My father once told me that when I was a kid, I already memorized one piano piece before I learned how to speak. He said that when he saw me so delighted playing it, he felt like “every soul that gets lost in this vast universe can find its way back home.” Those were his exact, profound words. Until now, I am still not convinced that in a perfect sense, I grasp what he wanted to mean. But with everything that I have been through, I’d like to tell my father that every soul that gets lost in this vast universe will always find its home indeed. But there are two things more important than being home when your soul has wandered –ACCEPTANCE and REDEMPTION.
Pianos have
always been the other half of me. My fingers press, my
mind drifts away and my heart gets emptied. Playing a song is just like the
cycle of one’s life.
When I sit on a chair near a piano,it means I am about to start living. Birth.
I place my fingers on top of the keys to signal that I am ready to make music. Childhood.
Then I press the keys and start to make shifts that can either be intricately beautiful or utterly ugly. Growing up.
Then I press harder, faster or slower. This is the song’s highlight that depends on the melody I play - that point in life where we realize what type of existence we have lived or why we even started playing.
When I sit on a chair near a piano,it means I am about to start living. Birth.
I place my fingers on top of the keys to signal that I am ready to make music. Childhood.
Then I press the keys and start to make shifts that can either be intricately beautiful or utterly ugly. Growing up.
Then I press harder, faster or slower. This is the song’s highlight that depends on the melody I play - that point in life where we realize what type of existence we have lived or why we even started playing.
I am old. Fighting
cancer is not pretty.I face darkness every time I breathe. I have no one to
spend the rest of my seemingly predetermined life. Most of my days lately have
been spent in my room playing the piano for hours. I never stop. I reject the
idea of death so I fight back. I feel obliged to tell a story no one may even
care about. But this is more than the music. This is about something bigger,
something more abstract and something that doesn't need explanation but just
some space. It’s something I want to call A
Beautiful Interlace.
Here’s my story.
Gradual blindness
was an unexpected consequence after I was diagnosed with lung cancer last 2009.
This disease caught me off-guard. I never even smoked a single stick of
cigarette my entire life. Life. Oh, life. It is indeed more than a box full of surprises. It
takes you to places you don’t want to go and it diverts you to paths you never
even planned to take. What’s even more ironic is that I am a doctor. Or at
least I was. I should have known better how I could have a disease like this. I
worked as a physician for thirty five years and I stopped due to many other life
complications apart from cancer. My parents have died a long time ago. My
siblings have their own families abroad. My contact with them is not that
frequent. I just have few people who take care of me. I pay them for their
menial jobs here in my quite large, deafening home. The walls of this house seem to feed me
stories of my past that need to be told while I play this song on the piano
right now. They whisper agonies of my despicable loneliness.Yet, I don’t feel
less of myself. I have already had my own share of love and selflessness.
But that’s many, many years back.
But that’s many, many years back.
This may come as
a surprise to you but I actually got married. I have four kids. My wife died of
a car accident last 2010. What’s harder for me to carry is the thought that I
wasn't allowed to attend the funeral. It’s my children who barred me from
coming. My eldest child is a physician as well. He’s got a family with two
children. He and his wife who is a History teacher are living in Texas. My
second child, the only daughter I have, is a single-mother who works as an
accountant in Canada. She moved to California together with her 4-year old
daughter when her mother and I got divorced. My third and most favorite child,
my 31-year old son is a lawyer who owns a large chain of beach resorts miles
away from where I live. Of all my children, he was the one who I thought would
not leave me. He was the last person who would abandon me, I used to think. But
I was wrong. I've even heard rumors that he wants to have his last name changed
legally as soon as possible. A lawyer with all those legal stuff in mind. He is
my son indeed. The last name I have handed to him by right must now feel like a
disease to him. It broke my heart when I heard of it. True or not, just with
the thought that the has come up with this idea, it already gives me an
insurmountable paternal pain. But God left me one with wondrous possession when
I got separated with my wife. My fourth child, the one with Down’s syndrome and
the one who used to never leave his mother’s side, refused to leave this house
when everyone else did. His mother kept on dragging him out. When he would
realize that they would reach the door, he would bite his mother’s arms and
rush back to my room. It was something very odd because all these years back, I
tried to be the best father to him but he wouldn't be as joyful as he was with
his mother. I am proud of all my children. I hope they will still feel the same
way when I’m gone.
