It was heart-wrenching to read the things my mother thought needed to be said in the case of her unexpected death. In the letter, she spoke to us directly, called our name and our shit with so much love, I can’t begin to imagine if anything really happened to her. I thought about it, you know. Would I be able to live a life without her? How would I cope? My father, on the other hand, was very light on the topic. His attitude was more like, “Everyone will face death eventually. If I am dead, good luck to you all, I am out. Bye!” My brother said something about him last week, which I thought was pretty accurate. “[My father] He lived his life the way he wanted it,” and that he surely did. He was also pretty confident that he wouldn’t get to age 70. 

My father died just a few months after he turned 69 years old. Last July, when I saw him on my phone screen, lying on the floor with eyes closed and pale lips, my heart pounded hard. I couldn’t even cry but oh how I wished to be there. We all lived in different cities, my siblings and my parents, and that video call was the last time I ever saw him. It was busy, people were panicking on the other side of the phone, unsure what to do with no family members present. But one look at him, and in my gut, I just knew. He was gone. I hung up and called my brother right away. I told him, I think he passed away. I called my mother and told her the same news. I had to repeat the sentence five times before she realized what I was saying. I think repeating the news gave me the realization as well. Suddenly, there were no bones in my body and breathing felt impossible. I always thought there would be more tears but all I could feel was this empty space inside of me**.** Was it my heart that was broken? Or my body? Or was it everything? Because it definitely felt like everything in me shattered. How could something be so painful yet so numb? Will this feeling ever go away?

I do have a theory now that the feeling won’t go anywhere. Just like how your heart and your soul suddenly filled with so much love after the birth of your child. This is just the opposite. It probably will be less daunting over time, but I don’t think it will go away. This is how it feels to lose the love of your life, I told myself. A good friend of mine who had a similar relationship with her late father as I had, told me, his presence was in the absence and now that he’s gone, he’s everywhere. That was probably the most relatable thing someone has ever said to me after my father passed. He’s everywhere and I am trying to accept that. 

Rewind to early 2020, when the world declared COVID19 as a pandemic and things went above and beyond crazy, I was so scared my father wouldn’t make it. Look, not to play favorites, but my mother casually gave me a hand sanitizer to keep in my bag (way) before we even heard about Covid19. She’ll thrive in the condition where you have to keep things (and your hands!) clean and spotless, wiping all surfaces every few hours. My father, however, was the total opposite of her. Let’s just say, he’s not germaphobic. Anyhow, my father has had asthma since he was a child, it never got out of hand but this condition made him unqualified for the vaccines. At least, not until his doctor cleared him up for it. He said in full confidence, I would be fine without it. I would not catch the virus. We did the treatments for his condition but never got to the point where he was qualified for the vaccines.

One of my uncles arrived at my father’s estate, a few seconds after I ended the video call. He took my father to the hospital to check or at least see if there’s anything to do to save him. The doctor called it Death On Arrival, suspecting a heart attack. To give us peace of mind, we wanted to have the assurance that my father didn’t in fact catch the virus. Past midnight, we got the confirmation from PCR and SWAB tests that came back negative. The drama of getting the test result back just in time for us to prepare for the funeral, I can’t help but grin a little bit, oh my, my father and his life. I could almost hear him chuckling, “I told you so.” 

It's been a little bit over 100 days since his passing and I am still learning how to live in the world without my father. I had this idea to interview my father and make a journal out of it because he has all of these unbelievable stories. I lost a lot of motivation and will recently. With one baby on her way to toddlerhood, who has the time to appropriately grieve? That is why when I read about Mirror in my recent jump into learning about the blockchain, a tiny little spark went off.

Would it be crazy to reach out to my father’s friends and talk about whatever connection they have together? I know it would be interesting yet also scary, considering the possibility of finding truths about my father that I (might) don’t want to hear.

Writing this piece, I could hear my father giving his uninvited opinion in my head, “You better hurry up because my friends are old and they are gonna join me sooner rather than later.” 

So here I am, trying to immortalize my father’s existence through written words. These last two years, people have been experiencing tremendous grief, mourning over their loved ones. We’re going to get through this. I know we don’t know each other but we’ll learn over time how to live in this unknown world. In the meantime, stay healthy and stay strong. I’ll talk to you again soon, along with an interesting story I hope.

mf

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Hi everyone, my name is Meity and I am just learning my way into crypto/blockchain/web 3.0. My (almost) three years old daughter and I are also trying to create NFT together from her daily art & craft activities, we’re still learning and exploring so please be kind! 

Let’s get connected on Twitter and hic.af <3 I would be very happy to hear from you.