‘I Love You’ are not always words we get to hear from our parents
“Do you know your father’s life choices?”
Until that fateful March day I had never discussed, thought or theorized what my father’s choices might be in his dying days. Living life in a vegetative, immobile state seemed massively counterintuitive to the way he lived his life. My father was jovial, lighthearted and always avoided a fight — in stark contrast to my mother, who was born ready for battle. This was a battle we were both in for even though she had divorced him 32 years prior. Family is funny like that, it doesn't always come in the shape or form you expect, or even retain that shape, but it is in the end all we have.
It was during this time that I realized emotionally my life was about to enter an existential crossroads. Every joke I made with him, misunderstanding that we had and a question of “why would you do that dad” came crashing down on me at a time when I needed my personal strength the most. You reflect on a lifetime of “maybe I could have done more of ____” or “why didn’t he ever do _____ for me.” In times of darkness, we’re tasked to emotionally draw light from whatever source is accessible for our psyches. As 2 months of hospitalization, insurance atrocities and emotional grips tallied on one crippling thing stood out to me as dad’s mortality waited in the wings — I’ve never heard the words “I love you” from my father.
Growing up in America doesn’t prepare you to be emotionally to be indifferent. Many kids born here are taught that feelings matter and identify from a young age via the land of TV tropes and movie families that they are a gift. My parents, Juana and Richard, are two people cut from a different kind of cloth. My father was born in the 30s into poverty and the foster care system. Things were not easy for him, but he always made the best of what he had and worked hard to make ends meet. It is my hunch that he too never heard the words ‘I love you’ from his parents and in fact, was abandoned by his father as a child and separated from his mother from childhood until he reconnected in his adult life.
My mother is a hardened woman who immigrated here from the Philippines in the 70s, seeking out a life of adventure and love. Never one to conform to anyone's standards, she taught me how to be tough from a young age and to “never rely on any man and have your own money.” Her childhood was equally as frayed with her mother passing in her late teens, forcing her to play impromptu mom to her 5 siblings. Her character is a unique mix of morally complicit and religious, yet rebellious and curious.
Both of my parents came from a place where “I love you” was considered a given per my existence and continued enrichment, but the words themselves were just ornamental and frivolous. With their own issues becoming more evident over time, I grew up both assured my mom was giving it her all and never quite knowing if she hated or loved me because her approach was tough love through it all. In Asian culture, especially in her native Philippines, corporal punishment isn’t extreme and there’s no way you’re going to learn how to be a decent person until someone smacks you across your face to incite a visceral reaction.
No knock on her, this was what Juana knew in life. What became clear to me at a young age was my father’s extremely different approach to love. My dad listened to my feelings on things. I lamented about my mother’s toughness, poverty, dark corners of my mind and all the moments in my upbringing that were emotionally void and crushing. He was not an “I hear you sweetie” kind of guy, but from his patience and willingness to validate my feelings when I was acting like a little brat or craving more when the well had run dry, I felt a sense of love and understanding.
As an only child, you have no gauge to weigh against. Hell, as a child period you have no way of knowing or understanding the life-long repercussions of a childhood in the emotional void. As my parents continued to move on in life while co-parenting me, I began to accept that I was probably not going to hear ‘I love you’ in a traditional way, the way I had seen friends around me experience with their parents. This just wasn’t something I was going to experience in my lifetime because my life, was different than everyone else. Critique ran high without a balancing force of loving affirmation, a common issue I’ve come to find out that many children of immigrant and old-school parents experience. They struggled selflessly and you should too.
It became hard not to grow resentful as the years went on. Watching through the lens of other families of friends and ex-boyfriends, I envied their unbeknownst ability to receive free love from their parents. Drama-free, actual love. It wasn’t until my late 20’s that my mother began saying it to me freely and unprompted. It was as if some part of her unlocked, we came to an understanding of time, space and forgiveness and she just began validating me with the simplest “I love you” at the end of our phone calls. Time is funny like that, it will either distance or connect two people, but it always requires work, gratitude and patience.
It’s a dark secret many people do not speak about, likely because it’s triggering. Your parents aren’t required to tell you they love you, but it sure helps for lifelong morale. Once you’re born into this world, you’re inherently at their mercy. How can they move past the trauma they have carried throughout their lifetime in order to secure a better, loving future for you? None of this is a given. It’s humans trying to move the needle everyday and through their own emotional breakthroughs or deterrents, sweeping you into their undertow. Recognizing this in my 30’s I now understand that giving love is a deeply personal responsibility. A true lesson in the selflessness and forgiveness of it all. As parents, you must try to clearly serve love on to your children and as daughters and sons of humans from a myriad of backgrounds, we must try to part ways with any hate and resentment we hold in our hearts. Every day until our last breath is taken, is a day that we can say I love you clearly and move forward on a path of genuine healing. Those 3 little words can make such a difference in someone’s life when coupled with the actions that speak it, yet we rarely discuss their merits with true reverence.
After my dad’s initial heart attack, he was left intubated for weeks in the hospital in a situation where my last words to him prior to this occurrence were frantic pleas of understanding when the doctor called me from his cell phone at the hospital. Nothing can prepare you for these calls and looking back upon these moments, they’re like a dream that I still haven’t quite woken up from. There are multiple voicemails dad left me over that time which I cannot listen to just yet, but are the only piece of him that I realistically have left. The truth is, the love I felt for my father was so strong and pure. He was a flawed, wild spirit like me and even though I had never heard the words “I love you” from him, he showed me love with his actions when he was able to. That’s the funny thing about “I love you,” the words mean nothing without action and the actions feel empty without verbal validation. On my first visit to see him in the ICU I ran to hold his hand (which also, was not something I would have readily done) and told him immediately that I loved him. After all, who knows if there would be any time to waste. At that moment I regretted being proud and not saying it sooner, in rosier times. As they say, you live and you definitely learn.
We’re expected to march on post mortem as if it didn’t effect us or our trajectory, but the truth is my father’s death changed my life in more ways than I could have ever expected. As I begin to plan my road to motherhood in the next few years, I think back to how hard I had to fight to hear “I love you” from my parents. I remember years of angst and hatred because my family wasn’t inherently more loving in the way I expected. All we can do is recognize the actions that set our lives into a course and try to counter them. We all need to strive to live in love and do better not in 10 years, but today. Even if I never heard the words from his mouth, I always knew in my heart I was the love of his life.
Months after he passed, I was looking through some of his papers and found a defensive driving course worksheet with a list he was required to write out for his assignment. The list was your typical “don’t speed, people care about you” layout but something quickly caught my eye. At the top of the “People I Care About” section, my father had written my name as number one. Posthumously, it was the closest thing to an “I love you” I would ever get and everything I had needed to hear from him, without a word spoken.
