08/11/2025
I dreamt of my dad last night. We were having one of those rare, quiet conversations that felt both real and sacred, like time had briefly folded in on itself. He kept telling me, “Anak, kaya mo. Kayang kaya mo ’to.” 🥹
Then, as dreams often do, it slipped away. He closed his eyes, and I woke to the sound of my alarm.
Later that morning, while cleaning my little home library in preparation for what lies ahead, I stumbled upon his old books I carefully kept, now quietly waiting on my shelves. One of them was “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill. I knew my dad well enough to expect his usual doctor’s scrawl inside (those barely legible notes that only he could understand). But seeing his handwriting again stopped me. It was a small thing, yet it carried the weight of memory.
On one page, he had marked a passage titled “Six Ways to Turn Desires Into Gold.” And there it was, the same message he had been trying to tell me in the dream. That success, like faith, starts with belief. That the life I want will come not through luck, but through discipline, purpose, and trust in timing.
In that quiet moment, I realized how my dad never truly stopped teaching me. Even in silence, even in absence, he continues to guide me in ways I could never have planned or asked for.
Maybe that’s what love looks like when it outlives a person, it stops needing a body to exist. It finds other ways to reach you. It speaks in dreams when words are no longer possible. It hides in old handwriting, in the scent of a page turned yellow with time, in the echoes of advice once half-heard but now fully understood.
Love doesn’t end, it simply changes form. It becomes the small, invisible thread that ties your present self to the person who once shaped you. It softens the sharp edges of loss and replaces the ache with quiet gratitude.
You start to realize that remembering isn’t about holding on to the pain of absence, it’s about honoring the life that left an imprint so deep, it continues to guide you long after they’re gone.
And maybe that’s the truest form of love: when presence turns into legacy, and memory becomes a gentle hand that keeps pushing you forward.
Because some people never really leave. They just live differently: in our words, in our choices, in the calm courage they once taught us to find.
Dad, even from where you are, you’re still looking out for me. You are gone, yes, but never forgotten🕊️
P.S. Love your fathers while you can. One day, their lessons will echo through the smallest things and you’ll realize they never really left.
