a table for a party of five, minus one

after my pops died, people kept asking me how i was doing in this careful voice, as though grief was something that could be measured cleanly. as though there was a correct answer besides: i don’t know. everything feels wrong now. i know, everyone means well. there is no right thing to say. the truth is, grief did not arrive all at once for me. it arrived slowly. in fragments. in delayed collisions.

my father died from complications of covid when the entire world was shut down. even now, writing that feels surreal. the roads were emptier then. airports sounded different. in fact, arriving at austin bergstrom international airport felt like a ghost town. hospitals became places people disappeared into. the world moved behind masks and closed doors while millions of people carried private devastation inside homes that suddenly felt too quiet. and somehow, in the middle of all of that global grief, each loss still felt horribly personal.

before i could go home to my mother, before i could sit inside the house my parents built together, before i could even properly exist inside the reality that pops was gone, i had to quarantine alone in an airbnb for two weeks.

two weeks.

i only saw my mother once during that time: at my father’s funeral. it was just the 4 of us, we were once a party of 5. saying that feels devastating.

sometimes i still think about how unnatural that was. how grief itself became restricted. measured. distanced. how there were rules around mourning. the airbnb was quiet in a way that did not feel peaceful. the kind of quiet that makes every thought louder. every memory sharper. i remember waking up every morning suspended between disbelief and dread. the world outside kept moving in this strange muted way while mine had completely stopped. friends would come by to drop off sweet gifts, they would stand in the drive way and i at the threshold of the door as we chatted. some friend’s drove hours just to say hi and chat for a few before getting back on the road home. people were baking sourdough bread. watching tiger king. talking about lockdown hobbies.

and my father was dead.

there is something deeply disorienting about suffering catastrophic personal loss while the entire world is simultaneously unraveling beside you. it becomes difficult to separate your grief from the atmosphere of the time itself. everything felt haunted back then.

recently, i came across a reel asking:
“what is the most heartbreaking thing someone has ever said to you?”

without thinking, i replied:
“we are going to facetime you so you can say goodbye to your dad.”

i stared at the comment after posting it because even years later, it still does not feel like a real sentence.

a woman replied to me. she said her father and brother had also passed during covid. then she said something like: “even for a moment, know there’s someone out there who understands this feeling. your dad is not alone.”

her username ended with “redrobin.”

and immediately i thought of the robin. if you know me, you know about the robin.

the morning after i finally arrived at my parents’ house, i woke up early before everyone else and went outside to water my father’s garden. the house felt hollow. not empty. hollow. like grief had physically altered the structure of it. i sat in the grass crying when a robin landed nearby. close enough that i stopped breathing for a second. it tilted its head at me and stayed there quietly while i cried. and through tears, i whispered: “i know. i just miss you.” i know how that sounds. maybe grief simply makes us search for connection everywhere. maybe the brain cannot tolerate absence without trying to soften it somehow. but i swear something inside me recognized him in that moment. not literally. not scientifically. just emotionally. instinctively. after that day, robins kept appearing at strange moments. not constantly. just enough to make me pause.

the morning before i had to put my soul dog to sleep, i sat outside with her while she sniffed the yard one last time. i was crying quietly, trying to hold myself together for her.

then there it was again. a robin on the fence. watching. still.

like:
i know.
i’m here.

now i live in the desert, where robins are harder to come by. so when i saw that woman’s username, some part of me softened immediately. maybe it was coincidence. maybe it was synchronicity. maybe grief just creates its own private language out of ordinary things. i don’t know. i only know that after reading her message, i suddenly wanted to make pork adobo. i had avoided making it for years. at first unintentionally. then very intentionally. because i was afraid it would not taste like my father’s. and if it did not taste like his, i worried i would lose another piece of him.

in filipino families, food is never just food. especially in immigrant families. especially in families where love is often shown more easily than spoken. love arrives through feeding people. through someone cutting fruit for you before you ask. or the way pops would peel shrimp for me because he knew i didn’t want to get my hands dirty. or through a full plate appearing in front of you after a hard day. through cooking your favorite dish because they noticed you seemed sad. through making enough food for everyone even when money was tight. celebration lived inside meals for us. not because we always had money for elaborate gifts or vacations or giant parties, but because making a special meal meant: you matter enough for this effort. you are loved enough for this time. we may not have much, but we will make something beautiful anyway. food carried care. pride. memory. devotion. sometimes entire emotional conversations existed inside one meal.

so i made the adobo.

the smell filled the kitchen slowly. steam clouding the window next to the stove. the kind of smell that settles into walls and clothes and memory. pops probably would have laughed at me using a dutch oven to make the adobo, “no need fancy just get a pot”… and suddenly i was no longer standing in my kitchen in the desert.

i was home.

not the physical structure. not even a specific memory. just that feeling. safety. warmth. belonging. the feeling of being loved in an ordinary day kind of way. i took one bite and immediately put my spoon down because tears came before i could stop them. it tasted exactly like his. and for one impossible moment, my body remembered what it felt like to still live in a world where my pops existed. i think that is what food becomes in diaspora families. not just nourishment. not just tradition. proof. proof that someone loved you enough to keep you fed. proof that care can survive migration, hardship, distance, even death. proof that memory lives inside the body long after people are gone. one bite can return you to an entire lifetime.

suddenly the television is too loud somewhere in another room. someone is asking if you ate yet. someone is handing you the best piece without mentioning it. someone loves you so deeply they spent hours making sure you would feel full. and maybe that is why grief and food became tangled together for me forever. because sometimes the closest thing we have to resurrection is taste.

so, if i’ve ever made you a meal, i hope you realize how much love and care i had for you in that moment. i hope you understood that i was never just feeding you. i was paying attention. i was remembering the things you liked. the things you avoided. the way your face softened when you finally relaxed. i was trying, in the quietest way i knew how, to make you feel cared for. i hope the smell of it stays with you sometimes. unexpectedly. years from now, walking into a kitchen somewhere and suddenly being pulled back into a memory you forgot you still carried. and for a moment, i hope it brings you back to softness. to the laughs we shared. to conversations that stretched longer than we realized. to comfort. to warmth. to the feeling of being safe enough to exhale. i hope you remember the comfort of it all.

the mouth feel.
the warmth settling into your belly.
the feeling of finally being still because someone made sure you were fed.

because where i come from, food has never just been food.

it is tenderness.
it is effort.
it is one of the purest ways some of us know how to love.