When the defense ended, Professor Santos came to shake hands with me and my family. When it was Tatay Ben’s turn, he suddenly stopped, looked at him carefully, and then his expression changed.
But that moment—those few seconds of recognition in a crowded auditorium at UP Diliman—was built on years of sweat, dust, hunger, and sacrifices I didn’t fully understand until it was too late.
I was born into an incomplete family.
By the time I was old enough to walk without stumbling, my parents had already divorced. My earliest memories are not of toys or birthdays but of shouting, slammed doors, and my mother packing clothes into a plastic bag while wiping her tears with the back of her hand.
Nanay Lorna took me back to Nueva Ecija, to a sleepy barangay that seemed to be made of nothing but rice fields, sun, wind, and gossip. Our house was a small wooden structure with a rusted tin roof that sang every time the rain hit it. The floor creaked, the walls were thin, and privacy didn’t really exist. If someone sneezed three houses down, you heard it.
I don’t remember my biological father’s face clearly. In my mind, he is more like a shadow—tall, smelling of aftershave and rage, always halfway out the door. He left a hole in my life that no one tried to name. We didn’t say “Papa.” We said “siya”—“him.”
We were poor, in the simplest and most brutal way. Nanay tried to pretend it was just “simple life,” but the empty plates and old clothes didn’t lie. Sometimes we ate tuyo and rice. Sometimes just rice. Sometimes just rice water.
There were days when Nanay would say, “Busog pa ako, anak, kumain ka,”
and I would pretend I believed her, even though I could hear her stomach growling louder than mine.
When I was four years old, my mother remarried.
He came into our lives like a stranger wandering into a movie scene that had already started. His name was Ben, but everyone eventually called him “Tatay Ben.”
He was a construction worker. He arrived with no house, no savings, no land—only a thin back, tanned skin, and hands calloused from cement, rebar, and bricks. His clothes smelled of sweat and dust. He had an awkward smile, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to be happy.
The neighbors whispered.
“Widowed ka na ba?” someone asked Nanay.
“Hindi, divorced,” she said quietly.
“Ah, so he left you,” the neighbor replied, like a knife slipping between ribs.
At first, I didn’t like this man.
He was a stranger who suddenly sat at our table, slept under our roof, and shared my mother’s laughter. He left early in the morning with a pail and his tools and came home late, his boots heavy with dried mud.
He always smelled of construction sites—of sand, wet cement, steel, and fatigue.
The first time he tried to talk to me, I hid behind Nanay’s skirt.
“Kamusta ka, bunso?” he said softly.
I didn’t answer. I just clung to my mother.
But he didn’t force himself on me. He simply nodded and left a small plastic bag on the table. Inside was a cheap toy car, the kind sold at the sari-sari store.
“For you,” he said, not looking at me, as if he was embarrassed.
I didn’t pick it up. Not then.
It was little things at first.
My bicycle was a wreck—one wheel bent, chain rusty, handlebar loose. My biological father had promised to buy me a new one before he left. Of course, he never did.
One evening, while the sky turned the color of smoke and the cicadas screamed outside, I saw Tatay crouched in the yard, turning my bicycle upside down. He didn’t ask permission. He didn’t say anything. He just started fixing it.
He removed the chain, wiped it clean with a rag, put a bit of oil, tightened the bolts, blew the dust from the spokes, and straightened the bent wheel with more patience than I’d ever seen a grown man spend on a child’s toy.
I watched from the window, my chin on the windowsill.
After a while, Nanay called out, “Kain na tayo, Ben!”
“Sandali lang, Lorna,” he replied. “Natapos ko na ‘to, promise.”
When he finally came in, his hands were greasy, and there was a black smudge across his forehead. He washed his hands quietly in a basin, as if afraid of making a mess.
The next morning, I saw my bicycle standing straight, shiny chain, wheels aligned.
I touched the handlebar. It felt like someone had touched my childhood and tried to repair that, too.
