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I have this ready to be posted on fathers day and on this coming Pride week events. Adamantly thinking of just tossing it away, but I know I will live to regret not to share my feelings of being proud and free on this pride week. Visited by a surreal dream of my father who passed away four months ago, my father who is a macho guy and from old school, who in his younger years cannot comprehend and understand why there are people who are different, and in that period of time i'm still very young and dressed in boys clothing and struggling with my emotions and rebelling against conforming on what a young boy should act and do. But as relying on my father for our daily bread, there is nothing you can do but to obey and follow the rules, his rules.
Then when indiscretions have forced him to leave his family and left my mother to raised us with just a little financial support from him, which eventually stopped as he has his new family to support, which leaves us to work at a young and tender age to alleviate the hardships that my mother is suffering in trying to raise us as a single mother and not seeing her before going she's gone to work, and leaves us to tend to oursel ves for breakfast and prepare to go to school And we all missed those loving moments. And during this period of time I discovered that I dont want to live the life and the gender I was born to. And as Mother's are known to surrender and give their unconditional love and understanding and support. I was still in my teens when I helped out financially to send younger sibling to school and during this time I am living full time as a woman and helping to make ends meet.
My mother still pretty much conservative have accepted me as she knows i'm happy to live my life the way I want it and what can make me happy is more important than what other people would say and her own feelings about it. But fate has brought us back my Father, and my mother being a christian and who believes in forgiveness welcomed him back, with some reluctance and hesitations from her children, most especially from me! But we sometimes have no power on what's life has in store for us and we know we can't beat life and what fate will throw on our feet. As my father also is adjusting to some changes 'Big' changes, leaving behind a wife and sons, to come back and find out that one of them have become a daughter, shocked, a little anger, but mostly disappointment and maybe for him regrets, thinking that had he not abandoned us, maybe I wouldn't become what I have becomed. Not convinced that I'm pre-disposed to be a woman, he rejected me and the love I was supposed to offer.
But as time went by without him really accepting me, civility runs its course in our family, we're slowly getting closer to each other again, and as he comes to term of who I am now in our family, We celebrated Birthdays and Holidays and weddings and new born babies like any other regular family and we all try to be just like any.
Until he was diagnosed with cancer few years ago and it advances to its critical stage last year and with the detection of early signs of Alzheimer, his conditions deteriorated, and although i'm not the eldest, I was delegated to bring him back and forth to the hospital and in constant dialogue with his physicians. in this period of time I thought I was doing it as just an obligations of a child to his ailing father and circumstances cant make me dispute the role I was put into, and as our day to day together in the emergency room, to the hospital ward and finally to the palliative care, where I nursed him up to his final hours, I realized what I was doing is beyond obligations and compassions, But because I love my Father inspite of. And when i'm looking at him and he's looking back at me, everytime I spoon fed him and as I see my reflections in his eyes, without saying a word and with tears in the corners of our eyes, we knew that we both have ask for forgiveness and we both have forgiven each other.
He died when I was not in the hospital. His ghost visited me last sunday 'fathers day' dream or not it's very surreal, standing besides my bed, a little scared but softly I ask him 'Dad what? and in his undead voice he said 'I just came to say goodbye and to thank you for spending time with me in the hospital and taking care of me and to tell you 'I LOVE YOU' and tell your mother I love her too! and as I was uncontrollably sobbing at this time, I told him I love him too and sorry for all our shortcomings. at this point I have to ask him if there was even just a time when he is proud of me, He kissed my forehead and said 'Since the day you were born' in which I replied and said I love him too and I forgiven him with all my heart.
Some of you will say, whats the relevance of this thread to this pride week, maybe nothing, maybe something, I have never been proud in all my life 'coz, I always thought I am an outcast in my own family and doesnt deserves to be in their society, as my own father, I thought was disgusted at me and made me feel unworthy, but he came back to tell me that he's proud of me, that i'm capable of loving and caring and forgiving and most importantly he made me proud of myself and that no pious and hollier than thou heterosexual can take that pride away from me and how proud is my father of me!
