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Eight years ago, when I first moved to the Philippines, it felt like a symbolic death of my former self. My Philly identity was dying, and I was being reborn in a new land. The transition was both exhilarating and disorienting. I went from believing I would never live outside of Philly my entire life to living on the other side of the world in a completely unknown place. I was dealing with a new culture, language barriers, new friends, new recreational activities, and a new family to fit into.

Back in Philly, acquaintances I had known and talked to gradually drifted away, and even my close friends and I spoke less often. In the Philippines, I had to carve out a new identity for myself, and the life I had known in Philly seemed to fade as the days, weeks, and months passed by. As much as possible, I would try to return yearly to reconnect with friends and family, and each year I would feel more and more distant, more and more foreign, more and more disconnected. Even my accent was changing. This continued up until the pandemic which put everyone through difficult times, but personally kept me from visiting and reconnecting with friends and family like I had the previous years.

In August of 2022, I finally visited Philly again with Kaye, our kids, and our two nieces. It had been approximately three years since we last saw my family, and the pandemic had kept us apart. During our brief stay, I managed to visit my dad a few times, but he was not quite himself. He seemed frail, worn out, and as if he had aged significantly within those three years. My dad, burdened with the responsibility of caring for my grandfather who suffered from dementia, was also still grappling with his own demons, indulging in alcohol and occasionally other substances as he had throughout his life. Now, this was not something new, but its impact on him seemed to have accelerated or been exacerbated in some way. He was getting older and the gap in years from which I’ve last seen him highlighted that fact.

He was also no longer working, had no place in the hierarchy of community esteem, and lacked any kind of social life. He complained about a lot of things but did nothing to improve his situation. Way back before we got to this point in our lives, I was his little buddy. He really could do anything except believe in his self, and I looked up to him for his capabilities. He was my refuge during the times of familial strife, and he provided comfort without very detailed verbal emotional expressions. He was just dad.

When I was a kid, we’d often walked the streets of Philly just for the fun of it, in any season, playing made-up-on-the-spot games as we did so. He built things with his hands. When we were apart during my parents’ separation, we would connect through online games in virtual worlds, and we even developed a little community to do so with his workmates and friends that we made online. As I got older, I started to focus on my own personal life and relationships and, while he was always there, our relationship wasn’t always as close as it used to be. I wanted to do my own thing. Then, of course, after graduating and leaving my job at the bank and a lot of in-between, I left for the Philippines. At the time it didn’t feel as final as it must have felt for him. He seemed to change over time. He became more rigid, unchanging, stuck. Since that move his messages to me always ping-ponged between antagonism to provoke a response and engage with him, to curious discussions regarding life, politics, aliens, conspiracies, and just generally checking in to make sure we were okay. He admitted to purposely pulling my strings because that’s an effective way to get me to engage in communication with him. It was not healthy, but it worked. After he quit working, my sister and I were his community and his social life, and with our absence, he would elicit our reactions by pushing our buttons. He always loved us his own way, but it was difficult for us to want to be around a lot of the time.

Anyway, one day during our trip back to Philly, we went to see him, and as we entered the house, the pungent odor of cigarette smoke clung caked to the walls. Kaye and the kids chose to wait outside due to the odor, and we eventually decided to visit a nearby park to spend time with him outside of the smoke filled, dilapidated house. At the park, Taddybear fell ill, spewing projectile vomit throughout the park, and was behaving weak and lethargic.

My dad, in his unstable state of mind, failed to grasp the gravity of the situation. He did not seem to acknowledge that something was wrong and was only engaging in conversation with me. We knew we had to leave, and although we wished for him to spend more time with his grandchildren, he wasn’t capable at the time of interacting with them in any significant way. We eventually had to take Taddybear to the hospital and thankfully everything was okay, but we didn’t want to leave anything to chance.

My dad was able to connect with us again before our departure when we went to the Philly Zoo with the family and he was normal then, but his body had a tough time in keeping up with us in the sweltering heat. I wish there could have been more time to spend with him, but we were always unsure of which version of dad would show up.

Our visit during that time was also marred by the stress of traveling with young children and unexpected problems. There was a heat wave that sapped our energy whenever we were outside for an extended period. The kids were sick, and we had to bring Tad to the emergency room. Our Airbnb sucked and made our lives hell multiple times. Our unit was on the 6th floor, and the elevator was down for about half of our stay. We had three strollers that we would have to carry down the stairs whenever we wanted to do something. The realty company who was running the personalized listing for the Airbnb refused to compensate us for these problems. Then, I had to pay for and personally install a smart-lock for the front door of the unit due to the previous one being flimsy and the door being in bad-shape (Jax broke it, but it was ripe for the breaking – there wasn’t a handle to pull to open the door for goodness’ sake). Also, there was a period of two days when the water was out, and we had to move EVERYTHING into a hotel in center city. Hell, I tell ya.

I digress since it is besides the main point but paints a picture of our stay during that time. Everything that we felt and experienced contributed to our perception that Philly had changed significantly during our absence. The once vibrant city now seemed to be on edge, its streets plagued by high crime rates, dangerous driving, and a palpable sense of unease as people emerged from their homes in a covid-lockdown induced madness. People seemed to care less about each other.