I rode it around the barangay that afternoon, the wind on my face, the neighbors watching. I pretended I didn’t know who fixed it. But I saw him watching from the doorway, a small, shy smile on his face.
My sandals broke one rainy day on the way home from school. The strap snapped right in the middle of a muddy path. My socks were soaked and brown. I walked home barefoot, embarrassed and angry.
Nanay scolded me.
“Bakit hindi ka nag-ingat? Diba sabi ko sayo, isa na lang yan. Wala na tayong pambili!”
Tears burned my eyes. I threw the broken sandals in a corner.
Later that night, when everyone was asleep, I woke up thirsty and went to the kitchen. I stopped when I saw him.
Tatay was sitting at the table under the weak yellow light bulb, bent over my sandals. He had taken a needle and thread, old rubber, a bit of adhesive. His hands moved slowly and carefully, stitching and reinforcing the torn strap.
He didn’t know I was watching.
He didn’t complain. He didn’t say, “This boy is careless.” He just fixed what was broken, like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The next day, my sandals were on the floor by my bed, repaired. It wasn’t a perfect job, but they held for months.
I wanted to say “Thank you.”
Instead, I just wore them and walked a little slower, trying to keep them from breaking again.
I got bullied at school.
Growing up without a father in a small barangay is like wearing a sign on your back that says “target.” Kids repeated what they heard at home:
“Walakang tatay!”
“Iniwan ka!”
“Broken family!”
They made it sound like a crime, like I was personally responsible.
One Friday, a group of boys followed me after class. They grabbed my bag, emptied it on the dusty ground, stepped on my notebooks, laughed at my cheap pencil case. One of them pushed me, and I fell on my knees.
“Go cry to your mother,” one said. “Oh, wait. Where’s your dad? Oh, right. He’s gone.”
I went home dirty and bruised, holding my torn notebook. Nanay saw me and exploded.
“Ano ‘to? Bakit ka ganyan? Bakit hindi ka marunong lumaban?!”
Her voice was shrill, tight with worry and exhaustion. It sounded like anger, but I knew it was fear.
I just cried harder.
She raised a hand to hit me, but Tatay grabbed her wrist gently.
“Lorna, tama na.”
She glared at him, then went inside.
Tatay didn’t ask too many questions. He simply picked up my scattered things, dusted them off, and put them back into my bag.
After a few minutes of silence, he said quietly, “Saan yung school mo?”
I pointed in the direction.
The next day, he left for work earlier than usual. I thought nothing of it.
But at dismissal time, when the bell rang and the kids spilled out of the classrooms, I saw him.
He was waiting outside the gate, sitting on his old bicycle, helmet crooked, shirt stained with dust and sweat. He looked out of place among the parents, many of them wearing office clothes or riding tricycles.
When he saw me, he smiled and lifted a hand.
“Halika, sakay.”
The bullies were there, too. They stared at him with confusion.
“Is that your father?” one asked.
I hesitated. My heart pounded.
“He’s… my Tatay,” I said.
The boy snorted but said nothing. They watched as I climbed onto the back of the bicycle, my arms wrapping around his waist.
We rode home slowly, the afternoon light warm on our backs, the wind carrying the scent of rice fields and distant cooking.
On the way, he spoke softly.
“Tatay doesn’t force you to call me dad,” he said. “But Tatay will always be behind you if you need him.”
I didn’t answer. The words lodged in my throat.
That night, as he prepared to sleep on the banig on the floor, I whispered in the dark:
“Good night, Tatay.”
He didn’t answer at first. I thought he hadn’t heard me.
Then I heard a soft, shaky exhale.
“Good night, anak,” he whispered back.
Through my childhood, my memories of him are stitched together from small, quiet moments.
An old bicycle parked outside the house.
A dusty construction uniform hanging on a nail.
The sound of him washing his hands in the basin before eating.
The nights when he came home late, shoulders slumped, eyes ringed with exhaustion, hands still white with lime and mortar. No matter how tired he was, he never forgot to ask:
“Kumain ka na ba, anak? Kamusta ang school?”
