This one comes with a trigger warning. I talk about sexual molestation. Funny thing about that (strange funny, not haha funny) is that it took me decades to acknowledge it that way. So, hat tip to my amazing therapist for getting me there.

One more things before I start, I think I am going to skip to the last page of the book so you know this story does end in a happy-ish sort of way. Mom and I are in each other’s lives now. We’re mostly okay. More okay than I ever expected us to be. Okay enough that I can say I love her in a fashion and I think she loves me in her own way. For this lifetime, that is enough.

I don’t remember the first time I felt the hand on my ass wandering down the outside of my pants, down the crack of my ass. I don’t remember the first time I heard, let me see it… tug on the front of my pants… I can, I made it… I just remember it happened enough times in front of enough people that I hoped someone would say something. I was more embarrassed than anything. And sometimes people would tell her to stop it. Whether she would listen or not depended on how much she’d had to drink.

Apparently, she needed to make sure I was growing into a real man. A real man, I would come to learn, was a man with a large cock.

It was humiliating and enraging. And so fucking confusing.

I was way too smart and far too old to not understand on some level what was happening and I knew it was wrong. I was far too young and scared to have the courage to stop it. Every time she would say, I can I wanted to grab her the way she was grabbing me just to prove the point it was fucking wrong, but I was too much of a pussy to do anything more than stand there a child. The worst part of it all - the fucking humiliating part - was that sometimes I would find myself being aroused. That will fuck with your head for decades. A child doesn’t understand biology or physiology. To a kid - to this kid - there must be something wrong with me, something that enjoys this. That, my friends, is a mindfuck that took tons of therapy to unfuck.

The in-between times of not seeing her, of waiting for her to pick me up on a Friday night and having her no show; not wanting to come back inside because she’s gonna be here! is the sort of thing that breaks a kid. The noise inside an unwanted child’s head is a special kind of torture.

Mom’s love their kids more than anything in this world. Obviously, yours doesn’t. What’s that tell you? I’m trash. I must be.

On one of those nights I had spent way too long waiting for her to never show up I had a nightmare. I called for her and my dad came to my room. I was screaming for my mom. When he got close enough I hit him and told him I didn’t want him, I wanted her.

I know, mijo, I’m sorry. He scooped me into his arms. I hit him again and again and again, I want my mom. I think I even screamed that I don’t love him, I love her. He never let me go. He just held on as I wailed and hit him with my curled up fists until I was so exhausted I fell asleep on him.

Years later my dad visited me in Ohio and we talked about that night. He was surprised I remembered. I tried to apologize but he cut me off. Mijo, you were so little and you were scared and hurt. You were so, so angry and you had every right to be angry. You’re not the one who needs to apologize.

There would be months, sometimes years when I wouldn’t see her. Then something really… strange is not the word, but I don’t know what other word to use. I was weeks away from turning ten when I got caught playing a game I invented. I would pretend to be someone and write letters to someone else and I would write the responses pretending to be the recipient of the original correspondence.

This time I was Ronald Reagan writing to Adolf Hitler to tell him to quit with all the war nonsense. I didn’t quite realize I should have been writing as FDR, I was nine for fuck’s sake. Anyway, I wrote back-and-forth between the two and it got really fucking dark. Like, I will bomb and burn you into hell kind of dark. My dad saw the letters and freaked the fuck out. I suspect he wondered if he didn’t have a future serial killer on his hands.

So he called the family shrink - my Uncle Charlie - and set up an emergency family meeting.

It was my dad, my Uncle Charlie, my grandma, and me all at my Uncle Charlie’s West Hollywood apartment. A place that smelled like home and was the safest place in my world. I don’t remember most of the conversation, but I know that at some point my mom was called in and the absences - almost two years straight at this point - and all the touching were laid on the table and discussed openly. I don’t remember if it was uncomfortable, but I suspect my dad and Uncle Charlie did everything they could to mitigate my unease.

What I do remember is that I got my mom back and the next week she was hosting my tenth birthday party with her new husband. Someone took what would become my favorite photo of my mother at that birthday party. I still have it. In it, she is flipping her head so that her gorgeous head of black hair is flying and almost obscuring her face. You can see that it’s her and even recognize her sort of, but she isn’t really visible enough to say for certain. She can be anyone I want her to be in that photo. For that brief moment she was my beautiful mother.

I want to tell you, dear reader, that my tenth birthday party was the beginning of a wonderful relationship with my mom and that everything that came before was left in the memories of time while we built an amazing relationship. But that would make me a big fat liar and you deserve more than that from me.