During our visit, we also encountered this danger firsthand as we were warned of a nearby shooting in West Philly while walking nearby with the kids in their strollers, and Kaye was physically assaulted by a mentally unstable woman in Center City. We found the woman and the police refused to do anything about it. Who would think that there’s no recourse of action against someone  who assaults someone that isn’t staying in the city for an extended period of time? Tourists beware. As our trip neared its end, on a warm summer evening, I found myself outside our hellish Airbnb, drinking chocolate milk purchased from the Sunoco across the street and engaged in conversation with my friend, Richie Scully.

We were discussing the changes in Philly, and I confessed that each visit made me feel more like a stranger in my own city. I lamented that my family, the very reason for my visits, was growing older and more distant. My dad was not taking care of his health and often self-medicated to forget his problems. He was difficult to be around, and often complained about everything, especially the difficulties in dealing with taking care of my aging grandfather who was suffering from increasingly frequent bouts of dementia and a suspected recurrence of cancer. As I looked up at the sky and saw what appeared to be a shooting star, I realized that my sense of home was evolving. Philly, the city that shaped me, was slipping away, and yet, I knew I would always be an outsider in the Philippines, too.

In the months following our conversation on the steps, my dad passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack brought about in large part by liver damage caused by excessive alcoholism. The impact of his loss weighed heavily on my heart, as I was forced to face the reality of our lack of time together due to the distance and his demons as well as my diminishing connections to the city and my personal history. Our relationship, though at times rocky, was always grounded in love. My dad was a great dad in many ways, and we had our moments of misunderstanding and miscommunication, but we would always get over it; it was never relationship breaking, just trying at times. The disputes we had over politics, or his strange conspiracies now seem like cherished memories, peculiar ways we connected and conversed. I strangely miss the late-night Viber messages that he would send which would talk about current world affairs.

Yet, with his passing, I felt a sense of unmooring. As the ties that bind me to Philly weaken, the city I once called home feels increasingly distant. My home in the Philippines is where I have re-assembled my life, but the roots of my identity remain entwined with the City of Brotherly Love. My dad's death has shaken that sense of identity and left me questioning the stability of my connections to my birthplace.

When we returned to Philly for my dad's funeral, it was a bittersweet homecoming. As we reconnected with family and friends again after such a short time since our last visit, it became clear that the city had changed, and so had we. South Philly, the neighborhood that once held so much meaning for me, now felt different. Every nook and cranny of the familiar streets and landmarks of the city still evoked memories of specific times I was with my dad in those places, and his absence cast a shadow over the entire cityscape.

The feelings of being adrift reminded me of a poem by Jose Rizal, one of the Philippines' national heroes. Written during his exile in Spain, the poem speaks to the alienation of a wanderer who returns to his homeland only to find himself unrecognizable and alone. As I considered my own predicament, I could not help but see the parallels in Rizal's words.  The poem is called, “Song of the Wanderer” and I felt like the wanderer upon my return home:

Dry leaf that flies at random

till it’s seized by a wind from above:

so lives on earth the wanderer,

without north, without soul, without country or love!

 

Anxious, he seeks joy everywhere

and joy eludes him and flees,

a vain shadow that mocks his yearning

and for which he sails the seas.

 

Impelled by a hand invisible,

he shall wander from place to place;

memories shall keep him company

of loved ones, of happy days.

 

A tomb perhaps in the desert,

a sweet refuge, he shall discover,

by his country and the world forgotten

Rest quiet: the torment is over.

 

And they envy the hapless wanderer

as across the earth he persists!

Ah, they know not of the emptiness

in his soul, where no love exists.

 

The pilgrim shall return to his country,

shall return perhaps to his shore;

and shall find only ice and ruin,

perished loves, and graves nothing more.

 

Begone, wanderer! In your own country,

a stranger now and alone!

Let the others sing of loving,

who are happy but you, begone!

 

Begone, wanderer! Look not behind you

nor grieve as you leave again.

Begone, wanderer: stifle your sorrows!

the world laughs at another’s pain.

 

In a strange twist of fate around the time of my dad’s funeral, the Phillies were in the middle of a run to the World Series AND we attended another funeral for the passing of one of my aunts. The city was buzzing with excitement and anticipation, yet I couldn't fully share in the collective joy. It was a reminder that life moves on, even as we mourn the ones we've lost. Throughout the visit, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the city's euphoria and my own sense of loss. The same with the joy in reconnecting with family that I haven’t seen in ages at a particularly sad point in time. As in Rizal's poem, the wanderer may return to his homeland, but the sense of belonging he once felt may be forever altered. The Phillies' success and the city's celebration could not fill the void left by my dad's passing, but it did serve as a distraction for an otherwise difficult time. It also reminded me of my initial emotions when I first moved to the Philippines, leaving behind my sense of self in Philly. Life goes on.

In the end, our return to Philly for the funeral allowed us to reconnect with our roots, pay tribute to my dad's life, and find solace in the love and support of family and friends. But it was no longer a trip home. Home is a shifting emotional landscape, and our ability to adapt to change and create new connections is what truly defines it. My landscape in Philly was forever altered, as it has been happening over the last eight years of my absence. The city will continue to change and our connections to it will weaken, but the memories of my dad, other ghosts of the past, and the time we spent together walking Philly’s streets will always be cherished. Still, our visit served as a reminder that even during times of loss and change, we can find strength in the love of family and friends that binds us to our past and propels us into the future. Until the next visit, life is impermanent, and change is inevitable.