…That’s a kind of heartbreak I don’t know if I will ever recover from.
Today, 4th of August, my dad would have turned 75.
Instead of buying him a cake, we’re visiting his urn. I would not be hearing him call me “Puti,” instead, I find myself listening for a voice that I know I will never hear again.
Three weeks had passed since he passed away, but I still walk into my parents’ house expecting him to be there. My eyes still search for his favorite chair. For a brief second, my heart wins the argument in making my self believe that “Dad’s probably just resting.”
Then reality quietly catches up. “No… he isn’t in the next room, and he isn’t coming home anymore. And every single time I remember that it feels like losing him all over again.
A lot of friends are asking how I am and I don’t even know how am I supposed to answer that. At the age of 48, I’ve come to deeply known what grief feels like. Now, I don’t think grief is loud. Grief is reaching for your phone because you want to call your dad before remembering you can’t. I’ve realized that grief is hearing someone laugh in another room and wishing, just for a second, that it’s him. Grief is finding his handwritten recipe notebook and tracing his handwriting with your fingers because that’s the closest, you’ll ever come to holding his hand again. And more importantly, grief is coming home and realizing that home has changed forever.
Living in Canada gave me a life I will always be grateful for. It gave my children opportunities and gave me a career. It gave me dreams that became reality, but immigration has a cost that nobody prepares you for.
People see the better opportunities, and the beautiful places. But what they don’t see are the sacrifices hidden behind those pictures.
The birthdays you miss.
The ordinary Sundays that become memories without you.
The parents whose hair turns a little grayer every year while you’re looking at them through a screen.
The hugs you keep postponing because you tell yourself, “I’ll do it next year when I come home.”
As immigrants, we become experts at believing there will always be another visit. We tend to always push it and believe that there will be another Christmas, another birthday or another chance.
Until one day… there isn’t.
And suddenly you realize that the life you worked so hard to build came with a price you never imagined having to pay.
I’ve replayed that thought more times than I can count.
What if I had come home sooner?
What if I had stayed longer the last time?
What if I had hugged him just one more time before boarding my flight back to Canada?
What if I had known that would be our last goodbye?
Those questions don’t change anything. But my grieving heart asks them anyway. Of all the times I’ve come home to the Philippines over the last seven years, this is the only visit where time feels cruel. Every year, I joked that my vacation felt endless.
Now I wake up every morning wishing the clock would stop. Because, I’ll have to leave again. And I don’t want to, not because I don’t want to go back to Canada. But because somehow it feels like I’m leaving my dad behind.
I know he isn’t in their house anymore. I also know he isn’t in the urn we visit at the ossuary. I know love isn’t tied to a place, but my heart hasn’t learned that yet. It still believes that if I stay just one more day… somehow this won’t be real.
Maybe that’s why I keep feeling like there’s something left undone and something left unsaid.
Maybe there isn’t… maybe that’s just what love feels like when it suddenly has nowhere to go.
Dearest Dadi,
Today should have been your 75th birthday. We should have been singing Happy Birthday. Taking too many pictures. And for sure you would make your Maja Blanca or maybe your Sapin Sapin or Biko…
You should have been asking me, “Ano gusto mo kainin, Tyh?” But that’s not how we are, instead, we’re telling stories about you. We’re laughing through our tears because that’s what you would have wanted.
Dy, I hope you knew how grateful I am that I have a dad like you, you were my standard of how a hardworking man and how a loving and caring husband should be.
I hope you knew that every dream I chased carried a piece of you with me. And I hope you knew that not a single day in Canada passed without me loving you from across the ocean.
I wasn’t there to hug you goodbye…. that will always be the ache I carry.
But if love could travel across oceans… I hope you felt every hug I couldn’t give.
Happy 75th birthday, Dad.
I miss you in all the ordinary moments.
I miss hearing you call me “Puti.”
I miss hearing you ask me what I wanted to eat.
I miss coming home and knowing you were there.
Thank you for giving me roots strong enough to know where I came from, and wings strong enough to build a life across the ocean.
I only wish distance hadn’t taken away my chance to hold you one last time.
Until we meet again…
I hope the first thing I get to do is finally give you the hug I never got to give.
Love always,
Your Puti
