Grief Is The Price We Pay For Love

by Michelle Callanta-Toledo

My dad passed away on June 18, 2021— the evening of my daughter’s 14th birthday, and just two days before Father’s Day.

He was 70 years old.

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My husband and I had planned and booked our daughter’s birthday getaway a month in advance, and decided we would be staying with friends at their wakepark in Pampanga.

We thought the trip would not only allow our daughter, Psyche, to spend a birthday outside of the house and in the company of kids her age, but also allow her twin brothers to spend time with their godparents, the very same friends we were visiting.

In the early hours of May 30th, my dad was rushed to the hospital for lack of oxygen, and would later be found to be suffering from pneumonia and the complications Covid-19 came with. My sisters and I didn’t tell a soul and kept that information off of our socials.

“He would be fine,” we thought.

Every day, we would send our dad video and text messages of hope and encouragement. He was discouraged from talking and receiving phone calls due to the high-flow oxygen he was on, let alone receive visitors, which made the whole ordeal all the harder.

For the next two weeks, we hoped and we prayed, and we simply tried to see the problem in front of us from a solutions-focused perspective— planning out what needed to be done once our dad was discharged, the kind of care he would need at home, and, as this pandemic has taught many of us, how we were going to pay for his growing hospital bills. These were the things my sisters and I discussed via video calls while our mom took more personal care of her husband.

So yes, we had every expectation that we would be taking our father home, understandably weak but alive.

But on the evening before our daughter’s birthday getaway, my eldest sister, Paula, called to tell me that our dad needed to be intubated. Again, I would see this from a solutions-focused and almost stoic perspective and simply charged it as something that needed to be done if it meant my dad would get better.

I refused to let my fears fuck with my hope.

Now, it’s important to note that I had just finished my graduate studies in guidance and counseling (my graduation is this August 2021). Whatever therapeutic knowledge and practice I had learned in the 3½ years it took me to finish, I was applying generously on myself, especially in those very depressing moments. (My thesis on “authoritative parenting and androgyny” would also mirror how our parents raised us, and the perceived benefits we would receive into adulthood, particularly when it comes to our emotional self-regulation).

This would explain the stoic calm I’ve come to know— that, or the fact that when you have one pubescent teenage daughter and twin toddler sons, and they’re at stages in their development that require your utmost patience and understanding, you need to be able to channel fucking Seneca himself if you want any chance of surviving without need of an actual therapist.
(And that joke was brought to you by the fact that “humor” is my number one character strength as per positive psychology— something I definitely got from my dad.)

So, we headed off to Pampanga, and I tried to make sure my three kids would have a great time despite the personal circumstances I was dealing with. The next day, on the morning of Psyche’s birthday, I woke up in a panic to several missed calls from my sisters and my brother-in-law. Apparently, my dad had requested for a family zoom meeting, but it didn’t push through and he ended up talking to only our eldest sister, who would then tell us how their conversation went.

He said, nay, he gestured, as he was intubated but surprisingly lucid (something we still have yet to understand from his doctors to this day, who have not answered any of our queries nor offered any consolations).

He gestured repeatedly that he wanted his tubes taken out, mouthed the words “enough“, and signaled with his hand that he wanted to “rest.” I always take a moment when I recall that memory as it’s the one that always seems to cut the deepest.

I learned this on the morning of my daughter’s birthday, who was sleeping soundly in the other room with her friend while I lay beside my sleeping husband and our sleeping sons. In order to tackle the full day ahead, I found privacy in the living room of our suite, crying as quietly and as quickly as I could, trying to release as much of my anguish as possible just so I could make room to accommodate other people’s happiness.

You cannot even begin to imagine the sheer weight of having that knowledge yet still manage to put on a brave and happy face in front of our friends and my kids.

But I did it. Not only because the hope I clung onto gave me courage, but because I didn’t want to burden anybody else with my grief.

“Grief,” Mark Twain once said, “can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”

And so I carried my grief and worry while I reveled in the joy and happiness I saw in my kids for being out and about, despite the still ever-present pandemic and the risks that remained.

