His Packed Roses; Her Thousand Cranes

White paper cranes hung from the ceiling, as if they came from the skies; they are my hopes and wishes in the form of a bird—so they could be delivered to anyone above, who would listen to my prayer. Below lay my father in bed, while the heart monitor continued to beep, like a countdown to his death, except I don't know when he would finally give up his last breath.

What was I to do when the person I love is going to die at any moment?

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"Martha." She looked away, walking stubbornly forward. In her hands were strings connected to helium balloons. It was a gift for every kid after they performed in their end-of-year ceremony and Martha only managed to see her father after everybody went home.

"Martha, I'm sorry. Papa couldn't make it in time." Martha kicked the stones on the ground as she ignored her father. Not once her father ever came for any school event. She swallowed a bitter taste behind her throat as she remembered how everybody had their parents hug and kiss them after their performance.

Her father continued. "Papa will bring you to McDonalds as an apology, Martha. Just...just forgive me, would you?"

"Papa promised," she spoke as if it was the only thing that mattered.

"I know. But I..." Her father placed his hands on her shoulder and she turned around. Her father was kneeling down, as he bit his lip. Reaching out to her face, he caressed it. "How was it, Martha?"

Martha looked down again. "Nice." She played with the strings. She wanted to push her father away for what he did but as she saw him with his sad look, she felt bad for acting the way she had been.

Her father said nothing but pressed a kiss on her forehead before pulling her into a hug. Martha hugged her father back, accidentally letting go of a few strings.

"I promise that it will be the last time, Martha. I promise that papa will come the next time."

Martha didn't believe it but when she was in his warm embrace, she pretended to be a normal girl with two parents instead of one, with hugs and kisses any time she wanted. It's a dream but dreams last sweetly as they come to Martha and that was enough. For the moment.

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I fold another crane. I didn't write anything in them.

I placed them on his arm, watching the crane fall sideways. I eventually managed to make it stay still.

With my two arms on the bed, I placed my chin on the bed, watching the crane, just hoping.

Just hoping.

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Martha sat across the table, watching her father fold a crane. Her lips curved up, forming a wide smile as her father plop the crane on her head. He laughed as she took it down and beamed at him.

"Papa! Teach me how to make it. I want to make that bird!"

"It's a crane, Martha." He ruffled her hair. Taking a piece of paper, he gave one to her and he took another. "You see, you have to fold it this way." He showed her using the piece of paper in his hand.

She fumbled. Her first try didn't look as good as her father's. She pouted, but her father looked at her, ruffling her head again. "You have to be patient. I didn't get it the first time either." He then took another piece of paper to show her again. After three tries, Martha managed to fold one that resembled the one her father folded.

"Yes!" She jumped around the apartment with glee in her voice, then eventually settled upon setting the paper crane on the coffee table, kneeling on the ground and watching the crane, as if it could come alive at any moment and fly.

Another weight landed on her head again. Martha bowed her head down slightly—another piece of origami landed in front of the crane. She breathed with her eyes wide. "It's a rose!"

Her father kneeled beside her. "Yeah. It's a rose." There was a hint of grief in his voice but it would be years later when Martha found out that it was the way her father wooed her mother before she passed away. Her father wasn't one to tell his feelings outright.

But he was the type to write them out.

He took the rose. Delicately, he pulled down the flaps holding it in place, and tug them. The paper curls unraveled and it was then that Martha realized there was some writing on it.

On the paper, it wrote: I'm sorry.

Martha furrowed her brows. "Papa?"

He ruffled her hair, dropping a kiss on her forehead. "I'm sorry if I ever break any promises before. But if there's one that I won't break, Martha, that is that I'll always love you. I only wish that you'll forgive me...when I don't quite..." he trailed off, but before he could continue, Martha sat on his lap, and lied against his chest. She did not say a thing because her father understood her actions better than what she said.

And so they remained there. Martha never noticed her father's shoulders were less tense after she got off his lap and asked him to teach her more origami folds.

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This time I fold a rose. It's never as good as his but it will do.

I keep folding them. The bed was soon filled with paper roses of different colors. Love, my father once said roses represented that.

But no matter how many I fold, it will never be enough to ever bring back time.

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The sky was clear blue, with the trees swaying in the light breeze. The heat was gentler today, not like the scorching heat it was yesterday. Martha held a paper rose in her hand, turning it over and smiling while her friend, Joyce, teased her for having a father who had a romantic sense.

Martha rolled her eyes. "Roses is just the way my father likes to say 'I love you'. He doesn't see it as being romantic. He just sees it as a way to express his love for somebody." Martha knew that because her father had always given roses not to her mother only, but to her grandmother, who had passed away two years ago. Martha still missed her grandma, who despite her habit of swearing, taught her to be strong and confident about herself. Her grandma was like her female idol—minus swearing because her father hated it—and Martha always remembered her lessons when she faced difficulties in life.

