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I lost my dad on New Year’s Eve 2019.

It was sudden, unexpected, and not related to the pandemic that would come a few months later.

It’s hard to separate the grief of losing him from the chaos that 2020 brought with it. From chaos comes creation. From writing comes remembrance. A way of keeping your loved ones alive.

One of my earliest memories of my dad was this game he made up. Big crab, baby crab. That was the game my father played with me when I was five or so. He would use his hand to mimic a crab moving along an imaginary beach. My hand was the baby crab moving alongside his. It wasn’t so ironic that we were both crabs in this game as, being Scorpios, we were crabs in real life at times.

I was my father’s daughter. I was driven, quick-tempered, and headstrong. Suplada, as my mom would describe me at times in Tagalog. All my father’s traits. Those traits suited him well in his role as a general surgeon, one which he thoroughly enjoyed. They did not suit me so well growing up as they were not ladylike.

I was a daddy’s girl in every sense and his splitting image as well. He had a curiosity and passion for learning other cultures and cuisines, which he expressed in his cooking. He handled a knife in the kitchen as skillfully as he did in the operating room. Reading and cooking were his outlets from a profession that demanded perfection and an indomitable will. Under his often intimidating presence in the OR beat the heart of a compassionate and highly sensitive human being. Like many doctors, he took any of his patients’ complications to heart.

My father strongly encouraged me to attend the University of Chicago, so I did. Inspired by the university’s culture of learning, I aimed to be an English major while going pre-med. The rigorous curriculum did not allow me to give ample attention to both fields of knowledge, so science won out. Like both my parents, I chose a career in medicine. Having chosen a surgical field of medicine, my father became my career role model.

Becoming responsible for patients and therefore other people’s lives, I quickly saw why my father took his patients’ outcomes personally. Helping patients meant knowing their stories and being part of their lives. As an obstetrician, I bore witness to families in the making. As a gynecologist, I bore witness to women in the process of becoming.

As a surgeon, my father understood the loneliness that comes with making decisions in a critical care setting. Over the years, I would ask his opinion on a complicated surgical case, and he was always there to help. He was a man of few words, but he could talk at length on how best to diagnose and manage a surgical patient. He also relayed stories to me of his proudest and darkest moments as a surgeon, which I felt privileged to understand.

He left this world abruptly on New Year’s Eve 2019 from a cardiovascular event, the details of which I carry in my heart. I was a witness to this event. As I watched it unfold, I knew what the outcome would be in spite of my profession. Life is fragile and full of ironies. In spite of my profession, I learned about the transience of life that night. At how life changes in an instant.

I gave the speech of my life on the day of his funeral. It gave me the opportunity to share his life with others and learn even more from his example. Like all of us, he embodied opposites. He was a force of nature but was also gentle. He was demanding of those close to him but loved unconditionally. His essence was pure compassion.

I never played that big crab, baby crab game with either of my two sons. It was just between my dad and I. A treasured part of my time with him.

Life is strung together by these memories. We can’t relive them, but we can be transformed by them. And keep moving forward.

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