Dear Papa,

After you and Mama left, I’ve tried to avoid visiting funerals. There’s this quiet, sleeping ache inside me that awakens every time I see coffins, flowers, and people grieving. It’s not that I don’t want to be there for others; it’s that a part of me is afraid. Afraid of feeling everything I’ve kept buried. Afraid of reliving the day I lost you both. Somehow, funerals have become mirrors that reflect my own pain, and I still haven’t found the courage to stand fully in front of that reflection.

Last night, though, I went to visit your cousin’s wake. I walked into the room and immediately saw familiar faces ; people I haven’t seen in months, some in years, yet they felt like home. I saw the same setting I had grown up with: everyone sitting around a table, laughing, sharing old stories, a bottle of Alfonso making its slow rounds. And suddenly, my heart was searching for you. For your voice. For your laugh. For your presence that used to anchor me in rooms like that.

Tears came without warning when I realized you were missing from that familiar scene. No one was there to take my hand, pull me gently toward a group of new faces, and proudly say, “Ito ang bunso ko.” No one to watch me from across the room with that look only a father gives. And in that moment, Papa, it felt like time folded over itself like I was both a child again and an adult, missing you with the same intensity.

I miss you in ways that words barely hold. Sometimes I talk to you in my head, sometimes in whispers before I sleep, hoping you hear me where you are. I imagine you and Mama together now, whole, at peace, maybe even smiling when you see me try to be strong. But strength feels heavy without you both here.

Papa, I think grief never really leaves us; it simply changes its shape. It teaches us to carry love differently and to hold it not in our hands but in our memory, in our choices, in the small ways we live. I used to think healing meant forgetting the pain, but I see now that it means remembering with peace.

You once told me that strength isn’t about not crying, but about standing again after you’ve fallen apart. I hold onto that, especially on days when I feel weak, or when silence feels too heavy. I try to live each day with kindness and courage, the way you did. And when I falter, I remind myself that I am your child that your quiet strength runs through my veins.

Please keep guiding me from heaven, Papa. Visit me in my dreams when you can. Remind me of your voice, your smile, the warmth of your hand on my shoulder. Because even though you’re not here in the room, I still want to live a life that would make you proud.

I love you, Papa. Always and in all ways. I guess some loves, like what I have for you, don’t really end or don’t end with goodbyes, they just change in shape, some they just learn to live quietly inside you.

Please kiss Mama for me. I miss you both!

Love,

Your bunso.