"But still! Your father should get girls from doing this. Girls swoon over them."

She laughed. "My father doesn't really have an interest in anybody." Her father still loved her mother deeply, even though she passed away from an accident after Martha was born. Martha admired that type of love her father had for her mother.

"Either way, what did he write this time?"

She smiled. Her father would draw or write on paper before folding it into a rose, placing it on the counter before he went out for work. He did this everyday, ever since she was seven, after breaking his promise of going to her end-of-year school performance. At fifteen, Martha felt that he did it because he realized that he could not be with her always, and he wanted to make sure she felt cared for, even in the smallest way possible. Despite her father being busy, he always made sure to come back in the evening, and they would have dinner together, talking about everything: what they did, who they met, what they love.

She won't exchange her father for anything.

"He wrote a nice quote in it this time." She raised her head up, letting a leaf fell on her forehead. Shaking it off, she continued, "Nothing cliche." She wasn't a fan of cliche quotes. Cliche quotes usually spoke of idealistic ideas rather than realistic situations.

"Oh? What is it?"

She unfolded the paper rose and showed it to Joyce. Written on the crumpled paper was this statement:

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

By Anais Nin

Remember this: Love, while it's powerful, it can be defeated sometimes.

"Jeez, your father is sure a pessimist."

Martha laughed. "He's a realist. That's what I love about him." If her father gave her all those cliche quotes, she wouldn't bother to read them. They knew each other well enough to know what each cared about the most, and being her father, he taught her to be realistic but also hopeful about things. 'Hope is a good thing', her father always said that, even when he lost his job once and they had to go through a pretty hard time. Her father constantly hope for the better times and she always felt that was his strength: to never despair but to continue on with a strong belief that a better life will come.

"Then what did you write for him?"

Martha smirked. "Something more...unconventional."

"As always, you have a morbid taste for quotes."

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A lightning sounded outside. I stared out at the gray sky, and I placed my hand on the cold window, watching the raindrops fall.

Do you think, Dad, that if I keep hoping, something inevitable as this would not come?

But then you'll tell me that there's a better moment after this. You always believe that after a storm, the sky will turn blue again.

But I disagree. When a storm comes, especially this one, it destroys something beautiful. No matter how blue the sky is afterwards, my life would never be the same.

It may get better but it won't be the best. 

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Great thinkers proffered that man is born broken and he spends a lifetime healing. All men share a germinal sense of innocence, but life leads us into our vices. Temptation surrounds us, and we willingly march into the den of iniquity. We rationalize and attempt to justify commission of great sins.

Kilroy J. Oldster

Martha's father raised his eyebrows at the writing his daughter wrote in the paper with fold creases. Then he chuckled. Folding the paper back into a crane carefully, he placed them into a glass bottle on a cabinet.

"As always, you are pessimistic, Martha."

Martha tilted her head, smiling. "Who did I learn it from?"

He laughed. "I certainly taught you to be aware of bad stuff but I didn't expect you to take it to this manner."

"Well, I'm just being extra aware of bad things." Her father shook his head at her response.

"But you know, I believe that people are inherently good, Martha."

"Why so, father?"

He smiled distantly. "Because dear, people never like being bad. They just think that what they do is right. In the end, if you think about it, nobody knows what's right because every action of us may or may not hurt others. We may claim to do right but sometimes to others, it's wrong because it hurts them."

She looked down at her plate of spaghetti. "People can do bad even if they know."

"Definitely. But even so, if you gave them something to be good for, I believe they will."

"Even psychopaths?" She joked.

"Well, that I'm not too sure." Her father's lips curved into a crooked smile. "Psychopaths aren't exactly normal people. There's always exceptions to things, I suppose."

"Then there should be exceptions to my pessimism."

He chuckled louder. "At this rate, people are going to ask how I raised you."

"Just tell them you raised me with paper roses, food and a dash of optimism mixed with realism."

They both smiled, Martha with a wide, cheeky one and her father with a small one. "You just love to retort everything I say."

"My hobby, Dad. Joyce doesn't understand my words like you do."

"Of course. I'm your father. If I don't, then how would I manage to raise you?"

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Would you wake up for me, Dad? Let us talk again like we used to. We should go hiking some time again, with your canvas and paints. I suck in painting but at least we could talk while you paint.

I'll bring you anywhere you want. Just tell me and I'll do it. So wake up. Just wake up for me.

But the beeping sound of the monitor keeps reminding me of what's inevitable.

For once, I wish I am deaf.

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A glass container filled with paper roses.

A glass container filled with paper cranes.

Today was her father's birthday. When it was either one's birthday, they would bring out these containers of paper origami and reminisce over the things they write in them. In times like this, her father sometimes would ask her about the things she wrote in them and why she chose to do it. It sometimes ended up being a deep discussion over life; sometimes Martha didn't remember the reason and they would just have fun musing over why she wrote those quotes.

