“How Are You So Okay?”
A Eulogy for My Father
My father, Edwin G. Dayuta, passed away on the afternoon of Easter Sunday, the 31st of March 2024, at 12:50 PM. Before this, he’d been in an unwakeable sleep since the 18th of March.
I held his hand, already cold to the touch, as he took a few last quick breaths, as his teeth chattered, and as his heart finally stopped.
Born on the 19th of May 1959, he was 64 years old.
This was the eulogy I gave on the day of his burial.
“How are you so okay?”
This is something my mother asked me one night when I was hiding away, watching some TV show in some dark corner. She asked me this in tears; this was not new these days. Ever since my father first had his seizure and was then diagnosed with Stage 4 Glioblastoma Multiforme a few months later, my mother has lived every day with a hair trigger for tears.
But she never let dad see.
When the sorrow got to be too much, she would hide away and then, in front of dad and sometimes, in front of us, she would be ever dutiful and put on a brave face and carry on taking care of all of us as if her whole world wasn’t shaken to its core. But she cried, still, and when those times that she did, she would hide.
That is until that one night that she asks me this and begs me for the secret.
She says she sometimes hears me laugh when I’m in a Zoom meeting with my teammates at work as I or someone else made a silly little joke. Or she hears me laugh late at night and it’s because I’m rewatching Supernatural again and that show is a weird fever dream in and of itself. I still go out and see friends from time to time. I go bowling, watch movies, go to little get-togethers. All of this, despite the situation — the situation being that my father is slowly dying. I make my iced protein coffees. I buy pastries. I go to work. I buy new clothes. I get my hair done. I go to the gym. I take my emotional support dance classes. I still joke and I gossip and I live my life and I, generally, don’t appear changed by the state of my father’s health.
My mother asked me one night how I can still be so normal because she wants to be too. She says she wants to laugh too, she wants to feel joy too, and doesn’t remember the last time she could feel it. So how do I do it?
And to that, I want to say, “Mom, do you think you’re the only one who knows how to hide?”
When my father first had his seizure in July 2023, by the time I got to the hospital, he was asleep. By the time he was admitted into his private room, when he woke up hours later, he couldn’t really remember everything that had happened — the ambulance, the MRIs, the seizures, the emergency room. But when he saw me, and I will never forget this, the first thing he asked me was, “How are you going to get to work?”
Clear as day.
The very first thing he wanted to know from me was how was I going to get to work. Because before this, my father would drive me to the city where my office is, every time. Mind you, I’m 29 years old and this is the oldest he’ll ever see me. But I was used to that because my parents would always see me as if I were still 12 years old. That’s how they see me.
Why do I say this? This is important.
See, as a child, you grow up idealizing what a father should be.
And when you’re young — or, maybe, when you’re like me and you’re a little too perfectionistic, a little too much of a dreamer, you start to picture a different father than the one you have. A perfect father should be this, a perfect father should be that — I had set this impossible standard for my dad to meet when I was little and I couldn’t see him then, back when all I could see was what I wanted and not what I had.
I can see him now, though.
Because the father I had, who raised me, was often impatient and crass and angry at traffic and loud. So loud. He did not like to wait but he also moved on his own time — you couldn’t rush him either, even when he was the one who was late.
My dad disagreed with me on just about every point in life. Sometimes, he would make it a point to dislike something just because I liked it. To get a rise out of me. And he was never, ever allowed to be wrong — even when I knew he was. My dad was flawed, he made some bad decisions, and he had regrets and secrets that I will likely never know. He was vain and proud and he loved the finer things in life. He was always so sure of himself, even when he was wrong, which was funny sometimes, but other times also drove me insane.
But I see the better parts now too.
My dad used to dance with me on weekend mornings next to the refrigerator while my mom made lunch in the kitchen. We would have the stereo on so loud and he would play old songs I had no business knowing at such a young age and he would take my little hands in his gigantic, labourer’s ones and he would teach me how to dance. How to waltz and how to sing. How to put on a show. My dad was a natural performer in the stage that is life and he was never, ever shy. He felt at home in a spotlight, in an introduction and it was like he always knew his lines.
He knew how to command a room without preparation. He had a strong presence without being intimidating and he was a strong man, literally. I remember coming home from my grandparents’ house and I would pretend to be asleep in the backseat just so he would carry me to bed, which he did for years.
My dad taught me how to argue and those of you who knew my dad, you know how he could be so you know I never lose. Not even when I’m wrong, which, because I’m my father’s daughter, I never, ever am.
He was also more personable than most people I’d encountered. He could make friends so easily and I’d always envied that ability. My dad was wildly generous and always shared, whether it was knowledge or money. Growing up, if there was ever anything that I wanted — a souvenir toy from a stall, a whole new book series for my birthday when I was a teenager, a new laptop — he’d find a way to get it for me, even when mom (the more frugal voice of reason in the house) said no.
