My father was dying. It was a fact that I refused to acknowledge for months. Cancer steadily ate up his lungs for years. Thanks to cigarettes: it made us suffer for years and made us orphans eventually. Hours before I received a call that indeed my father would come home in a coffin, I prayed for the impossible: that I would be given the chance to hug and tell him how grateful I was for all he has done for all of us; to tell him, I love him. It was never granted.Of all my siblings, with the exception of my brother Jojo, I guess I was the one who stayed by my father's side the longest. I was his apprentice for years. It was from him that I learned that helping other people makes us better persons. But, in all those years I never uttered a word of gratitude or of love. 'I love you, dad' was corny. Everything was presumed, understood, tacit, if not taken for granted. Once I told my best friend in college, Jerome, that one of my greatest regrets was that I was not able to hug my father when he was yet alive. He said: 'You're right. But you can still hug him through other people. Go and tell them your stories so that both children and parents could hug each other and say, 'I love you...' before it's too late.' Vita brevis: life is short. It was a costly lesson to learn that 'presumption hurts our loved ones the most.
Today, I see to it that I hug my children everyday. No, I don't wait for any special occasion to do it. I hug them and tell them how much I love them anytime of the day. They do the same as well. Love should not only be seen in doing, it should also be said, spoken, uttered. Spoken words of love connect directly to our brain through our auditory nerves. Hugs embrace the whole being. A hug is the kiss of the heart.
So, what are we waiting for? Let's all be huggers. Let's give them for free without reservation. Sprinkle it with crisp whisper of tender care. It's an instant karma, as John Lennon puts it. You get the benefits right away. As an unknown author once said:
" Hugging has no unpleasant side effects and is all natural. There are no batteries to replace, it's inflation-proof and non-fattening with no monthly payments. It's non-taxable, non-polluting, and is, of course, fully refundable."
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