It was not death. It was grief.

I wrote this on May 9, 2023, after my first therapy session.

At the time, I was not writing to make sense to anyone else. I was writing because I needed somewhere to place the weight of what I could not yet fully understand. I went there thinking I needed answers about death, about fear, about the thoughts that kept appearing in the middle of ordinary days and quiet nights. But what I slowly began to realize was that fear is not always about the thing it names. Sometimes, fear is only the shape grief takes when it has been ignored for too long.

I am sharing this now not because I have all the answers, or because healing has become a straight and finished line. It has not. I am sharing this because this was the day I first allowed myself to ask for help, and the day I began to understand that some fears are not warnings, but wounds asking to be seen. Some fears are grief trying to speak.

---

Today, I finally decided to see a therapist.

Since my birthday, I have been thinking about death a lot. Not because I want it. In fact, I fear it.

It has become a persistent thought, an idea that creeps in while I do the most ordinary things: walking, eating, riding a motorcycle, sitting inside a car, taking public transport.

What if 29 is the age I am destined to die?

What if it is not 50, like what I constantly tell people when we talk about the perfect human shelf life?

What if I walk on the street and get killed by a crazy bystander? What if I get into an accident because I do not know how to cross the street properly? What if I get food poisoning? What if I suddenly develop a food allergy I never had before? What if the motorcycle I am riding crashes? What if it is a car?

I thought I could easily brush the thought off, but it lingered.

It never went away.

It stayed.

It started affecting the way I saw life, and even the way I moved through my daily routines.

Until one night, it broke into my sleep like a thief in the night. Like an uninvited guest at a birthday party. Like a prisoner who had escaped from jail and found the perfect spot for a hideout.

My eyes were closed, and death came in from my head down to my chest, making my heart beat twice as fast as it normally would. It woke me up, as if sending a reminder that if I closed my eyes any longer, they might never open again.

Not anymore.

So today, I finally decided to see a therapist.

I wanted to understand what was happening to me. Why I was thinking this way. What I should do to make it stop.

I was desperate for answers.

I was longing for answers.

All I could think about were the answers.

On the fifth floor of a six-story building was a small white room where I decided to see a therapist. She was there, sitting on a black swivel chair, waiting for me.

I came in, said hi, and apologized for not showing up on our original schedule, to which she kindly said she understood.

I told her my story.

I told her how I had become scared that death was coming for me soon. I told her this was my first time asking for help, because I had never needed help before.

Or maybe because I always thought asking for help meant inconveniencing people.

I told her I wanted answers.

I told her why I could not die just yet.

Mom left three years ago with three requests I needed to fulfill.

Keep the family together.

Celebrate my little sister’s 18th birthday.

Make sure she finishes college.

They sounded simple when said as sentences. But to me, they became commandments. They became the last shape of my love for her. They became the proof that even after death, I could still be a good son.

I had done two out of three, I told her. But I still had a long road ahead before I could complete the last one.

That was why I could not die yet.

Not because I believed I had control over death, but because the idea of dying before fulfilling all three felt like failing her again. I did not want to meet her in the afterlife with unfinished promises in my hands. I did not want her to look at me and say that I failed her when she was living, and I failed her even after she was gone.

“Let’s talk about your mom,” the therapist said. “Her passing. Can you tell me more?”

I wanted answers, so why were we going there? I asked myself.

But I answered anyway.

I told her about Mom’s death, or at least the version of it I had learned to say out loud.

I told her how everything happened in a way that still feels both slow and sudden to me. How there were days when I knew we were already losing her, but I still kept looking for signs that we could keep her a little longer. How I held on to every possible option, not because I was ready to make difficult decisions, but because I was afraid of what would happen if we stopped trying.

I told her about the dialysis.

How she did not want it. How my dad did not want it. How my siblings did not want it.

And how I did.

Not because I wanted her to suffer. Not because I wanted to go against what everyone else felt. But because I thought that if there was still one more thing we could try, then maybe we should try it.

Maybe that was what love was supposed to do.

Maybe love meant refusing to surrender, even when the body was already tired, even when everyone else was already afraid to hope.

But grief has a cruel way of rewriting intentions.

