Rest in Peace Papa

I wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t have my father’s relentless love and support. It’s been over 6 months since his death and I find myself still grieving, processing the pain that God has allowed us to feel in the past 4 years: starting from my mother’s unexpected death in 2021, my father’s stroke and locked-in syndrome from 2022 leading to his death in December 22, 2024, alongside my brother’s health struggles as well. My father died at the age of 66 years old, 3+ years after my mother died, just 3 days before Christmas Eve. We buried him on the day before Christmas Eve. This time I was there, in-person, just a few days before he died and I was there to bury him. When my mother died, I watched her die on a video call, and watched the funeral and burial on Zoom, all because of COVID restrictions for travel at the time. Unable to see and touch her one last time and unable to bury her broke me so you can understand why I was so thankful to be there by my father’s side so I can properly pay my respects one last time.

The grief I feel after my father’s death is different from the grief I felt after my mother’s death. My mother’s death was sudden, unexpected and the shock that came after was deep and painful. My father’s death was slow. He had a massive stroke in April 2022, just 14 months after my mother passed. The stroke spared his life, but it left him paralyzed, unable to swallow. The first few months he was still able to babble some words, and give a thumbs up but he then had multiple strokes that gave him locked in syndrome – being trapped in his body, unable to talk, eat, or move. He declined rapidly in 2024 and had complications with his lungs and other organs. Seeing him and caring for him as he became unrecognizable and bed ridden was painful for all of us. My father, who was once energetic, the life of the party, intelligent and hard working, affectionate and had a contagious laugh, did not deserve to spend his final years on earth that way. The pain was at a depth that was, at times, unbearable. There was also anticipatory grief. Our hearts prayed for a miracle but pragmatically, we also prepared for the worst.

The days leading up to his death was clear evidence that God exists. My father’s death actually strengthened my faith in God and His mercy. The way things happened, the timing, it was just evidence that God was there: He was there as I flew from the United States to Indonesia; He was there in the hospital room; He was there at home when my siblings and I took turns to freshen up and nourish ourselves. My father’s death allowed me to experience true surrender to God’s will, trusting that whatever the outcome, God is faithful. He worked through our family and friends that helped us in our darkest hour.

I know it will take some time for me to process the grief and trauma. I get flashbacks of seeing his body in the morgue or seeing him connected to tubes in the hospital bed. Or when he was laying in our house, one last time. Or seeing a tear roll down his cheek as he was in a coma and all three of us were hanging out by his side, praying, chatting. Or when I put one airpod in his ear and one airpod in mine so we could listen to music together. In our culture, it is common to have the funeral and mass at the family home. His body was at the same exact place my mother’s body was, just over 3 years prior. Or the moments when he took his last breath as we prayed. I remember that day, it was a Sunday. It rained all of a sudden. The sky was grey. Everything happened so fast. I was on autopilot. I was on Project Manager mode because I had to multitask and organize a funeral, while being with my father (physically) one last time.

I so desparately want to move forward and live my life but I feel that I carry this sort of energy in me that I haven’t quite processed yet. It emerges sporadically, unpredictedly from time to time, and it often makes me think, I thought I was doing okay, why am I still feeling this? Grief is a strange animal. I told my therapist the other day, “If my mind was a house, there’s a closet that is leaking. There’s something on the other side banging the door and something, it could be water, it could be some sort of vapor, is leaking through the edges, like the door of a room in sinking Titanic. I’m scared to open that door because I’m scared of the overwhelming things that will come at me, everything all at once. But I know it is asking to be seen and felt.” The door is leaking and it no longer feels controllable or manageable. She asked me, do you want to open that door? Over the past 5 months I was avoiding it. But at this moment I’m ready to open the door. Because on the other side is a happier, at peace, and healed version of me waiting.

People say, out of love, that the deceased loved ones would want you to move on and be happy. That takes work. It’s emotional labor and the definition of moving on is not an absolute, scientific moving on.