By the way, I
cheated on my wife. I had a relationship with a younger woman, a nurse from the
same hospital I used to work in. I enjoyed communicating with this woman
through the phone. We have actually reached that point where our text messages
got too romantic and unconventional.We had secret meetings and private
conversations. Those moments with her didn't give me remorse at first. Little did I know that it would be my life’s
next downfall.One morning, I caught my son, the one with Down’s syndrome,
holding my phone. He was laughing while his mother was beside him. They had
been watching something on my phone before I found them. That moment, it
already hit me what they were looking at - the text messages and worse, the
pictures of that woman and I together. I always thought I could hide that phone
from them.My wife looked at me with hostility. It was something she never did
all the years of our marriage. She then swore all words she could ever say and
threw at me all objects she could grab. It was the last day I ever talked to
her. She would never speak to me again. Not even in the last few moments of her
life.
People have been
judging me – a cheater, a worthless father, a family destroyer, a pervert, and
all other things. I bet I heard every label people used on me. It was on 2002
when my wife knew that I was cheating on her. We were legally separated
immediately on 2003. I tried my best to work normally. I would go to the
hospital like nothing happened. But every time I walked in the hallways, it’s
like I could hear people’s thoughts and gossips bounce through the walls
echoing my way. I could handle the latent public shame but when my children
started to abandon me, all the people around them were asked to do the same. It
was the only logical road I could go down - stop working.
With the money I
saved all those years and with my youngest son, I thought I could live the rest
of my life happily. We went to several places trying to cover the pain of life
with adventures outside.With all the places we went to, I saw purity with my
youngest son’s happiness. He would exhaust himself all day so at night, I would
just stare at him while I wrote essays and composed piano pieces. I never knew
I loved my son that much. I tried every day to communicate with my other
children to ask for their forgiveness. But they seemed to have forgotten their
father. Painful as it might seem, the days of trying turned to weeks,
then months, then years and then to almost nothing. In 2007, my youngest son,
the one who has never left my side, the one with Down’s syndrome, died at home.
He has finally surrendered. That was when I knew that with every song I would play
thereon, I would forever be alone. There would be no one to listen to the songs
on the piano. But before my son died, I was able to confess to him something I
never told anyone before.
What if I tell
you that way back in medical school, I had an affair with my roommate who
eventually became the best man in my wedding? Yes, you heard it right. I don’t
know where it all started. I never thought of having a relationship with
someone of the same gender.Not at all. Not until I realized that days were so
gloomy without him. Not until I noticed that not being with him was
excruciating. Not until I figured out that I feel complete when we exchange
talks, laughter and even pain. Not until I fell for him. It was fate’s work, I
thought. I knew it was fate.
I was so afraid
that he would turn his back on me if he knew that I felt something odd towards
him. We were more than brothers. We treated ourselves more than that. Wherever
I was, he was also there. When he needed me, I was there for him. I knew his
whole family, he knew everyone in my life. Right after we took our medical
licensure exam, I confessed to him at the risk of being erased from his life.
But I still did. Then he just laughed at me. He told me that he thought, all
those years, we were already having a relationship because he felt the same
way. I realized that my love was requited. It was very ecstatic. All emotions
came rushing to fill my already racing heart about to explode. With one long
and tight embrace, I admit it was probably the best day of my life.We started
working on the same hospital. We even moved together in the same house. I felt
that our love for each other on those early years of our career grew exponentially.
Like it defied every boundary ever known in existence. But God had another
plan.
He was asked to follow
his parents in Australia. Even if I begged him not to go, he could no
longer change his parents’ decision. There was nothing both of us could do. We
started a long-distant relationship. But eventually, it failed. For me, all
relationships with long distances always fail. He wouldn't respond to my mails.