He was not a learned man. He could read and write, but slowly. He couldn’t help me with algebra or physics. He got lost in thick paragraphs of English text.
But he always, always said the same thing:
“You may not be the best in class,” he told me, “but you must study properly. Wherever you go, people will look at your knowledge and respect you.”
Our life was a math problem that never solved itself.
Nanay worked as a farmhand, planting and harvesting rice for other people’s fields. Tatay mixed cement, carried hollow blocks, climbed scaffolding from Monday to Saturday, sometimes even Sunday. Their combined income was barely enough.
We had no extra. No vacations, no new gadgets, no brand-name clothes. My school shoes were always one size too big so they would last longer.
I loved school, but I also understood our situation. I didn’t dare to dream of anything too big. Dreaming felt like being greedy.
Then one day, the letter came.
I had taken the entrance exams for a university in Manila secretly, filling out forms using money from a tutoring gig. I didn’t expect to pass.
When the brown envelope arrived, Nanay called me from the yard.
“May sulat ka,” she said, brows furrowed.
My hands shook as I opened it. Words danced in front of my eyes:
“Congratulations… admitted to the Bachelor of Arts program…”
I sat down, knees weak. Nanay snatched the letter, reading it slowly, lips moving.
“This means… college?” she whispered.
I nodded.
She covered her mouth with her hand. Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“Anak, Manila ‘to,” she said. “Ang layo. Ang mahal. Paano na?”
I didn’t meet her eyes.
“Okay lang, Nay,” I said quickly, even though my heart ached. “I can… I can stay here. It’s fine. I’ll find work after high school. I don’t want to—”
“Hoy,” a voice cut in.
We looked up.
Tatay was standing in the doorway, his shirt damp with sweat, a towel over his shoulder. He had just come home from work. He walked over, took the letter from Nanay’s trembling hands, and read it slowly, line by line, his lips moving.
He read it twice.
Then he sat on the wooden step, elbows on his knees, letter in one rough hand, cigarette in the other. He stared at the floor, thoughtful.
Nanay wiped her tears. “Wala tayong pera, Ben,” she said. “Rent, pagkain, pamasahe, tuition—”
He lifted a hand gently.
“Naiintindihan ko,” he said.
He finished his cigarette in silence.
The next day, he sold his only motorbike.
It had been his one luxury, his one symbol of independence. He had saved for years to buy it—installment, low down payment, paid in sweat and back pain. It was old, but he had cared for it, cleaned it, polished it on Sundays.
When I woke up, the motorcycle was gone, and there was a small stack of bills on the table.
“Pambili ng gamit mo sa Manila,” he said simply. “Enrollment. Pang-unang buwan na renta. Saka pamasahe.”
“Nakakahiya, Tay,” I whispered, throat tight.
He smiled faintly. “Mas nakakahiya kung hindi ka mag-aaral.”
The day he took me to the city, he dressed like he was going to a job interview and a fiesta at the same time.
He wore an old baseball cap, a wrinkled collared shirt that had been ironed until the fabric looked thin, and black pants that fit awkwardly around his legs. His back was drenched in sweat from carrying my cardboard boxes and a small maleta.
He held a box like it contained something fragile and priceless. Inside were “gifts from home”: a few kilos of rice, a glass jar of tuyo and tinapa, and some small bags of roasted mani wrapped in newspaper.
On the bus ride, his hand gripped the seat so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Manila traffic overwhelmed him—the buses, the jeepneys, the honking, the chaos.
When we finally reached the dormitory, he carried everything up three floors without complaining, even though his breath sounded heavier with each step.
He arranged my things quietly: the little electric fan, the thin mattress, my books stacked neatly on the desk.
Nanay couldn’t come; she was working in the fields. It was just the two of us.
Before leaving, he stood in the doorway, looking at the small room.
“Ang liit,” he said, half joking. “Pero kaya mo ‘yan. Malaki ang pangarap mo.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled envelope.