What I once understood as an act of hope slowly became evidence against me. In my mind, I stopped being the child who wanted his mother to live. I became the person who made the wrong decision. The person who pushed too hard. The person who asked for one more chance, only for that chance to become part of the ending.

I told her how, after Mom died, I did not know where to place that guilt.

There were people to talk to, papers to settle, visitors to receive, decisions to make, messages to answer, and a family to hold together. So I did what I thought I was supposed to do.

I stood there.

I moved.

I answered questions.

I thanked people for coming.

I looked composed enough for everyone to believe I was strong.

And maybe I wanted them to believe it.

Because if they believed I was strong, then maybe I could believe it too.

I told her how I only cried once, inside my apartment, when I got home after the first night of her wake. It was the kind of cry that did not feel like release. It felt like something escaping before I could stop it.

After that, I packed it away.

I wore the bubbly, jolly version of myself again because that was the version people knew. That was the version that did not make people uncomfortable. That was the version that could still function.

Everyone kept saying, “You’re going to be okay.”

But not a single person asked me if I was really okay.

And I think, had even one person asked, I might have fallen apart. I might have admitted that I was not okay. That I was scared. That I was angry. That I felt guilty.

That I did not know how to be a son without a mother.

Or an older sibling with too many responsibilities.

Or a person expected to keep moving after the person who held everything together was gone.

I told her how I felt that the three things Mom asked for became my responsibility alone because she told them to me.

I told her how afraid I was to ask for help, even during the toughest times and the lowest lows, because I did not want to inconvenience the people around me.

I told her how asking for help made me feel less capable. Less competent.

I told her how I had approached life through temporary happiness because, deep inside, I still blamed myself for Mom’s death.

As if I killed her.

As if I caused it because I pushed her to undergo dialysis when she did not want to. When my dad did not want to. When my siblings did not want to.

It was me who wanted it.

And in my mind, it led to her demise.

“I think what you are experiencing now is part of what happened three years ago,” she said. “The thought of death consumes you because you see it as a failure, not a conclusion.”

I see it as a failure, not a conclusion.

Make it make sense.

“We need to unpack more of that grief because it is important to let it out,” she continued. “You have kept it for three years, and healing takes time. One year for others, five for some, twenty for a few. What is important is that you are showing up now.”

Today, I finally decided to see a therapist because I wanted answers about my thoughts on death.

Only it was not death we were answering.

It was grief.

Third Time's the Charm (And Why That's Okay)

 

Twelve years ago, fresh out of college and brimming with the kind of confidence that only comes from not yet knowing what you don't know, I enrolled in a master's program. I thought it was the logical next step. Everyone seemed to be doing it. I wasn't doing it for any particular reason, and maybe that was exactly the problem. Life had other plans, as it often does, and I didn't finish.

The second attempt didn't even make it past the first tuition fee. I paid it, looked at the number again, and realized, with a mix of defeat and reluctant clarity, that this wasn't something I could sustain. Not then. Not that way.

So I let it go. Again.

There's a particular kind of grief that comes with giving something up, especially something you wanted, or thought you wanted. It doesn't announce itself loudly. It just quietly settles into the back of your mind, occasionally surfacing as a what-if, a not yet, or a maybe someday.

For years, the master's degree lived there. In the background. Patient.

And life, to its credit, kept moving. I built a career. I figured out what I was good at and, more importantly, what I actually cared about. I traveled. I grew into myself in ways I couldn't have predicted at twenty. Those years weren't lost time — they were the years that gave me something to bring back to the classroom. I just didn't know it yet.

There's a version of this story where I feel guilty about the detours. Where I look at the years between attempt one and attempt three and see wasted time, missed opportunities, a dream deferred for no good reason. But I've made peace with a different version: that I wasn't ready then, and that's okay. Readiness isn't something you manufacture. Sometimes you just have to live until you get there.

Last year, in my early thirties, I tried again.

This time felt different from the very start. Life had settled into something I could recognize. Not perfect, not fully figured out, but mine. I had a clearer sense of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be. So when the idea came back around, I didn't dismiss it. I leaned in.

