Eight Memories

Today marks 8 years since you took your last breath, Daddy. On this anniversary of your departure, I have decided to share eight vivid memories over the course of the 33 years I had you.

It is my birthday — February 6, 1986 — and I am now 8. One of my gifts is a letter from a dog named Candy who will soon come home to me. As I read the letter aloud, my excitement increasing with every word, I am aware that the handwriting looks very familiar. It is only years later that I realize the handwriting was yours.

I am 12 — July 1990 — and instead of going to Ecuador to see my maternal grandmother one last time, I am in summer school. It is just the two of us (and Candy) at home. My mother calls for what will be my last conversation with my Abuelita. I play Beethoven’s Für Elise on the piano for her, telling her I love her and that I will miss her. I hang up, dissolving into tears in your arms. You stroke my hair and tell me my Abuelita will leave this world with that tune in her head and that I gave her a great gift in playing it for her. Your words, in that moment, are a gift to me.

I am 14 — September 1992 — and it is my first day of high school. At my insistence, you have ridden the train from the Bronx to downtown Manhattan with me. I was scared to go alone and despite the fact that you work in the Bronx, you agreed to accompany me. At the corner, just before turning toward my school, I tell you I can handle it from here. You agree good-naturedly, give me a kiss and a hug, and send me on my way. I feel ready to take on this new chapter, as well as the train ride home alone.

I am 18 —August 1996 — and you and my mother are helping me settle in to my freshman year dorm room. You hand me a box, a gift that you tell me will help me remember that no matter the physical distance, you are always with me. Upon opening it, I see it is the mug in which you would serve me chocolate milk every morning at breakfast during high school. I am moved to tears because in that moment I realize that I have the protection of yours and my mother’s love, even when we are apart.

I am 22 — May 2000 — and I have just graduated college. We are out to dinner celebrating with the family and you read me Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go! I settle in to listening to you read me a story, as I did countless times throughout my childhood, and I begin to feel more thrill than terror at what is to come.

I am 31 — it is my wedding day, May 31, 2009 — and just like in the movie Father of the Bride, you begin to walk before the music has begun. I gently put my hand on your arm to detain you and as soon as Canon in D begins, we step in tandem, toward the man who loves me as you taught me I deserve to be loved.

I am 33 —April 2011 — and you and my infant son, the grandson whose eyes mirror your own, are sitting in a community garden. It is an unusually warm day and we bask in the sun, in the easy banter we have always shared and in the awesome reality that the three of us are branches of the same family tree, forever linking past, present and future.

It is your dying day — November 29, 2011 — and my mother, brother and I have decided to turn off life support and to let you go. I cry inconsolably in the hospital room, wondering how I will make sense of life from this day forward. As we walk out of the hospital, the sun begins to shine out of the dark, grey, mournful sky. I look up and say, “That’s Papi.”

It has been 8 years without you, but I spent 33 years with you, and I have a lifetime of memories. They, and the light you left in the world, sustain me.

Keep resting in peace, Daddy. I love you and I always will.