DAY 3 - PRETTY 

Soon after Dad was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure, I found solace in a new obsession - hair and makeup. Not for others, but just for myself, hahaha!  

I would really like it when Daddy would take notice and say "you really look good today hija (ya, that's how he spells it, mestizo even in writing), masuwerte kayo ako ang pinakasalan ni Mom!!!"

Watching TV, I could no longer catch up with the dialogue as I became totally absorbed with how the female characters drew their eyebrows, coloured their eyelids, contoured their cheekbones, applied their blush, lined and painted their lips, and coiffed their hair.  Crazy obsessed.  

What used to take me 10 minutes to get ready for work, now consumes as much as 2 hours, especially if it's iron-my-hair day.  I had to be "put-together" every time I stepped out of home.  And it didn't matter if I was going to work, coffee with friends, window shopping, fastfood for lunch or Medical City to keep Dad company during his MWF dialysis sessions.   I wanted to be Daddy's sight for sore eyes there, in the hope that seeing his eldest daughter would distract him from the ugliness that was his dialysis, where he secretly knew that he was not really getting any better. 

Ironically, the night Daddy suffered his fatal heart attack, I rushed to the hospital with wet, unkempt hair, devoid of makeup. I was far from "put-together".  My face, my hair, my heart, were not ready to say goodbye to Daddy.

Prettify is something I still enjoy doing every day.  But I have a long way to go by Daddy's standards of what is truly beautiful.  For underneath the hematoma, fresh wounds and edematous arms and legs was a beautiful man, because he had a beautiful heart. 

Yes, Dad, masuwerte kami ikaw ang pinakasalan ni Mom.