“May konti pa dito,” he said, handing it to me. “Pang dagdag mo sa unang buwan.”
“I can’t take this, Tay,” I protested. “You need it.”
“Tatay doesn’t know what you’re studying,” he said slowly, “but whatever you study, Tatay will do. Don’t worry.”
Only when he had gone and I opened my lunch box, wrapped in banana leaves, did I find a small folded paper at the bottom.
His writing was ugly and uneven, as if every letter had to be wrestled onto the page.
“Anak,
Kahit hindi ko alam lahat ng ginagawa mo sa school, alam ko na kaya mo.
Huwag kang matakot sa hirap. Sanay na tayo sa hirap.
Kaya natin ‘to.
– Tatay”
I didn’t cry in front of him. But that night, alone on the thin mattress, with the city noise outside, I pressed the letter to my chest and sobbed until my pillow was wet.
I spent four years in college and then continued into graduate school.
Those years were a blur of lectures, exams, group projects, midterms, research papers, late nights in the library, and part-time jobs. I took whatever work I could find: fast food crews, tutor, library assistant.
There were so many times I wanted to give up.
There was the semester when my professor told me my English “wasn’t academic enough.”
There was the time my thesis proposal got rejected twice, and I had to start all over again.
There was the day I found out my classmate, whose family owned several businesses, got an internship in Makati I could only dream of.
Whenever my chest tightened with anxiety and self-doubt, I remembered Tatay’s hands.
Rough, cracked, scarred.
Hands that carried hollow blocks, steel bars, sacks of cement heavier than my entire body. Hands that worked through the heat of noon and the discomfort of rain.
When I went home on breaks, I saw him at the construction sites.
Once, I visited him unannounced. I found him sitting at the foot of a concrete skeleton of a building, helmet off, sweat dripping down his neck. His breathing was shallow, like his lungs were full of stones.
“Tay,” I said, panicked. “Are you okay?”
He smiled weakly. “Napagod lang.”
His hands trembled as he took the plastic cup of water from a co-worker. His nails were lined with cement dust.
I told him he should rest, look for something easier.
He waved a hand dismissively.
“Tatay can still do it,” he said, forcing a grin. “When I’m tired, I think, ‘I’m raising a PhD’—and I feel proud.”
We both laughed.
I didn’t dare tell him that a PhD meant more years of study, more tuition, more sacrifices.
I didn’t tell him that sometimes I hated myself for wanting it so badly.
Graduate school was another world.
UP Diliman felt almost like a foreign country the first time I stepped into the campus. The buildings seemed bigger. The professors spoke faster. The expectations were higher.
I was older than some of my classmates, and poorer than almost all of them.
There were nights when my stomach hurt from hunger because I chose photocopies over a decent meal. There were days when I pretended I wasn’t tired because I didn’t want anyone to see how much I was struggling.
But every time I thought of quitting, I imagined Tatay climbing a scaffold under the afternoon sun, one mistake away from falling, all so I could sit in a well-lit classroom and write my name on paper.
I didn’t have the right to give up.
The years blurred again.
Coursework. Comprehensive exams. Proposal defense. Fieldwork. Data analysis. Drafts and redrafts.
The PhD became not just a degree, but a promise. A way for me to justify everything my parents had done.
When I called home, Nanay always had the same questions.
“Kumakain ka ba?”
“May kaibigan ka ba diyan?”
“May girlfriend na?”
Tatay always had the same ones, too. Fewer words, but heavier.
“Okay ka lang ba?”
“Hindi ka ba napapagod?”
“Kaya mo pa?”
Sometimes, he would just say, “Kaya natin ‘to,” and hang up quickly, as if he was embarrassed to say anything sentimental.
Over time, his voice changed. There was more air in his sentences, more pauses. Sometimes he coughed in the middle of a word.
“Tay, may sakit ka ba?” I asked once.
“Ubo lang,” he replied. “Trabaho pa rin si Tatay.”