I'm now midway through a Master's in Communication Management, and I'm doing it while working full time. Let me be honest about what that looks like: it means squeezing readings into lunch breaks, writing papers on weekday nights when my brain is already running on fumes, and spending a good chunk of weekends in a classroom instead of on a couch. It means saying no to things I'd rather say yes to. It means operating in a near-constant state of "a lot."

And yet. I love it.

Not in a breezy, Instagram-caption kind of way. I love it the way you love something that asks a lot of you, something that stretches you just past the edge of comfortable and dares you to keep going. That's always been my motto: embrace the uncomfortable. Not because discomfort is noble or because suffering builds character in some abstract sense, but because the things worth doing almost never feel easy at the start. The discomfort is usually a sign you're in the right place.

Being back in school as an adult is a strange and wonderful thing. You notice everything differently. You ask better questions, not because you're smarter, but because you've lived enough to know what you don't understand. You bring your actual life into the room: the career pivots, the hard conversations, the things you've had to unlearn. There's a texture to it that simply wasn't there at twenty, when school was just the thing you did before real life began.

What I didn't expect was how much it would remind me that I'm always a student, in every sense of the word. Not just here, sitting in class with a notebook and a running list of deadlines, but everywhere. In my work, in my relationships, in the quiet moments when something shifts and I realize I've been thinking about something all wrong. Learning doesn't have an endpoint. It just changes shape.

Right now, mine happens to be very literal.

I'm writing this for anyone who has a dream sitting quietly in the back of their mind, waiting. The one you've started and stopped. The one that felt impossible once, or twice. The one you're not sure is still meant for you.

It might be. Timing is not failure. A detour is not a dead end. Sometimes the reason the first two attempts didn't work is simply that they weren't supposed to. The version of you who needed to do this thing hadn't arrived yet.

That version of you might be closer than you think.

Third time's the charm. But only because the first two times were part of the journey too.

She Would Have Been 62

My mom recently turned 62.

I still say it that way: turned. Not “would have turned,” not always. Because in our family, her birthday did not stop arriving just because she was no longer physically here to celebrate it with us. The date still comes. The memories still show up. Her name still gets mentioned. Her presence still finds its way into conversations, into decisions, into the way we care for one another, and into the little moments when we suddenly remember something she used to say.

It has been six years since she passed.

But I don’t want this to be about the loss.

Loss is part of the story, of course. It always will be. When someone as important as a mother leaves, you do not simply move on as if life returned to its old shape. You learn to live around the space they left. You learn that missing someone can become part of your daily language. You learn that years can pass and yet you still catch yourself thinking, "Ma would love this," whenever something good happens, whenever you discover a new place, or whenever the family gathers and her absence is somehow impossible to ignore.

But this is not a story about what death took.

This is a story about who she was—and who she could have continued to be.

This is about imagining my mom at 62.

And knowing her, she would have been enjoying.

She would have been enjoying the simple things. A good meal. A long conversation. A family gathering. A random day out. A birthday celebration she would probably pretend was not a big deal while secretly enjoying every greeting, every small gift, and every person who remembered.

She would have been enjoying time with us. With me. With the people she loved. My mom loved spending time with me, even when there was nothing grand planned. It did not always have to be an occasion. Sometimes it was just eating somewhere. Sometimes it was just talking. Sometimes it was simply being in the same place, sharing a meal, exchanging stories, catching up on life.

I know that if she were still here, she would have been bugging me to bring her to the places I go.

She would have asked where I was going. She would have asked who I was with. She would have asked what the place looked like, what the food tasted like, whether it was worth visiting. And then, sooner or later, she would have found a way to say, “Dalhin mo naman ako diyan.”

And honestly, I wish I could.

I wish I could bring her to the places I now go to. I wish I could take her to the restaurants I discover, the cities I visit, the simple corners of the world that I know she would have loved. I wish I could watch her look around and enjoy herself. I wish I could hear her comments, her questions, her little complaints, her laughter. I wish I could sit across from her again, order food, and talk about everything and nothing.

Because that was one of the beautiful things about her. She did not always need much to be happy. Sometimes, she just wanted time.

Time with her children. Time with family. Time with the people who mattered to her.

At 62, I imagine she would have had more stories to tell. Some of them new, some of them repeated for the hundredth time. She would probably start with one topic and end up somewhere completely different. She would mention someone from years ago. She would remember a detail no one else remembered. She would laugh before finishing the story. And even if we had heard it before, we would listen again because that was part of her charm.

