Tonight I drink whisky a friend sent and take apart my son's lightsaber. Christina paints the kitchen. A document to authorize a real estate agent to sell my childhood home hits the inbox.
08-15-21
I finally got to my drafting table to clean up the bag of things I chose to bring from my father's house after he died. I found what I'm certain is a receipt from the sort of side hustle lotteries Latinos run alongside the real lottery and it had sevens everywhere and he played it on my birthday. I don't remember making that distinction for this piece of paper but I'm glad I kept it and I hope I remember it because it made me feel loved and thought of by him even though he is gone. I guess this is a receipt for that receipt. I put that and the other things in 3 folders in my filing cabinet and I labeled them Papi. Under that I found the nice things Chris sent me and I will drink the booze tonight and I put his kind words and urgings in the folder labeled mementos.
06-27-21
I took my dad's big red truck to get looked at by my mechanic uncle in Hollywood. Florida. The last time I followed my dad driving it he'd been in the hospital a couple days. He barely stayed at night in his lane on I95 and I got the expected visions of a wrecked truck at some point. But I got a sense of the muddy steering while doing 75 the tires too big or cheap. It felt like I'd put on a shoe too big for me. The bench seat wide open my elbows far out to set on the center console and door arm rest me surely looking like a chicken about to flap out the window. The driver door speaker did what it could a functioning alcoholic so I turned it down drove in silence listened for something broken. When I got to my uncle's he put on the radio in his garage and on comes the last song I heard my dad sing while sitting in my living room an unlit cigar in his mouth like a kid pretending to be an adult. I can't decide if it is a sweet or bitter whisper but I close my eyes and hold on for just a second before what the fucking my uncle and as I drove home I sang the two words every so often trying to hear my father in my head: Hola Soledad.
06-23-21
Last weekend I found what seems to be a poem in the nightstand in the duplex my father stopped sleeping in a while back. Blue ink in Spanish cursive on both brown yellow sides the blue lines faded. I don't know if he wrote it and I don't really understand it as I transcribe afraid I need to get it down digitally before it explodes or something. There are sections 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and I don't know if these refer to age or if he was just stylin'. There's a note at the bottom instructing me to turn the page. I want to love it because I want writing from my father But my father was so dry and this is about a river in Cuba. So I worry my mother wrote this and I am twisted because I don't want to love anything from my mother. So I type digging out untangling his script looking words up to see if they match what I believe to be the sentiment from this distant hum of a thing scritching at the base of my brain finding that he used aurora enchantress and wrote of delivering hallelujahs to a woman at the mouth of a river or it's a metaphor for drinking from her chalice. I don't believe in gods but damn it I want to believe my father was a poet like me though he never gave off the lilt of lyricism aside from the way he sang Hola Soledad recently: a lament. When I get to the part about bitter years imprisoned I know it has to be him. I sob and remember his simple response when asking for a reason: BECAUSE SOMEBODY JUST WANTED TO. It ends with wondering about the woman and children who would never bear his eyes, hair, or name and a ghost who escapes a well with something that was never his. I know this stupid lucky ghost. He wanted his father's words and got a poem. I know this fucker well.
06-19-21
Had to do
the weed eating
in the backyard
like Homer Simpson does it
like a fool cutting circles
in the grass
and I am shaking.
The sedentary lifestyle’s hello.
Got green
in my dress socked sneakers
and I wonder
is this what
Poison Ivy’s pussy
smells like
and I’m only 2/3
done
shakin
shakin.
06-11-21
Southwest 8th Street and 40 Somethingth I write this almost a month later. Everyone is saying take your time. How can anyone do that as they walk intentionally toward a motherfucking land mine of tears. The night before, we had visitors in the room late Ismelia talking over my answers to her questions repeating how she knew him since he was a boy me talking right back over her just because I'm an asshole. Jose doing his best to be supportive of me though I am a cunty contrarian right up to the end of my father's life. Saying how proud my father was making sure to tell me he's there for me but not to replace my father knowing the kind of shit I look for knowing what a piece of shit I can be when someone is trying to help me. Everyone saying fucking talking you're doing the right thing though I find no power resides in me to keep my father from going under to right the left side of his face to stuff the chuckle back into his mouth when I say the docs say there's no fix for this "No ay arreglo" after the multiple brain hemorrhages and the erratic heart rate. How he shook his head when I asked if he wanted them to bring him back when the heart attacks came. These motherfuckers expected the heart attacks like rain. How he nodded when I asked if he wanted to be comfortable though I don't know if he knew it meant the dimming of the lights or if I even had that conversation or if I just said yes, please make him comfortable. I held his hand as I spoke on the phone to one of his buddies from the neighborhood and I think maybe he waited that he wanted to make sure those humble people knew. These were his people away from home. That taste of country Cuba. I wasn't looking at him and I felt his hand pull away a little and I just knew. I told the guy I had to go and hung up saw my dad take one last long breath and just stop. A single tear crept down from his closed right eye and drowned all light in my life all the safety gone no more Sprites in the late night when my stomach went sideways no more big red truck rolling into my swale no more voice in the car laughing at me about being the family food delivery person. And into the business of Death I went. Now I sit here in the air conditioner ordering computer parts writing this non poem crying slow. He sacrificed so much for me. He gave up a relationship with a lady because I was jealous of that woman and he comforted me saying hey her kid didn't want it either. The last thing intelligible he said was hey careful driving home because I drive like an asshole. He suffered me so much and I feel I am letting him down with every interaction I have with my son. I asked him, as that day went and after when his hand was cold. I prayed to my father only Him and to no made up motherfucking anythings please please leave me your patience tell me the trick how do I shut the fuck up Tell me, Titan. He took care of everything a while back. I didn't have to find a groupon for a funeral and a burial. With the motorcycle cops we took all the red lights on the way there and Christina laughed, remarked how he'd have gotten a kick out of it. He wanted to be up high in a crypt so people couldn't step on him and animals couldn't shit on him. I think he wanted to look down like this was a balcony and he knew I liked the shade so there's shade there. I dread going back looking up but I know where my god is: Southwest 8th Street and 40 Somethingth.
06-06-21
It's a bit strange and sad how easy it is for me to put the death of my father in a box in a far away part of my mind. The ease with which I can speed myself there to look at any of the many items in the box and be instantly broken makes me wonder if it means it's needed to avoid being a monster or something and I think why would drowning this way be necessary by design.
05-30-21
It hurts so much to look back and wonder if I shouldn't have waited just a little bit more before telling them yes please make him more comfortable. All I can hear is go ahead and finish him off.
05-19-21
How He Felt So I don't forget his hands were brown spotted with the years but smooth warm at first from the fever and cooler as the day went. The skin thin on the arm it crinkled like aluminum foil. The arm hairs short. His forehead felt dry ashy but his hair was cool thin but still soft and bouncy But the eyes yellow in the whites and the olive was dull. He had a not great beard going and the electric razor I bought him sat in a box at home. Shallow breathing. A hard rasp every so often. The last fight.
05-18-21
My dad didn't pick up when I called his cell at the hospital this morning. I eventually talked to a nurse who said he couldn't remember the pin to unlock the phone. My dad does not have memory issues and while sometimes selective he remembers with steel. I told the nurse this wasn't normal for him but maybe he had that chemo fog my girlfriend has from treatment over time. Christina did me yet another kindness and picked up tamal en casuela from the Cuban place and I took it to him that afternoon. He had some and let me set up the iPad so he could watch baseball but had trouble with certain words and at the end of the night told me "La computadora no esta buena" and tapped on the right side of his head. "Maneja despacio y cuidado con las curvas" was the last complete sentence he spoke to me.