I told him to go to a clinic. He laughed.
“Mas mahal pa yung gamot kesa sa sahod ko,” he joked. “Mamaya na ‘yan. Pag mayaman ka na.”
On the day of my PhD thesis defense at UP Diliman, the sky was gray and heavy, like it was undecided between rain and sunshine.
I had begged Tatay for weeks to come.
At first, he refused.
“Magastos ang pamasahe,” he said. “Nakakahiya naman sa mga profesor mo. Wala akong damit na maayos.”
“I don’t care,” I insisted. “I want you there. I need you there.”
Nanay joined the pressure campaign.
“Punta ka na,” she said. “Minsan lang ‘to sa buhay natin.”
Eventually, he gave in with a sigh.
“Bahala na,” he muttered. “Pupunta na si Tatay.”
He borrowed a suit from a cousin, an old navy-blue coat that was slightly too big in the shoulders and too tight at the waist. The pants were shortened hastily, the stitches visible when he walked. He wore leather shoes that were one size too small, making him walk like the floor was uneven.
He arrived the morning of the defense with Nanay, both of them carrying plastic bags with snacks “just in case.” His hair was combed back with too much gel, his cheeks freshly shaved but nicked in places.
He looked uncomfortable in the lobby, surrounded by students in business casual attire and professors with leather shoes and briefcases. He kept smoothing his jacket, adjusting the collar, wiping his palms on his pants.
I introduced him to my classmates and adviser.
“This is my Tatay,” I said.
He smiled shyly, nodding, not sure whether to shake hands or bow.
Inside the auditorium, he sat in the back row, spine straight, hands on his knees. He stared at me as if I were the only person in the room.
During the presentation, I tried to focus on my slides: methodology, framework, findings, implications.
But sometimes, when I glanced at the audience, I saw him.
He was leaning forward, squinting at the projector, pretending to understand words like “phenomenology,” “discourse analysis,” “positionality.”
He didn’t understand the content. But he understood the weight.
Every graph, every paragraph, every citation was a brick he had helped carry without knowing its name.
The questions from the panel were sharp and demanding.
“Why did you choose this framework?”
“How do you address the limitations?”
“What is your contribution to the field?”
I answered as best as I could, heart pounding, hands shaking slightly.
Time slowed, then sped up.
Finally, the chair of the panel smiled.
“Thank you. Please step outside while we deliberate.”
I left the room, pulse racing. Nanay squeezed my hand.
“Okay lang ‘yan,” she said, more to herself than to me.
Tatay didn’t say anything. He just looked at the closed door, jaw clenched.
After a few long minutes, they called me back inside.
The chair smiled.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You have successfully defended your dissertation.”
Applause erupted.
Nanay burst into tears immediately, pressing a handkerchief to her mouth to muffle her sobs.
Tatay just sat there, frozen, eyes wide.
Then, very slowly, he smiled.
It was a small, trembling smile—but it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
After the defense, there were handshakes and photographs.
My classmates posed with their families, parents holding bouquets, siblings making peace signs, friends laughing.
Professor Santos, my adviser, walked over.
“Good job,” he said, shaking my hand. “You worked hard.”
He turned to my mother.
“Congratulations po, Ma’am.”
Nanay nodded, tears still streaming.
Then he turned to Tatay.
He reached out his hand, then paused. His brows knitted together as he looked more closely at Tatay’s face.
“You are… Mang Ben, right?” he asked slowly.
Tatay blinked.
“Po?” he said.
“When I was young,” Professor Santos continued, “my house was near a construction site in Quezon City. I remember a worker there. He carried an injured co-worker down from the scaffolding once… even though he was injured himself.”
He tilted his head.
“I remember his face,” he said softly. “I think… that was you.”
Silence fell around us.
Tatay’s eyes widened, then flickered with recognition. He looked down at his feet.
“Ah… baka po,” he murmured. “Madami na pong pinuntahan ni Tatay noon.”
