Lessons From My Father

Six lessons about self-worth, family, perseverance, humor, and the strength to keep going.

My dad passed away four years ago.

Back in 2005, he suffered a catastrophic stroke that left the right side of his body paralyzed. For the first three months, it was touch and go. There were seizures, infections, and depression, because traumatic brain injury will do that to you. He underwent surgery to relieve the pressure building inside his brain. The procedure saved his life but left a deep indentation along his temple.

The stroke changed everything. Even after it took so much from him, he was still my dad and I was blessed to know and learn from him as a child, a teen, and a young adult.

I continued to learn from him, just in different ways. Much of what made me who I am was shaped by him. Sometimes his lessons were profound, others were ridiculous, but all of them were practical. Here are some of his best lessons:

1. Don’t accept last-minute invitations. You’re not here to fill seats.

I mostly follow this advice now. But when I was a teenager, I did not appreciate being told I could not hang out with my friends when last-minute plans came up. I still remember the embarrassment and anger I felt when I had to tell a boy in high school that I could not go out with him because he had called and offered to pick me up that same night.

Hindsight is 20/20. Dad was telling me to know my worth.

It does not matter whether you are getting ready to go to dinner with friends or walking into a boardroom. Your presence, your time and your thoughts matter. Your responsibility is to show up prepared, and you should expect, and sometimes demand, to be treated with the same level of thoughtfulness and respect in return. You are not an afterthought, a convenient substitute or a body needed to make a room look full.

I understand that not every last-minute invitation is an insult. Sometimes life is simply messy, and sometimes it is better lived in the moment. But my father taught me to recognize the difference between being genuinely wanted and being asked to fill a seat.

2. Family before everything.

For my dad, family time didn’t belong in the hours outside of his 9-5. Family was the reason he worked hard in the first place.

Putting family first meant making sacrifices that no one applauded and doing things that were inconvenient because someone you loved needed you. He taught me that success was meaningless if the people you love the most were stuck with your leftovers.

I do not always get this balance right. But the order of importance was never unclear to him, and because of that, it has never been unclear to me.

3. Nobody is waiting to give you anything. It is up to you to go get it.

That lesson shaped my ambition, but it also shaped my sense of responsibility. Closed doors are real. Bad timing is real. People will either recognize the value you bring to work, or they won’t. Eventually, you still have to decide what you are going to do next.

No one is coming to build the life you want on your behalf. You have to take the first step, and then another, even when no one is watching. The future is yours to build.

4. Don’t leave your food unattended.

Someone, meaning my dad, was always waiting for you to turn your back.

This is not a metaphor. If there was a perfectly juicy edge on a ribeye, it would disappear if you stepped away to grab a napkin or go to the bathroom. The same was true of those tender pieces of meat clinging to the edge of a pork chop rib bone. He knew exactly where the best bites were, and unattended plates were fair game.

It was infuriating. It was also very funny, especially because he would sit there waiting for you to notice the missing food like a psycho.

5. There is always time for humor.

My dad loved to laugh, and he loved making us laugh even more. His jokes were often terrible. There was the infamous “dalawang itlog” joke, among many others that earned laughs and groans from the rest of us.

He also created characters, including a gloriously cornball version of Dracula, complete with cashews hanging over the sides of his bottom lips like fangs. Ridiculous.

6. It’s not over until you say it’s over.

This is probably the most important lesson I learned from my father.

After his stroke, he had to relearn nearly everything using only the left side of his body. He learned how to wash his face, brush his teeth and comb his hair with one hand. Speech therapists worked with him so he could speak, read and write again. Physical therapists helped him strengthen his body and try to walk again. Even eating, something he had done without thinking for his entire life, became a skill he had to rebuild from the beginning.

You want to talk about the strength of the human spirit? My dad was completely paralyzed on the right side of his body, but he worked so hard to relearn how to live.

At the time, I understood that he was doing it for himself. I realized later that he was also doing it for us. He wanted to make things a little easier for my mom, who had become his primary caregiver. But I also believe he kept pushing because he knew we were watching: my mom, my brothers, my sister and me.

He did not want to be the father who gave up on himself.

My father’s life after the stroke was not the life he would have chosen. It was harder, smaller in some ways and filled with losses most of us cannot imagine. But he kept showing us that there was still life to be lived.

And he lived for 17 years after that stroke.

Four years after losing him, I am still learning from him. And whenever life knocks me down, I hear the lesson he taught us through every painful, determined step of his recovery: It is not over until I say it is.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.