Abuelo
Abuelo
I don’t know how to say this
I don’t even know where to begin
How do you write a tribute to someone who you still think is there?
Cuz you see, you’re not really gone in my mind yet
If I were to go to your house,
You would still be there in your favorite chair
All my life you have been in a chair
And it’s because of this I feel closer to you
See, we have held this inexplicable connection of my living and your dying
This unbreakable bond that only a grandfather and grandson can share
Where the joys of a new life are conciliated for the sorrows of an old one passing
For as my family celebrated my first year
You thought you had lived your last
This story has been etched into my mind
Like ancient hieroglyphics on the Great Pyramid of Giza
Of how on the day that I lived 365 days
Was the same day that your heart had stopped for 365 seconds
How I can imagine every single time I think about it
What my father felt that day
How he had to go from celebrating his child’s first year birthday
To rushing back home
praying that this not be his father’s last year
holding back his tears
From California to Texas
He drove straight through
To reach you before you were through
As fate would have it though, you would live
Yet hardly escaped unscathed were you
The stroke had taken away half of you
Literally
Paralyzed completely on the right side
Ironic, how on the day that I learned to walk
You lost your ability to
As I grew stronger than a bear
You grew weaker to the point of tears
As I got... as I got faster
You got up each day slower
As my mind blossomed like a flower
Yours deteriorated along with your power
Fast Forward 18 years
And while I’m here
You have finally passed on to there
Where I know you’ll have the best care
February 20th 10:35am to be precise
As my father explained to me
How the inevitable had finally occurred
My heart sank harder than the Titanic
Not just at the thought of you gone
Which in itself was something I dare not accept
For if I did accept
Than that meant that my father had just lost his father
The man that raised him along with 8 others
The man that gave him no praise
But something far more valuable
How to be a father
From building a house to caring for a family
Abuelo, you taught him it all
And to accept your fall
Would mean that my father would call
Only after wiping his tears to stand tall
Like the proud man you had raised him to be
As a redwood tree
And to accept your fall would mean to accept that I had lost my grandfather
The one who only through his presence alone taught what no one else could
Here, let me prove it to you
Ask yourself really, How many men
With no education
With no money
With no family
And with no English
Stay to support, not only to support
But to raise nine children?
In Juarez, a city where there’s so much drugs
That it puts pharmaceutical companies to shame
Where there’s so much death
War veterans cringe and jump into ditches
Where there’s so much poverty
It makes Detroit seem like a city of riches
How many men would do that?
They say – or they used to say
That me, my father, & my abuelo all looked dead on alike
That actually, I looked more like my abuelo
See, we shared the same Jimmy Neutron head
And Dumbo ears
Man, these ears
When I was a boy, these ears were my curse, ridiculed everywhere I went
It drove me crazy, felt ashamed even
Till the day that I was told that you look like your abuelo
And that same day, my pride couldn’t be tamed
For I held you higher than anything else in my mind
And that same day
I held my Jimmy head up high
I realize this doesn't do you justice
That no tribute could ever do that
But I hope you can appreciate what this niño had to say
And that you’re flying up high where Dumbo’s ears reign high
I accept that you’re gone
I accept your fall
I accept it abuelo
And I accept what that means
I know you hearing me right now
So I’ll just say it one last time
I love you abuelo
Thank you