I imagine her at 62 giving advice no one asked for, but everyone probably needed.

I imagine her reminding us to eat, to rest, to be careful, to save money, to help others, to not forget where we came from. I imagine her checking in on people. I imagine her carrying everyone in her heart, the way mothers often do. Quietly. Constantly. Without needing recognition.

And most of all, I imagine her helping.

Because my mom loved helping others.

Not in the performative way. Not in the way that needed attention or applause. She helped because it was simply who she was. It was almost automatic for her. If someone needed something and she had a way to help, she would help. Even when she was tired. Even when she had very little left for herself. Even when she did not have anything in the tank, she would still try to give.

That was one of the strongest lessons she left us.

She once taught us this principle: when you have little and others have none, share that little so everyone else has something.

I remember that to this day.

It sounds simple, but it carries a whole way of seeing the world. It means abundance is not only measured by how much you have. Sometimes, abundance is found in the willingness to share. It means generosity is not only for the rich, the comfortable, or the people who have extra. Sometimes, generosity is most powerful when it comes from people who know what it means to have less.

My mom understood that.

She did not wait until everything was perfect before she helped. She did not wait until she had more than enough. If she had something, even a little, and someone else had nothing, she would find a way to share it. Food, money, time, care, advice, presence. Whatever she could give, she gave.

Looking back, I realize that kind of generosity is not ordinary.

It takes a particular kind of heart to give when you are also running low. It takes a deep kind of compassion to see another person’s need even while carrying your own. It takes love, discipline, and maybe even a little stubbornness to keep helping in a world that often teaches people to protect only themselves.

That was my mom.

She could be tired and still show up. She could be worried and still think of others. She could have her own problems and still ask how someone else was doing. She could have little and still make sure someone else had something.

I think that is one of the reasons her memory remains so alive. Because people like that do not really disappear. Their kindness continues moving through the people they helped. Their words become principles. Their habits become examples. Their love becomes a standard you carry with you, even years later.

And at 62, I know she would still be that person.

She would still be helping. Still giving. Still worrying about other people. Still finding ways to stretch whatever she had so someone else could be included. She would still be the person who could not fully enjoy something unless she knew the people around her were okay too.

That is probably why she would have been such a doting grandmother.

She would have been spoiling her six grandchildren.

That is what lolas do.

I can imagine it so clearly. She would have been the kind of lola who sneaks extra food onto their plates. The kind who says “last na” but gives more anyway. The kind who buys little things for them, even when no one asked. The kind who defends them when their parents are trying to be strict. The kind who would say, “Hayaan mo na, bata pa,” while quietly giving them exactly what they wanted.

She would have loved watching them grow.

She would have celebrated their smallest milestones as if they were major achievements. A new word. A school award. A drawing. A dance. A funny sentence. A birthday. A graduation. A random story from school. She would have listened to all of it. She would have been proud of all of it.

And knowing her, she would have made each grandchild feel special.

She would have found a way to connect with each one. She would know their favorite food, their little moods, their ways of asking for attention. She would probably have nicknames for them. She would probably spoil them differently, according to what each child liked. And even when she got tired, she would still make room for them because love, for her, always had room.

I sometimes think about what they missed by not having more years with her.

But again, I do not want this to be about what was lost.

I want it to be about what remains.

What remains is the love she gave us. What remains is the generosity she modeled. What remains is the way she made family feel like something you return to. What remains is the principle she taught us: that even when you have little, you can still share. What remains is the memory of a woman who loved deeply, helped freely, and found joy in being with the people she loved.

What remains is her.

Not physically, but everywhere.

She is in the way we think of others. She is in the way we offer help. She is in the way we gather around food. She is in the way we remember birthdays. She is in the way we talk about family. She is in the way her grandchildren are loved. She is in the way I move through the world with a little more tenderness because she showed me what tenderness looks like when it becomes action.

Six years later, I still miss her.

That will never change.

But I also celebrate her.

I celebrate the woman who would have been 62. The woman who would have wanted to go places with me. The woman who would have enjoyed eating, talking, laughing, and asking me to bring her along. The woman who would have spoiled her grandchildren shamelessly. The woman who would have helped even when she had little. The woman who taught us that generosity is not about excess, but about heart.