The professor smiled, and his eyes shone slightly.
“I didn’t expect to see you here today,” he said. “As the father of a new PhD. It’s truly an honor.”
Tatay tried to respond, but his voice cracked. He swallowed hard and nodded.
“Salamat po,” he whispered.
I turned and looked at him.
His shoulders, which had always been slouched from years of carrying weight, seemed to straighten. His eyes were red, but his smile was soft and proud.
In that moment, I understood something I had never seen clearly before:
All his life, Tatay had been invisible.
On construction sites, people saw the building, not the hands that built it. They saw walls, roofs, glass, and steel—but not the laborer balancing on narrow planks in the heat.
He had never asked to be seen.
He never asked to be thanked.
He never asked to be recognized.
That day, he was.
Not because of me—but because of who he had been long before I was old enough to understand.
Life after the PhD moved fast.
Suddenly, I was “Doctor.” I was offered a position as a lecturer at the university. I had more responsibilities: classes to teach, papers to publish, committees to attend.
I married. We had a son.
I rented a small apartment closer to the campus. My days filled with lesson plans, grading, consultations, research proposals. My nights filled with lullabies, diaper changes, and late-night emails.
Sometimes I’d sit alone in my office, surrounded by books, and think of our old house in Nueva Ecija. The contrast made me dizzy.
I called home as often as I could.
Nanay loved video calls.
“Pakita mo si apo!” she demanded every time.
Tatay would appear at the edge of the frame, hair whiter, skin darker, lines deeper around his mouth.
He had stopped working construction after my defense.
“Retired na si Tatay,” he declared with a grin. “May PhD na akong anak, e. Pwede na akong magpahinga.”
But retirement for him didn’t mean sitting still.
He grew vegetables behind the house: eggplants, tomatoes, okra, pechay. He raised a few chickens. He bought a small radio and listened to the news every morning.
In the afternoons, he rode his old bicycle around the barangay, greeting neighbors, buying pandesal, delivering vegetables to friends “para sa high blood mo.”
Sometimes, he called me for no reason.
“Anak, okay ka lang ba?”
“May gatas si apo?”
“Pag uwi mo, may manok tayo. Ihaw natin.”
I always said the same things.
“Yes, Tay, I’m fine.”
“Yes, Tay, we’re okay.”
“Yes, Tay, I’ll visit soon.”
“Soon” became a fragile promise I kept pushing forward.
There was always something—class schedules, conferences, deadlines, my son’s checkups. It was never the right time.
“Next month, Tay. I promise. When the semester ends.”
“After this conference.”
“After I finish this paper.”
Time is a liar. It always pretends to stretch endlessly ahead.
Until it doesn’t.
One evening, I was in my office, surrounded by papers and half-finished slides, when my phone buzzed.
It was Nanay.
I answered with a smile.
“Hi, Nay. Kumusta? Si Tatay, nasaan?”
But her face on the screen was wrong.
Her eyes were swollen, her mouth trembling.
“Anak,” she said, voice breaking. “Si Tatay mo…”
The world narrowed to a single point.
“What happened?” I demanded, standing up so quickly my chair toppled behind me.
She took a breath that sounded like it hurt.
“Kanina… sa likod ng bahay… nagdidilig lang siya ng gulay…”
Her voice dissolved into sobs. Someone else took the phone—our neighbor, Mang Tonyo.
“Anak,” he said gently, “nahimatay si Ben. Tumawag kami ng tricycle, dinala sa ospital. Sabi ng doktor… inatake daw sa puso.”
My knees gave out.
I sank to the carpeted floor of my office, the fluorescent lights above buzzing loudly.
“Is he—” I couldn’t finish the word.
There was a pause.
“Wala na, hijo,” Mang Tonyo said softly. “Pasensya ka na. Ginawa namin ang lahat.”
Something inside me shattered silently.
The phone slipped from my hand and hit the floor. I stared at it, the call still connected, Nanay’s wail faint but piercing through the tiny speaker.
