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One morning in early summer of 1984, I woke up and looked over to where my dad was supposed to be sleeping. He wasn't there. In his place was my sister, still sleeping. I went over to the kitchen to find my mom. She asked if I slept well, but instead of answering, I asked where dad was. He's at the hospital, she said. She did not look me in the eye.

The discovery of his illness came suddenly. He was out drinking with his friends the night before when he noticed slight tremor in his left hand. Among the group was a neurologist with his own practice. So at midnight, they decided to go to the good doctor's office for what they thought would be a routine exam. Within an hour dad was admitted to a hospital. Brain tumor was the diagnosis. They gave him two months to live.

He lived past the two months he was given. Summer passed and autumn came. He was discharged from the hospital not because he was getting better but because there was nothing else they could do. My mom convinced him to get baptized. Augustine, they named him, and my mom, Monica, was his spiritual mother.

With the approach of winter, his condition worsened. By then he quit the expensive radiation therapy and stayed home. He lost all of his handsomely thick, graying hair and was visibly weakening each day. He went on a million different medications, some prescription, some herbal, some just plain nonsense. His liver, too, started failing.

By the morning of April 13th, 1985, he had been unconscious for a few days. It was first Saturday after Easter and the weather was glorious. I woke up from a terrible nightmare and looked over at dad on his bed. He looked the same as the day before and the day before that.

Back then, schools were on for six days a week, so I got ready and left for school. On the way I met my grandmother who was coming back home from a sleep over at her friend's house. How is your dad doing, she asked. He's fine, I said. He's fine. I don't recall anything from school that day, but I do recall that I kept to myself. I even walked home alone without any friends, which was rare. On the way home, I counted four butterflies. Four white butterflies.

When I turned onto our street, I saw my dad's best friend walking out from our house. He walked to a post nearby and taped on a sheet of paper with two Chinese characters written on it. I could not read what it said, but I remembered seeing it once before when an old lady across the street had passed away. I tried not to think of it and went over to say hi. He said nothing and looked away. He moved on to the next post.

The main gate to the house was open. The gate was never open except when we received important guests. I walked in and went up the terrazzo steps. At the entry to the house, there were many pairs of shoes, so many that I had to leave mine outside. I saw my grandparents in the living room and said hello. They did not say anything back. Then I walked into the small room adjoining the master bedroom.

My mom saw me and got up from where she was sitting. I looked into the master bedroom where there hung a black cloth with white embroidered cross in the middle about a third of a way out from the opposite wall. Many people gathered and sat in front of it, reciting prayers in unison. I turned and looked at my mom who now stood in front of me. Daddy passed away, she said. I burst into tears. She put her arms around me.

We joined the prayer group and sat close to the black drapery, behind which was my father's lifeless body. The undertaker was working behind the drapes. All I could hear over the murmurs of prayer was the sound of cloth ripping. Silk, I presume. From the sound of it, the undertaker would have ended up with many long strips of cloth. I wondered what he needed them for. My sisters came home later at different times. Both of them, as if they had made a pact to do so, just sat down and cried silently. I felt embarrassed for how I reacted.

My dad's funeral procession was the biggest that the neighborhood had ever seen. I heard later that easily a thousand people had gathered. The body was moved from our house to the church for the funeral mass, then to the cemetery that was an hour drive away where there were lake and frogs and tadpoles and birds, where red dragonflies rested on tips of grass complacently.

I have not gone back to his grave in twenty-two years. Now I'm afraid to go, afraid things will not be as I remember them. Perhaps I would go back some day when these past years and changes and grief bear meaning no longer. I hope to find that day at some point in my lifetime.