IT’S been more than eight months since I lost my father Vicente to pneumonia. After having lived with him for almost 50 years, I should still feel devastated. After all, he—not my mother—had been such a big influence in my life .

I can’t say I don’t miss him. Since his death, not an hour passes by that I don’t think of him. Now that he’s gone, I often catch myself asking, “What would Daddy say? How would Daddy react?”

And that covers such mundane concerns as replacing the bathroom’s fluorescent light.

But, to my surprise, I seem to be holding up quite well. Apart from occasional sleepless nights, which could have been caused by anything—from looming deadlines to mounting credit card bills—I have yet to experience crying fits, bouts of depression and extended episodes of self-pity.

I credit Daddy for all these. Long after his death, life lessons from him remain with me. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with his conservative views. I’m diametrically opposed to a number of his beliefs on such subjects as birth control, divorce and, yes, gay marriage.

Transition

But when it came to death, I believed him 100 percent. Death, he used to tell me, is just a transition from one stage of our existence to the next. Because he was a devout Catholic, my father’s views on death were perhaps no different from those of early Christians as they were about to be torched or fed to the lions: Death is just the beginning.

Apart from brimming with hope, his views on death were also filled with fatalism. The world is a stage, he once said, and we’re all actors with respective roles to play—either long or short. But despite their varying lengths, he continued, no role is too small or too insignificant under God’s watchful gaze.

He never said it to me, but perhaps it was also his way of reminding me not to be too shallow and materialistic. When faced with sickness and death, none of these acquisitions and accomplishments will matter, he said. They won’t make you any happier or extend your life a minute longer.

I realized what he meant as he spent his last weeks going in and out of the hospital. We were behind him every step of the way, but the battle was his alone to fight. And he dealt with it, despite the pain and discomfort, with faith and quiet acceptance.

We’re not rich, but we’re not exactly dirt-poor. But thinking about it now, there was probably nothing we could have done to extend my father’s life. In many cases, money only prolongs a sick person’s suffering.

My father’s death has had a profound and lasting effect on me, but at the same time, I remain unchanged in many ways. Why should I, when I know that his death was the culmination of his life’s work and reason for being on earth?

Daddy had a long, rich and meaningful life spent loving, serving and reaching out to others, but his time on earth was simply up. I realized early on that the sooner I accept this, the better it will be for all of us he has left behind. And as long as there’s no way yet for me to disprove his beliefs on death, I will continue to cling to them until the time he can again tell it to my face: “Son, I told you so.”