Dad, today is the seventh Father’s Day I don’t have you. To me, it is harsh, what’s more, it is brutal. Such is the brutality that tells me there won’t be any Father’s Day that I can have you again in the rest of my life no matter how many of it I will have. Father’s Day seems to be a joke to me, or at least it seems to invariably tease me that it has nothing to do with me. For all that, I love this day counting it matters instead of loathing it counting it nothing, for I have found a new meaning over it. I find it a special day that God bestows upon me that I can indulge myself in remembering you arbitrarily; whimsically recalling you anytime I want; imagining you were appearing in front of me and talking with me. I find I am especially legitimate to do so on this day.

Dad, sometimes I would complain that why would you have developed such a deadly illness with no cures but merely had you stay at the hospital suffering pain. Tears invariably fail to answer this question to me no matter how much it has fallen over my cheek tattering my face. Luckily, today I can turn the table on it properly and happily offer it an answer, for I have found something from God, I come to realize that it is – godsend – the time you could be with us chatting, atoning for the time you were with us of yore without chats. During the time you were at the hospital, every moment you were with us sharing joy and tears was so precious and memorable that nothing dares come to replace them. Yeah, without that period of time, we would never be able to understand you, getting to know you were a person who needed love and care and liked talking.

Dad, you had sacrificed your right, sensation, and pleasure of being loved to have attained goodness and kindness. Our heart is humbled by your impassivity to worldly harvest; our ego vanishes into thin air by your silence shown; our mind is cleared by your adoption of a simple lifestyle; your life had taught us spiritually without preaching and, all the more, you had unwittingly offered us a lesson about love letting us know love is an attitude of giving but not taking – and – true love must embrace sacrifice and tears. Such is the red pill that every one of us has to take to not only grow up but grow up with strength and wisdom! I love you, dad!