{"id":3774,"date":"2023-11-27T20:58:40","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T00:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/?page_id=3774"},"modified":"2023-11-27T20:58:40","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T00:58:40","slug":"dad-is-gone","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/fiction-archive\/dad-is-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Dad is Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center\">Dad is Gone<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Jesus Lopez<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>My father passed away on August 7, 2019.<br \/>\nHe was buried two days later on my mother\u2019s birthday.<\/p>\n<p>I had visited just a week prior.<br \/>\nI would have never left knowing a heart attack was coming at age sixty-four.<\/p>\n<p>One year too early for Medicare and the Homestead Exemption.<br \/>\nOne night in the hospital.<br \/>\nOne bill of $250,000.<\/p>\n<p>Now, all I have from him is fragmented pieces of narrative.<br \/>\nI couldn\u2019t get him to write his own.<br \/>\nI hope I can remember with accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>Dad was a child with an insatiable appetite.<br \/>\nHis parents afforded very little meat\/chicken, but always a ton of corn tortillas.<br \/>\nHe was bullied for wrapping a tiny piece of steak with five of them.<\/p>\n<p>He found a job in a tortilla factory at the age of twelve.<br \/>\nThe manager did not mind if he stole a fresh one from the pressing machine every now and then.<\/p>\n<p>There was a Mexican restaurant that he visited that got packed as soon as he entered.<br \/>\nAfter he repeatedly filled the restaurant with his visits, he got meals on the house.<br \/>\nAt 35, he managed to woo my mother of 23, both of them virgins.<br \/>\nHe bought a small house next to a tortilla factory.<br \/>\nAll was well until mom forced him to move to the U.S., for a better life for my sister and me.<\/p>\n<p>My parents found a small town called La Rosita, Texas.<br \/>\nThey built a house there, brick by brick, with pipelining money.<br \/>\nHe left constantly to make sure no money was ever needed.<\/p>\n<p>I have yet to meet a sweeter man than Dad.<br \/>\nThere wasn\u2019t a baby that didn\u2019t smile in his arms.<br \/>\nHe was happy to get grandchildren from my sister.<br \/>\nA privilege he did not foresee from marrying late.<\/p>\n<p>The last time we had a heart-to-heart, was on an August 2, 2014 road trip.<br \/>\nI got some missing pieces of the puzzle:<br \/>\nThe long hours of pipelining in the northeast U.S.<br \/>\nHow much physical pain he was in but never showed it.<br \/>\nHow much mom cried when I was deployed in Kandahar.<br \/>\nHow he wished I had never left home.<br \/>\nHow he dreaded that I would leave again for college this time.<\/p>\n<p>Dad is gone now but not forgotten.<br \/>\nHe was a simple man reminding me that saints do, in fact, roam the earth.<br \/>\nThe Mexican Mr. Rodgers with a mustache, eating 50 tortillas a day at age 23, and down to 30 tortillas by age 60.<\/p>\n<p>What bothers me the most is how often he said that he would never live as long as his father,\u00a0 who died at age seventy-four after a long battle with diabetes.<br \/>\nHe always mentioned how the wood of a tree\u00a0is always weaker than the tree that came before it.<\/p>\n<p>Paranoia sets in, making me question how long I will last.<br \/>\nAs a teacher, when will my last semester be?<br \/>\nHow will my students remember me?<br \/>\nAm I fulfilling my dad\u2019s legacy?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-4086 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1188\/2023\/11\/Author-Lopez-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Phot of the Author Jesus Lopez\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><strong>Jesus Lopez<\/strong> 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).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dad is Gone Jesus Lopez &nbsp; My father passed away on August 7, 2019. He was buried two days later on my mother\u2019s birthday. I had visited just a week <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/fiction-archive\/dad-is-gone\/\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5483,"featured_media":0,"parent":1301,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5483"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3774"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4218,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3774\/revisions\/4218"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/welter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}