Later on, the idea of him felt like something I never had. He literally stopped
existing in my life. I lived like something big was missing. Four years after
he flew to Australia,I got an email stating that I was invited to his wedding. My
tiny world was shaken. I did fly to Australia and attended his wedding. He
didn't say anything to me before the wedding apart from his words, “This is the
right road.”With one long and tight embrace, I admit it was the worst day of my
life. My heart crushed into pieces as many as the days we were together. I was
forced to also tread the “right road” and do the same thing. God really had another plan.
I finally met
someone to marry. My wife was a businesswoman who conducted transactions with a
colleague from the hospital I worked in. When my wedding day came, as expected I invited my best friend to my wedding as well to be the Best Man. But unlike
his reprieve during his day, I met with him somewhere private as soon as he
arrived here. I cried my heart out and told him all the suffering he’s caused
me all those years. He saw me cry. I watched as the remorse finally got into
his eyes.That night, his words reminded me why I fell for him. His slowly
expressed guilt reminded me why I had to accept all his faults no matter how
bad they were. But his entirety, his presence made me think why I love and will
always love him unconditionally. Our love never failed, I could feel it. But we
had to suppress it. We knew we had it coming. So we made love for the last time.
It started with one long and tight embrace, then I admit it became the most
unforgettable night of my life.
The day after
that, on my wedding day, I promised myself not to think of something unusual
again towards him. But I never succeeded. It even grew fonder all these years.
Wherever he is right now, I wish he knew that until the day I die, I still keep
the same feelings towards him. I have never been with someone whose soul is as
beautiful as his. I can never let the image of him in my mind drift away. That
would be the end of me.
You may wonder
why I cheated on my wife when all along, I had a strong emotional attachment to
a man from my yesterday. That young nurse, though she is a woman, reminded me
of my best friend so much. There’s this strange way in their smiles, manner of speaking,
the way they carry themselves and their wit that are unbelievably similar. It is really unacceptable that I loved
someone because she reminded me of a love that never succeeded. But I guess
this is how fate weaves our lives. It doesn't care which strand has the same color
with the other, all it does is creating one interlace with these strands that
will look beautiful. That is what every life is. It is always beautiful.
After everything
that has happened to me, I can say that my mantra in life has never changed. It
is “Never fail to follow your heart”. Choices in life are boundless. You can
never expect what you’ll have or what you’ll become based on the things that
are around you right now. You may be deprived of things you have always wanted
and these things may not come to you.But you will have your own. We have been
given the gift of knowledge to decide things on our own and to give meaning to
everything that we have been through. The next step to make the best use of this
gift is to keep it. Keeping it is what we call faith. We just need to hold on
something and believe in it even if it seems that the rest of the world
conspires not to provide it. We may not have all our heart’s desires but if we
keep on making use of the gift and continue on keeping the faith, trust someone
like me, who often feels all emotions at the same time, when I say that you will
truly realize how beautiful life has always been. No matter what your
definition of beauty is, life always has it - each distinct, each tailor-made,
each calculated. Take a look back. You can’t question the type of life you have.
You just need to go with it. Again, never fail to follow your heart. If you do,
I guess you’ll have the same feeling every single time I contemplate– that
feeling like you are in the arms of an angel. You feel like you are found but the
warmth proves that you were never lost.
I woke up one
morning last September 2011 and I realized that my once deteriorating eyesight
has already reached its breaking point. I had it coming. At that moment I
realized I was already fully blind, I cried with silent tears. Those were the
tears of acceptance. After crying, I laughed hard. I have had enough of seeing
the world that I am in. For some reasons, I sometimes preferred the darkness so
my blindness didn't come as much as a curse to me. Having a cancer follows the
same pattern. So before I leave the face of this earth, I just want to ask
forgiveness for everyone whom I have caused pain especially my children and
even my late wife. They should know that I never stopped loving them. I don’t
question God anymore. I never did. I just lived. I just loved. Every single
thing was part of my existence. I am near my last stroke. I am running out of
strand.This is the last part of my melody. But I will live until my last pace.
This is my life
and this is my song – A Beautiful Interlace.#