For a long time, I couldn’t move.
Outside, students laughed as they walked past my office, talking about exams, crushes, weekend plans. Cars honked in the distance. Life went on all around me, indifferent.
Inside my chest, everything stopped.
I went home that night.
The trip that I had postponed, delayed, scheduled and rescheduled—I made it in a rush, not as a son coming home to visit, but as a son coming home to bury his father.
The bus ride felt endless and too short at the same time. City lights blurred past the window. My reflection stared back at me: a man in a collared shirt, a PhD, a teacher, a husband, a father—who had somehow failed the simplest role of all: to be a son when it truly mattered.
When I arrived at the house, there were chairs outside, a white tent, neighbors talking in hushed tones. A tarpaulin with his picture was hung above the entrance: him in a faded checkered polo, smiling shyly at the camera.
“Benito L. Cruz
Beloved Husband, Father, Tatay”
I stepped inside.
The scent of candles and flowers wrapped around me. On the left side of the room stood the coffin.
His coffin.
I moved toward it as if my feet were made of stone.
Nanay was sitting on a plastic chair, rosary beads twisted around her fingers. Her eyes were red and empty.
When she saw me, she stood up abruptly, stared at me for a second, then collapsed into my embrace, her body shaking with sobs that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her lungs.
“Anak,” she cried. “Ang bilis. Ang bilis naman niya umalis.”
I held her, my own tears finally spilling over.
When I looked into the coffin, my heart exploded silently.
There he was.
Tatay.
But not quite.
His face was calmer than I had ever seen it, lines smoothed by the mortician’s hands, lipstick color on his lips that he would have teased as “pang-babae.” He wore a white barong. His hands, folded over his chest, were still rough and scarred, even in death.
Those hands had carried bricks.
Those hands had fixed bicycles and sandals.
Those hands had counted crumpled bills on the table, deciding how to stretch them for another week.
Those hands had pushed me gently forward and caught me silently when I fell.
I reached out and touched his fingers.
They were cold.
Finally, I whispered the apologies I had never made when he was alive.
“I’m sorry, Tay,” I choked. “I’m so, so sorry. I should’ve come more. I should’ve been here. I should’ve…”
My words dissolved into unintelligible sound.
Nanay put a hand on my shoulder.
“Hindi naman siya nagreklamo, anak,” she said hoarsely. “Hanggang sa huli… ang sinasabi lang niya, ‘Okay na ako. May anak na akong doktor.’”
She sank back into her chair, staring at the coffin.
“Kanina lang,” she whispered, “kausap ko siya. Pinakita niya yung mga talong at kamatis sa likod. Sabi niya, ‘Pag uwi ni anak, magluto tayo ng pinakbet. Mag–ihaw tayo ng manok. Mag picture kami sa harap ng bahay—doktor, nanay, tatay.’”
Her shoulders shook.
“Hindi na umabot.”
During the wake, people came and left.
Neighbors told stories of Tatay helping repair their roofs during storms, fixing broken faucets, lending small amounts of money with no interest.
A man I didn’t know shook my hand.
“Anak ni Mang Ben?” he asked.
“Opo,” I replied.
He nodded. “Pinagtanggol niya ako dati sa construction site,” he said. “Gusto akong tanggalin kasi na-late ako. Siya yung nagpa-usap sa engineer. Sabi niya: ‘Ako na ang babawi sa atraso niya. Huwag niyo lang siyang tanggalin, may pamilya yan.’ Hindi ko ‘yon makakalimutan.”
Another neighbor told me about the time Tatay quietly brought them a sack of rice when they had nothing to eat.
“He said sobra daw sa inyo,” she said, shaking her head. “Alam ko namang hindi ‘yon totoo. Wala ngang sobra sa inyo nun. Pero ibinigay pa rin niya.”
Each story was a brick in a wall of truth I had never fully seen.
I had always thought of Tatay as my private hero. I hadn’t realized he had been quietly building lives everywhere he went.
