“Let my father’s honours live in me.”
A friend of mine lamented that it’s been five years since her father passed away and she still feels guilty because she had to return to the U.S. after a month’s visit with her sick father and then he died a few days later.
She said, “I packed my stuff to come back home stateside to attend the graduation of my two boys. I assured him the two would be in Manila for the whole summer. The good-byes were quick, since I anticipated I would be back again. Indeed I was – a week later – for his funeral. Until now I have not forgiven myself. The burden of guilt for not being there for him and for my family is eating me. I am the oldest, yet I was not here for them.”
Father’s Day is the one day we set aside to honor our father. Perhaps, in reflecting about our dads, we, whose fathers are no longer with us, carry some guilt and feel we could have done more, shown more affection toward them, shared more of our time and even our possessions …
I think it’s natural to feel this way, but I told her, this is a day when we should actually rejoice, for we are the lucky ones! We were blessed with such wonderful dads, who taught us so much, and they and their teachings remain in our hearts today. I was lucky enough to have had a father who truly loved me and showed it. His was such a selfless love. Not many people are blessed in this way.
My father died very suddenly 18 years ago. It’s like God plucked this special human being from this earth and just like that, he was gone from our lives. My only regret is that we never got a chance to say good-bye and to tell him one last time that we truly and deeply loved him.
Looking back, I now realize his was a beautiful death and God really was being kind and meant to spare our family much pain. Dad didn’t suffer at all. Yes, we hurt, we cried, boy, did we cry, but at least we didn’t have to see Dad suffer for months or years with an illness or disease, like some families have to bear. This way, we remember Dad happy, smiling, vibrant, teasing and joking. We had no regrets for Dad. He lived his life to the fullest, it had meaning, and he did what he wanted to do.
From Dad, we, his six children, learned to work well and work hard. “No matter what you become, even if you are a street sweeper, you need to be the best street sweeper there is,” he would tell us.
Dad built up our self-esteem, and from him we learned to be self-confident. Whether it was giving a speech in class or a talk at some function, or teaching a college course, he would tell us, “Trust in yourself. You know better than the people in the audience. That’s why you are the one up there, so share what you know.”
When we had an idea, he would encourage us to fly with it. “Go for it! You can do it,” he would say. That was Daddy, our number one cheerleader!
From Dad we learned to be kind to others, to be generous and share what we have. “You have to help the people around you because they have nothing and you have so much,” he would constantly tell us. Dad did all these, even if it meant paying less attention to his business. As marriage and youth counselors, he and Mom would make time to speak to parents and children in the schools about God, life, marriage or parenthood. Dad would give the little money he had to a hard-up employee, a classmate of ours who needed money to finish her schooling, a friend of ours who was just short on cash, or a big tip to a waiter.
Dad was kind; he was gentle. Even his spankings were more like pats. He could get angry though, and there were a couple of times when he took out his belt, but never did he strike any of us.
Dad could be consoling, and no matter what, we felt as long as he was around, we were safe. I remember one time in the third grade, so many rumors floated around at school about kidnappings and robberies. I just couldn’t sleep. Dad embraced me and said, “We have Brownie, hija (daughter)! He will never let anyone into our home. You hear him barking? He will bite anyone who comes inside our house. So go to sleep now and don’t worry. He will protect us all.”
From Dad we learned to have courage, no matter what confronted us, and to persevere. Whenever I would return to the States after a visit, his parting words to me would always be, “Be brave, hija, be brave!” I would always wonder why he would tell me to be brave. I’ve been through a lot in my life since then and, somehow, remembering his words has helped pull me through the most difficult trials.
Most of all, from Dad we learned to trust in the Lord and pray. “Pray, pray pray, hija. You are nothing without God,” he would say. And when things got tough, he would tell us, “God will provide.” And God always did.
Since Dad’s death, whenever my siblings and I would each reach a fork on the road, we would wonder what Daddy would have said to us at that time. I miss his advice, but somehow, I have always felt I knew what he would have said. He taught us well, my dad.
What I really miss is Dad’s warm embrace. Our last took place when I was leaving for the airport to return to the U.S., after Mom and Dad’s 40th wedding celebration in the Philippines. That was a few months before Dad died. Dad hugged me tight in the rain and said, “Take care, hija, be brave, and pray.”
My fifth grade English teacher sent this message to all her students this morning. It is so appropriate. On this day and every day, I pray:
My dad, as I remember him.
“Let my father’s honours live in me.” – William Shakespeare
Remembering my hero on Veterans Day
November is truly Dad’s month. His birthday is on the 19th. He would have been 91 years old. This Thursday is Veterans Day. I like to tell his story every chance I get. He and many others fought a great war, so we may all be free. This is for Dad and all our heroes …
Covering a Veterans Day memorial service for the newspaper one year, I heard someone speak of our World War II veterans as “the generation of heroes … ordinary people who serve as examples of what we should be,” and I remembered my hero.
