Dad is Gone
Jesus Lopez
My father passed away on August 7, 2019.
He was buried two days later on my mother’s birthday.
I had visited just a week prior.
I would have never left knowing a heart attack was coming at age sixty-four.
One year too early for Medicare and the Homestead Exemption.
One night in the hospital.
One bill of $250,000.
Now, all I have from him is fragmented pieces of narrative.
I couldn’t get him to write his own.
I hope I can remember with accuracy.
Dad was a child with an insatiable appetite.
His parents afforded very little meat/chicken, but always a ton of corn tortillas.
He was bullied for wrapping a tiny piece of steak with five of them.
He found a job in a tortilla factory at the age of twelve.
The manager did not mind if he stole a fresh one from the pressing machine every now and then.
There was a Mexican restaurant that he visited that got packed as soon as he entered.
After he repeatedly filled the restaurant with his visits, he got meals on the house.
At 35, he managed to woo my mother of 23, both of them virgins.
He bought a small house next to a tortilla factory.
All was well until mom forced him to move to the U.S., for a better life for my sister and me.
My parents found a small town called La Rosita, Texas.
They built a house there, brick by brick, with pipelining money.
He left constantly to make sure no money was ever needed.
I have yet to meet a sweeter man than Dad.
There wasn’t a baby that didn’t smile in his arms.
He was happy to get grandchildren from my sister.
A privilege he did not foresee from marrying late.
The last time we had a heart-to-heart, was on an August 2, 2014 road trip.
I got some missing pieces of the puzzle:
The long hours of pipelining in the northeast U.S.
How much physical pain he was in but never showed it.
How much mom cried when I was deployed in Kandahar.
How he wished I had never left home.
How he dreaded that I would leave again for college this time.
Dad is gone now but not forgotten.
He was a simple man reminding me that saints do, in fact, roam the earth.
The Mexican Mr. Rodgers with a mustache, eating 50 tortillas a day at age 23, and down to 30 tortillas by age 60.
What bothers me the most is how often he said that he would never live as long as his father, who died at age seventy-four after a long battle with diabetes.
He always mentioned how the wood of a tree is always weaker than the tree that came before it.
Paranoia sets in, making me question how long I will last.
As a teacher, when will my last semester be?
How will my students remember me?
Am I fulfilling my dad’s legacy?
Jesus Lopez was born in Rio Grande City. He is a U.S. Army Veteran from the years 2011 to 2016. He was awarded his M.F.A. in creative writing in May 2018 from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He is a very ambitious individual who continues his Ph.D. studies at the University of Texas at Dallas while teaching English Composition and American Literature undergraduate courses at Collin College. He enjoys writing non-fiction as much as possible, using his experiences of growing up and in the military (both in English and Spanish).