I celebrate the version of her that I believe would still be living fully, loving loudly, and giving endlessly.

Maybe she would have had more gray hair now. Maybe she would have complained about body aches. Maybe she would have taken longer to get ready but still insisted she was ready “in five minutes.” Maybe she would have wanted photos but rejected the ones where she did not like how she looked. Maybe she would have had more stories, more opinions, more reminders, more reasons to laugh.

Maybe she would have been softer in some ways and stronger in others.

Maybe 62 would have looked good on her.

I wish we got to see it.

But since we cannot, I choose to imagine it with love.

I choose to remember her not only through sadness, but through the life she would have continued to enjoy. I choose to honor her by carrying the things she taught us. I choose to speak of her as someone who was more than the day she left. She was not defined by her passing. She was defined by how she lived.

And she lived with love.

She lived with generosity.

She lived with a heart that made room for others, even when her own was tired.

Happy 62nd birthday, Mama Emily.

I hope you know that you are remembered not only with tears, but with stories. With laughter. With gratitude. With every little act of kindness we learned from you. With every meal we wish we could share with you. With every place I wish I could bring you. With every grandchild who would have been lucky to be spoiled by you.

You would have been enjoying.

And somehow, through the love you left behind, I think you still are.

India Was Never on My List

 

India was never really a top-of-mind destination for me. 

It was one of those places I knew existed in the imagination of the world: vibrant, ancient, overwhelming, spiritual, cinematic. But it was never a place I actively pictured myself going to. It was not on a vision board. It was not part of a long-held travel dream. It was not a destination I had been quietly waiting to tick off a list.

But sometimes, life has a way of handing you a door before you even realize you were ready to walk through it.

For me, that door came through work. An opportunity presented itself, and I took it. And I was lucky enough to take that opportunity with my partner, JD, beside me.

So there we were, going to India.

Because the trip had already begun as something unexpected, we decided to make the most of it. We planned our days with the intention of seeing as much as we could, knowing that India was too vast, too layered, too alive to be understood from just one place.

So we went to Delhi. Agra. Jaipur.

And what surprised me most was how each place felt like its own world.

Delhi had a pulse that was impossible to ignore. It was movement, sound, traffic, people, history, commerce, everything happening all at once. It was the kind of place that made you feel small, not in a diminishing way, but in a way that reminded you how much life is happening beyond the routines you know.

Agra felt different. There was a solemnity to it. A quietness that settled in me, especially in the presence of the Taj Mahal. It was beautiful, of course, but more than that, it felt like a monument to longing, devotion, grief, and memory. Standing there, I understood that some places are not just seen. They are felt.

Then there was Jaipur, full of color and texture and warmth. It felt almost cinematic, with its pink walls, grand palaces, detailed architecture, and streets that seemed to carry stories in every corner. If Delhi was movement and Agra was stillness, Jaipur was wonder.

Together, they gave me different pockets of amazingness in one country. Each place distinct. Each place memorable. Each place offering something I did not know I needed.

And maybe that was what made the trip poetic for me.

It was not just about going somewhere new. It was about being reminded that the world is so much bigger than the life we usually allow ourselves to see.

There is something humbling about stepping outside your comfort zone. You realize how much of your world is shaped by familiarity: the streets you know, the food you eat, the language you understand, the habits you repeat. And then you find yourself somewhere completely different, trying to make sense of new rhythms, new faces, new ways of being.

At first, it can feel overwhelming. But slowly, it becomes freeing.

Because outside your comfort zone, you remember that you are still capable of awe.

You remember that there are places you have not imagined yet that may still change you. You remember that beauty can meet you in forms you did not expect. You remember that not everything meaningful has to be planned years in advance. Sometimes, meaning arrives through an opportunity, a yes, a flight, a person you love beside you, and a place that quietly rearranges something inside you.

India was never on my list.

But maybe that is what made it special.

It found me before I knew to look for it.

And in its noise, silence, color, and wonder, it reminded me that the world is big. There is so much waiting beyond what is familiar. And sometimes, the places we never planned to visit become the ones that stay with us the longest.