And My father love this country, He became a Canadian citizen together. And we owe our reunification to this country, as we could not leave the Philippines without him as he is the principal in the sponsorship papers. And I love this Country with all my heart as well.
HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!
Then when indiscretions have forced him to leave his family and left my mother to raised us with just a little financial support from him, which eventually stopped as he has his new family to support, which leaves us to work at a young and tender age to alleviate the hardships that my mother is suffering in trying to raise us as a single mother and not seeing her before going she's gone to work, and leaves us to tend to oursel ves for breakfast and prepare to go to school And we all missed those loving moments. And during this period of time I discovered that I dont want to live the life and the gender I was born to. And as Mother's are known to surrender and give their unconditional love and understanding and support. I was still in my teens when I helped out financially to send younger sibling to school and during this time I am living full time as a woman and helping to make ends meet.
My mother still pretty much conservative have accepted me as she knows i'm happy to live my life the way I want it and what can make me happy is more important than what other people would say and her own feelings about it. But fate has brought us back my Father, and my mother being a christian and who believes in forgiveness welcomed him back, with some reluctance and hesitations from her children, most especially from me! But we sometimes have no power on what's life has in store for us and we know we can't beat life and what fate will throw on our feet. As my father also is adjusting to some changes 'Big' changes, leaving behind a wife and sons, to come back and find out that one of them have become a daughter, shocked, a little anger, but mostly disappointment and maybe for him regrets, thinking that had he not abandoned us, maybe I wouldn't become what I have becomed. Not convinced that I'm pre-disposed to be a woman, he rejected me and the love I was supposed to offer.
But as time went by without him really accepting me, civility runs its course in our family, we're slowly getting closer to each other again, and as he comes to term of who I am now in our family, We celebrated Birthdays and Holidays and weddings and new born babies like any other regular family and we all try to be just like any.
Until he was diagnosed with cancer few years ago and it advances to its critical stage last year and with the detection of early signs of Alzheimer, his conditions deteriorated, and although i'm not the eldest, I was delegated to bring him back and forth to the hospital and in constant dialogue with his physicians. in this period of time I thought I was doing it as just an obligations of a child to his ailing father and circumstances cant make me dispute the role I was put into, and as our day to day together in the emergency room, to the hospital ward and finally to the palliative care, where I nursed him up to his final hours, I realized what I was doing is beyond obligations and compassions, But because I love my Father inspite of. And when i'm looking at him and he's looking back at me, everytime I spoon fed him and as I see my reflections in his eyes, without saying a word and with tears in the corners of our eyes, we knew that we both have ask for forgiveness and we both have forgiven each other.
He died when I was not in the hospital. His ghost visited me last sunday 'fathers day' dream or not it's very surreal, standing besides my bed, a little scared but softly I ask him 'Dad what? and in his undead voice he said 'I just came to say goodbye and to thank you for spending time with me in the hospital and taking care of me and to tell you 'I LOVE YOU' and tell your mother I love her too! and as I was uncontrollably sobbing at this time, I told him I love him too and sorry for all our shortcomings. at this point I have to ask him if there was even just a time when he is proud of me, He kissed my forehead and said 'Since the day you were born' in which I replied and said I love him too and I forgiven him with all my heart.
Some of you will say, whats the relevance of this thread to this pride week, maybe nothing, maybe something, I have never been proud in all my life 'coz, I always thought I am an outcast in my own family and doesnt deserves to be in their society, as my own father, I thought was disgusted at me and made me feel unworthy, but he came back to tell me that he's proud of me, that i'm capable of loving and caring and forgiving and most importantly he made me proud of myself and that no pious and hollier than thou heterosexual can take that pride away from me and how proud is my father of me!
And My father love this country, He became a Canadian citizen together. And we owe our reunification to this country, as we could not leave the Philippines without him as he is the principal in the sponsorship papers. And I love this Country with all my heart as well.
HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!
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