On the last night of the wake, after most people had gone home, I sat alone by the coffin.
The candles flickered, casting shadows on the wooden walls.
In my hand, I held two pieces of paper.
One was the folded note he had tucked into my lunch box years ago—the one that said, “Kaya natin ‘to.” I had kept it in my wallet all these years, the edges frayed and yellowed.
The other was the official certificate from UP, stating that I had earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
Achievement.
Sacrifice.
Past.
Present.
All crumpled into two sheets of paper between my fingers.
I thought of that day in the auditorium again.
Professor Santos recognizing him.
“You are Mang Ben, right? I didn’t expect to see you here today, as the father of a new PhD…”
For a brief moment, the world had seen him.
Not as an anonymous construction worker.
Not as a background figure in someone else’s story.
But as a man with a name, a history, and a legacy.
I wished I could give him that moment again.
I wished there had been more.
We buried him the next day.
The sky was painfully blue.
As they lowered the coffin into the ground, Nanay sobbed uncontrollably, clutching my arm. My son, too young to understand, held onto my leg, staring curiously at the people in black.
I threw a handful of soil onto the coffin, my fingers trembling.
With each clump of earth that hit the wood, the truth became heavier:
I would never hear him say “Kaya natin ‘to” again.
He would never call to ask if I’d eaten.
He would never meet me at the bus terminal with a plastic bag of boiled corn and peanuts.
He would never sit under the mango tree, pointing at his vegetable beds, boasting like a child with a school project.
Regret is the cruelest teacher.
It always arrives after the exam.
Months passed.
Life, stubborn and indifferent, moved forward.
I returned to Manila. I went back to teaching. I marked exams, attended meetings, wrote articles, sat on panels.
My colleagues congratulated me on my publications and conference invitations.
“Your parents must be so proud,” they said.
I smiled politely and said, “Yes,” because there was no easy way to explain that pride and grief were now permanently tangled inside my chest.
Sometimes, in the middle of a lecture, I would look at my students and see my younger self—confused, hopeful, tired. I tried to be kinder than some of my professors had been. I tried to remember that behind every tuition fee was someone like Tatay, climbing scaffolds or driving jeepneys or working double shifts.
At home, my son grew taller.
One evening, I found him in our small living room, struggling with a broken toy car. The wheel had come off. He frowned as he tried to fix it, hands too small to push the axle back in.
“Daddy, it’s broken,” he said, frustrated.
I knelt down beside him and took the car.
For a second, I saw myself as a child, watching from the window as another man quietly fixed my bicycle.
“Let’s try,” I said softly.
I worked the small wheel back into place, fingers clumsy. It took a few tries, but finally it clicked.
My son’s eyes lit up.
“Wow,” he said. “You’re so good, Daddy!”
I smiled faintly.
“I had a good teacher,” I whispered.
That night, after he had fallen asleep, I sat alone at the kitchen table, the note from Tatay in front of me.
“Kahit hindi ko alam lahat ng ginagawa mo sa school, alam ko na kaya mo.
Huwag kang matakot sa hirap. Sanay na tayo sa hirap.
Kaya natin ‘to.”
I traced the letters with my finger.
He hadn’t known what “phenomenology” meant.
He hadn’t known how to interpret p-values or citation formats.
He hadn’t known the language of academia.
But he had known something far more important:
How to build a person.
People sometimes ask about my research, my publications, my work.
They say, “You’re a PhD. Your father must have built a good life for you.”
They imagine big houses, cars, bank accounts.
I shake my head.
“My father was a construction worker,” I say. “He never built a house for me. He never owned land. He never left me money.”
I pause.
But in my chest, grief and gratitude rise together, twins that can’t be separated.
“He didn’t build a house,” I say slowly, feeling each word like a nail driven into wood. “He built a person. He built me.”
The tragedy is that I spent years trying to build a future big enough to honor him—
and only realized, too late, that he himself
had been the masterpiece
that would not last forever.