He wasn’t a self-sacrificing saint; he also knew how to value his own personal comfort and pleasure. He always had really nice shoes, expensive perfumes, good clothes. If my sister or I had a new phone, he would immediately get jealous and must have the same one or a better one than us. Because he took pride in his appearance and there’s no shame in that and he wanted to appear like a man who had all the answers. It helped that most of the time, he did.
My dad taught me how to drink coffee — his would always have to be boiling hot and he always had the same order, “grande drip with steamed non-fat milk and two brown sugars” — and he taught me how to eat sushi and cinnamon rolls. He would buy fresh corn every time we’d go up to my grandma’s place, he would get us all a halo-halo practically every day during summers, and he would always let us order whatever we wanted when we ate outside, even when our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. And there wasn’t a flat surface my father couldn’t turn into a bed, he could fall asleep anywhere.
And this is the part I hear the most about dad and I think it’s true — dad always had an answer. Someone in his team’s laptop was broken and he couldn’t pay for it himself? Dad would say, “‘Wag mo na alalahanin yan, ako na bahala (Don’t worry, I got this).” When my cousin couldn’t figure out my godmother’s wheelchair, Dad would say, “Ako na yan, ako na bahala. (Let me. I got this.)”
He did this for everybody he knew.
Everybody he cared about.
Everybody he loved.
There wasn’t a problem that he couldn’t answer with “ako na bahala” even when he didn’t. He would just figure it out eventually or find a way to fix it. But in his own time, he would not be rushed.
Dad raised me imperfectly, sure, but as I grew up in this imperfect life, imperfect world, there was something I could always count on. No matter where I was, no matter how late it was, no matter how tired he was, no matter how drunk I got at the office Christmas party, no matter how long it took — my father would come. And I would never be lost.
I would always have a way home.
No matter what kind of childish wish I had of what a father should be, my dad did his best with what he was given.
No, my father wasn’t perfect. But he was my dad. And he did great.
So that day in the hospital, when he was scared that this might be it and we would have no time for goodbyes, when he asked me how was I going to go to work, he was asking something else.
He was asking, “How are you going to be okay without me?”
So, like my mother, I hid… in my own way.
I hid behind this show that I’m perfectly okay. I start strength training at the gym and lift weights so I can get stronger. In his last months, I would always show him how much stronger I was getting. I could lift the water jug for the water dispenser and, before my dad got sick, I couldn’t lift a 6-kilogram box of oatmeal so just know that that was a huge deal.
I make jokes and I laugh, so loud. Loud enough for him to hear which I always am. I make plans and I go out. I would show him that I would be going out — to hang out with friends, to movies, to go bowling because he couldn’t anymore, to go to work.
Because, unlike my medical older siblings, I couldn’t do much when he got sick.
My brother, Joseph, would take the lion’s share of responsibility for two families, his own and ours, from thousands of miles away. He would organise and reassure, make tough decisions that we didn’t know how to make heads or tails of, armed with medical know-how, having trained to carry a patriarchal responsibility his whole life, as is the burden of the eldest.
And my older sister, Jammie, who knew how to take care of him during these last few months. My sister doesn’t have to pretend to be steady and calm and rational, she just is. She took him to every single one of his doctor’s appointments, physical therapy sessions, radiation… all of it. Where I’m squeamish and sensitive and reactionary and an Olympic gold medalist in whining, she’s consistent and patient and never complained. Not once.
I couldn’t help him any other way. I didn’t know how. I don’t know how to do much of anything that matters except write and tell stories. If I stuck around, looking sad and being useless, while he was getting taken care of, I knew that he would worry. He would be sad. And he wouldn’t want that for me.
The only thing I could give him was the show.
In the moments when he was at his most exposed and vulnerable, I did not look so I could show him that I would preserve the image I have in my head: that he was this strong, towering presence who always had all the answers and that’s what he would always be — not what this disease had turned him into, in these last few months. They don’t count. And I would never see him as anything else.
Show him that life will go on and we’ll find a way to be okay with this life he’d built for us when he still had both hands to build. Show him that I knew how to be okay, after he was gone. He doesn’t have to worry because I knew he would.
I can make my own way home now.
This was the only gift I knew how to give.
Because of course, I’m not okay. My dad is gone and even before he left us, I missed him. Even before he left us, he was already gone. I had to show him, while he could still see, that I knew how to keep going.
So, to answer the question: “How are you so okay?”
I’m not okay… how could I be?
Pero wag ka na mag-alala, di.
Ako na bahala.
As an added note, I mentioned in the eulogy that I used to pretend to fall asleep in the back seat of the car just so my dad would carry me up to my room because I didn’t want to climb the whole set of stairs just to get to bed.
On the day of his burial, I carried his urn to his final resting place.
We have a smaller urn prepared that I will carry to the country where my brother lives later this year, so dad’s dream of residing over there too will, at least in part, come true.
And I just think, from wherever he’s watching, he would’ve liked that.
It’s my turn to carry him up and take him home now.