But her father hadn't brought out the one from the container. He chose to open the one that she gave him this morning. Staring at her father, she bit her lip.

"Martha, you knew."

She twisted her hands together. "Your friend told me without knowing that I didn't."

Her father was silent. She then placed his hands onto his. "You should, Dad. It's a chance of a lifetime."

"It costs a lot, Martha. And I can't borrow money from my friends to do it. There's no guarantee I would win even."

"But you may stand a chance. You haven't tried, right? All your friends admire your paintings and if you win, you could do something you really love as a real job."

He shook his head. "How about you? My boss won't agree to this. If I went, I would risk being fired and there's no guarantee I would be able to find another job. University is in two years and I wouldn't want you to be in debt for that."

Martha could see her father's face being dejected again.

She shrugged. "I could aim for a scholarship, if that's worrying you."

Her father gave her a pointed stare.

She flushed. "I mean, I still have two years. I'm sure I can work hard during that time..."

"Martha, I'm your father. If there is one thing you hate doing, it is studying.

Furthermore, I don't want to stress yourself for something like this. There's no point in pushing yourself to do something that won't bring joy to your life."

Martha looked down. "But still. It's a lifetime of an opportunity. Something like this won't come again."

Her father laughed, with a tiny bit of mirth in it. "Sure, it's a lifetime of an opportunity." He paused. "But it has its price as well and I don't want to pay it, especially when I don't know if it's worth the price. After all, winning that does not mean to me as much as seeing you grow up, Martha. If you get to be happy, I'm happy enough." He ruffled her head. "I'm already a parent. I don't need to be an artist."

"You are already an artist. Just not well-known."

And her father smiled an accepting smile. "And I don't mind being that. Now that we are done with this, let's put it behind us."

They continued unfolding their individual stacks of origami but Martha could not help but wonder if she was holding her father back from who he could be. A seed of guilt grew in her heart and it was years later that made her realize that her father was right: every opportunity presented has a price to pay.

The thing is, are we willing to pay it?

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Fly, Dad. Reach the skies with all your might; the skies are the only limit in the world. Go for that competition and win!

You used to say I'm a bird, Dad. A bird that can't be trapped within a cage for I belong to the wide, wide sky. You'll let me fly away from this nest, and you don't want me to ever come back until I've seen the world.

But the world doesn't matter to me as much as your nest had.

I rather have my home back than have the world.

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"He hasn't have long to live."

Dad hid his illness for a long time. I wonder if he wanted to buy more time to be the father he could be in front of me. His friends said that he just didn't want to hold me back, that he didn't want to hold me back from going as far as I like.

There's a price to pay for every opportunity.

"Why?" I asked him the night he was sent to the hospital. "Why didn't you tell me anything about this?"

He reached out, almost like he wanted to ruffle my head. "Because I don't want you to be worried." He smiled, not the radiant and accepting one like before, but sickly and terrible version of what it was before. I almost didn't want to acknowledge that this was my father. How could I not see this earlier?

"You wanted to go there so much. You've been awaiting it for so long. I can't hold you back, Martha."

"Still, do you think that I'll go if I know this? You are more important than that event!"

He looked at me, with those knowing eyes, those filled with a grim understanding.

"That's why..." He looked away. "That's why, Martha, I didn't tell you."

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There was only one type of love that advocate separation of two people: the love of a parent.

My father is the rose. I'm the crane.

All children are meant to live beyond their parents.

I don't want to live beyond my father. Sometimes I wonder why nature worked in such manner; why take someone we love so early on?

I can fly but I don't want to fly far away.

But my father wants me to. His last origami wasn't a rose but a crane.

And as I open it, I can't help but tear up. I don't know how to imagine a life without my father. He was a man who taught me to be the person I am today. He is the person who I share all my problems, my hopes and dreams. And he is always the one I could fall back on, consult when I don't know which direction to turn next.

I can fly but I'm alone now.

Martha, I am sorry

How he first started this crane and rose exchange was also due to an apology.

I should tell you sooner about my illness. Would you forgive me?

Of course I will. Even if it hurts too much to know that I can never get back lost time.

I love you, Martha. Always know that, dear, that even if I'm no longer here, I'll still be here in these roses. I'll be watching you in the skies.

I lick my lips. It will never be the same as somebody in flesh.

You are my treasure. If there is one person I'm proud of, it will be you. I know you'll go far. I want to see you do so. So go as far as you can. Love as wide as you can. Experience as much as you could. Above all, learn to smile in the face of difficulties. I know this will be hard for you but I believe that you can do it.

I crush the paper.

You are my treasure too.

And now I have left are these leftover roses and memories that make up you.

Fly.

I can fly but I feel so heavy.

Some losses are inevitable. Life takes the people we love and leave us memories behind to recreate them in our minds. We need memories to make someone dead still alive in this world, but at the same time, we have to reconcile with their death.

Death—the ultimatum we all have to face, and live with.