Dad was a lieutenant in the Philippine Army, which at that time was part of the USAFFE (United States Armed Forces in the Far East). He fought in the Philippines against the Japanese during World War II. He was captured in Bataan and survived the infamous Death March. That’s all I knew about my dad’s war experience until many years later, when one evening, after meeting another veteran and Death March survivor in our town in Iowa, and with some prodding from my father-in-law, Dad opened the door to a part of him we had not known before.
Dad, along with other ROTC cadets, was inducted into the Philippine Army just a few months before the war. He was only 22 years old at the time. Since he had a college degree, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps and only went to the front lines when he had to take food supplies.
“It saved my life,” he said.
It was while Dad and some of his men were on a truck delivering canned goods in the Bataan peninsula that they were captured by the Japanese. When Bataan fell, Dad and the other prisoners were made to walk 60 miles in the searing heat from the battlefield to a main station and then transported to Camp O’Donnell in Capas, Tarlac.
The Death March lasted from five to nine days, depending on where on the trail a prisoner began the march. There were about 75,000 Americans and Filipinos captured in Bataan. After the march, there were about 54,000 still alive. Less than half survived the internment camps.
Dad said even after many years, he would still wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares of the “heat and sweat.” He said not one day went by when he didn’t think about his friends who were killed.
Dad recalled being fed one bowl of rice a day and, sometimes, nothing at all. He was only allowed to drink water from the river, along with the horses, and he remembered it being tainted with blood. He could not sleep because he was tied back to back with another prisoner during the night.
He never forgot the burly Japanese sergeant who hit the prisoners with a stick when they walked in the middle of the road, or whenever he felt like it; the Japanese soldiers who passed them in trucks, eating watermelon, taunting and laughing as the hungry prisoners reached out for the fruits; the hot, airless cargo train that took them to the concentration camp, where he was sick with malaria one day and dysentery the next. He watched his dead campmates being wrapped in blankets and taken to unmarked graves, and he wondered when his turn would come.
Dad’s mom and sister would visit the camp daily and beg the Japanese to release him. Finally, after several months, the guards relented because he was so sick. He later hid north of Manila, listened to a short wave radio and charted the progress of the American forces until Liberation.
The young man at the Veterans Day service said the greatest part about these veterans being heroes is not only that they had fought in the war, but “it is in what they did after that should inspire us. They went on to be doctors, lawyers and teachers. They went on with their lives and continued to make ours better.”
After the war, Dad continued his studies and became a lawyer. He never practiced law; instead, he worked in advertising for the Philippines Herald newspaper. He put up his own advertising and marketing firm a few years later. Then, he and Mom went back to school and earned their graduate degrees in marriage and counseling. They became marriage and youth counselors and gave countless talks to schools and organizations. They also became weekly columnists for the Panorama, the Manila Bulletin newspaper’s Sunday magazine.
On January 23, 1993, the day Dad died, he experienced an excruciating pain in his stomach, but refused to miss a talk to hundreds of parents of elementary school children at La Consolacion College. His last words were to them: “Teach your children to pray. Don’t just tell them; show them.” As he walked out of the auditorium, he collapsed to the floor. It was quick, as if he had been snatched away.
As we grieved after his burial, I lamented on the loss of his knowledge, his wisdom, and I was so afraid I would forget him. Mom consoled me and said, “You have to have faith. All he was is passed on to all of us. He lives on in our hearts.”
It’s been 17 years since Dad died and I still remember, like it was yesterday. I miss him. I miss his warm embrace, his humor, his teasing voice, even his corny jokes. I miss his laughter, and I even miss his nagging, “Hija (Daughter), pray, pray, pray!”
That was my father, a man of great faith.
“You can’t live on prayer alone,” I, the rebel, would sometimes chastise him.
When times would get tough, he would sit on his office chair, scratch his chin, stare out the window and say, “God will provide, Hija.” Strangely as it would sometimes seem, somehow, God always did.
War leaves an indelible mark on people. The experience made Dad more sensitive, more giving toward others and more trusting in the Lord.
Veterans Day reminds us life is about faith and giving, the giving of life for country, making sacrifices so generations after can have a better life, and trusting in God. No matter the reasons for each war, all who have served their country are brave heroes. They pass on a legacy we should cherish and always remember.
Dad passed on to me the story of his life, and most of all, he passed on his strong faith in God, so when I can, I try and share it with others.
When times get tough, I find myself doing the same thing – staring out the window, scratching my chin and murmuring the same words, “God will provide,” knowing Dad and God are with me.
Here he is, grinning from ear to ear, my dad, Lt. Jose M. Meily, Jr. (far right), celebrating at a club in San Francisco, where members of the USAFFE were recognized at the end of the war. This photo was published along with a similar column of mine in one of the newspapers I worked at several years ago.
Dad, Mom and me at my school’s Parents’ Night, 1965
Rose Meily
At ground level 