People say moms are these superheroes when it comes to say, managing a household or managing a career; superpowers given in the context of our physical, tangible sacrifices and abilities. But we often take for granted the silent battles we fight for the sake of our kids. The wars waging within ourselves just to preserve and protect our children from pain and sadness.

And I really wanted was for my kids to enjoy themselves that day.

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But later that evening, as my husband and I were hanging out with friends, and our kids were playing in the common area of our shared suite, my older sister called to tell me that our dad had suffered from cardiac arrest. This prompted video calls from my two younger sisters as we waited, while our dad was being resuscitated. It was the most excruciating wait of our entire lives. But what made it especially difficult was to see how my sisters expressed their own anguish, and even in my own suffering, I grieved with them and for them.

There was even a moment when one of my sisters was screaming so loud, I had to lower the volume on my phone so that no one else would hear. In my flustered panic, I accidentally took a screenshot of our faces… a picture I’ve kept for posterity, and which I shared with my sisters so we would know how our pain and grief looked when we paid the ultimate price for having loved our dad so much, the depth of our loss commensurate with the depth of the joy he had brought into our lives.

But even as all of that was going on, and I was alone in my room, an utter and complete wreck, I didn’t have the heart to tell my daughter that her Lolo had just passed— she, being the eldest grandchild and the one who got to know her grandfather the longest.

So, I decided I would tell my daughter the next morning, who was absolutely distraught but was quickly consoled when we allowed her to hang out with her friends for a little bit longer. Her resilience giving me hope and courage for the days to come.

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We left a day early from our trip so that I could go home to console my own mom. She had just lost her husband of almost 40 years, and the only man she’s ever loved since she was 17 years old.

The following day, we spent our first Father’s Day with just our mother.

Now, I don’t think I have ever sympathized nor empathized with my mother as much as I did when I finally saw her at our house with our dad’s urn. But death always seems to have an eerie and morbid way of putting things into perspective as we become hyperaware of our own mortality and frailty.

For all the years I misunderstood my own mom, the years I spent not wanting to see it from her point of view, I was finally able to look at her with a bit more compassion, and appreciate the sacrifices she made for our family. Now, when I think about my own courage and my own strength as a mother, I don’t think about my dad’s intellectual life lessons, I think about my mother and her maternal instinct to protect those she loves and her resolve to love deeply, almost insanely. I mean, not to digress but it’s worth mentioning that my mom fought like a fucking beast at that godforsaken hospital, and cursed the entire administrative staff for how our dad was treated. I swear, it was like straight out of a movie. Hell really hath no fury.

But dad would go to Heaven that evening.

As my mom, sisters, and I grieved together and I began to cry (a very rare occasion in the eyes of my family), my mother held me in her arms and wiped away my tears with my dad’s Philippine Science High School t-shirt that she wore. And that’s when you know that your kids never stop being your kids no matter how old they get. That you’re never too old and it’s never too late to be a good parent to your kids, and to be there for them when they need you the most.

My sisters and I were lucky to have gotten to know our dad at an age where he was no longer just our dad— the looming authoritative figure who we both feared and respected. He would also become our friend. And it’s his friendship we will miss the most.

“Respect the dead, take care of the living,” my dad always used to say.

So, if I truly want to honor everything he stood for, and everything he meant to me, I would have to be the best parent I can be for my kids. There is no braver, safer, greater thing I could possibly do. Because honor, duty, and integrity were still very real concepts in our household, despite the preconceived notions of chaos of managing and providing for a house full of girls.

“Do not let your adversity be an excuse for you to fail, let it be a catalyst for you to succeed.” He drilled that into our brains at a very young age.

We knew we couldn’t let even our grief get in the way of finding our happiness, fulfilling our duties, and living purposeful, meaningful lives. I have a personal adherence to the idea that losses are only losses if there aren’t any lessons.

So now, I look at my loss as a lesson and something I strive towards as I navigate my own parenting journey with my young kids — that if I trust my kids, and give them my respect, and extend them a certain level of autonomy so that they may learn and grow on their own terms, and be both a parent and a friend to them, then perhaps, one day, they, too, will love me as much as I loved my dad.

And there really is no braver, no safer, no greater love than that.

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Images courtesy of Michelle Callanta-Toledo