There were amazing moments. A trip to Yosemite, drive-in movie trips, and… well, a lot of alone time while they did whatever it is two young horny people do in the next room. For two or maybe three brief weeks I even lived with my mother whilst I was in middle school. My second of three middle schools somewhere in Alhambra while my dad got on his feet and found us a new place to live after his divorce from my stepmom.

It was strange to see mom sober. In some ways she was worse than when she was drunk. Drunk she was handsy. Sober she was just mean. Drunk or sober, I was ready to live on the streets after a few days. Then one day my dad was sitting at the bus stop across the street along my path from school right there on Valley Blvd. I was walking home with a buxom 8th grader that I was pretty sure was going to be the mother of my children one day when I saw him. I don’t think I even bothered saying goodbye to the future Mrs. Li’l Rudy, I just took off across the several lanes of traffic. There were screaming horns, screeching tires, metal-on-metal crashing probably, but I couldn’t hear any of it because he was there. He came back for me like he said he would.

Let’s go get your stuff and go home.

We have a place?

We do. We can’t move in til next week, but we can stay with grandma until then.

A week later I was in what would be my last middle school. I honestly do not remember the next time I saw mom. But I also don’t remember missing her.

—

Post script

I want to say a few things about what it did to me growing up to be touched that way, to be told explicitly that the value of a man is the size of his cock.

I became hyper sexual. No surprise, I’m sure. I lost my virginity way too young and slept with enough people that I ended up feeling very much like a piece of meat. I quite literally grossed myself out. I am not writing that for sympathy; I am writing it for the man or boy reading this going through it. It took me years of therapy and sobriety to finally get to a place where I realized that I am not defined by anyone else’s definition of a man. I determine my value, not someone who couldn’t keep their hands off of me when I was a boy. I am worth so much more than the shit that happened to me; the shit that happened to me is not who I am, it’s just shit that happened to me, you feel me? And if you are reading this and this happened to you I want you to know that you are so much more than what that fucking voice in your head says.

I want to tell you about my cousins Jesse and Joey and why they’re both dead now and how my dad saved me from ending up like them. I want to tell you about my cousin Becky and how she was my best friend and why she’s dead now and how my dad saved me from ending up like her. I want to tell you about my tío JoJo and how he lost an eye when he got caught cheating at cards in Texas and how he gave me my first sip of Schlitz Malt Liquor.

I want to tell you all about them, but at fifty-one the memories dance together like a mass of sweaty drunkards tripping balls on X at a rave in a warehouse somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. I have flashing moments of smoking fake weed with Jesse before we got Joey to give us the real shit. There’s that time Jesse landed on his face trying to jump farther than anyone else on the shitty bike ramp we three built. There he was screaming down the hill and onto the 101 on-ramp riding a shitty go cart we slapped together with plywood and wheels we broke off of an abandoned grocery cart.

I don’t want to remember the night Jesse and I walked home from Los Felix to Boyle Heights at one in the morning because his mother refused to come and get us, but also demanded he be home. I don’t really mind remembering the train hopping, or even the homeless guy chasing us with a knife along the L.A. River. But I really would love to have the memory of his mother beating the shit out of him for doing something as stupid as walking the streets of L.A. in the middle of the night erased from my memory bank. But I will always remember that being the first time in my life I felt pure, unmitigated hatred for another human being. I was too young to save my cousin from his personal beast, but I never forgot and never forgave. When his mother dies there is a very good possibility I may actually piss on her grave.

I do want to remember Jesse getting clean and sober and having a family in spite of the drugs and the prison and the fucking bullet holes that ravaged his body. I want to hold onto that moment he got up on stage and absolutely killed it in a play. I want to remember that decades apart had not diminished our joy at being together. I will always remember and cherish our last conversations as grown men about trying to do better for his kids than was done for him; about him forgiving his mother because holding onto that shit is like a cancer, you know?

Yeah, I know, but Imma hold onto it for you because fuck that puta.

Laughing, that’s fucked up, Rudy, but thank you.

Of course. I fucking love you, man.

I know fool, cuz we’re both the same.

We’re both the same.

I want to hold onto those moments of Jesse being happy and sober and whole. So I won’t tell you how his story ends.

I want to tell you about how badly Jesse and I just wanted to be Joey; that everything I could do, Joey could do better and with more panache. But then Joey disappeared into the streets and one day he never made it back.

I want to tell you about the nights Becky spent laying awake with me all night talking about the stars and the shitty people who hurt us; how we swore we would always have each other’s back and look out for one another because we both had moms that were complete shit; how we talked about wishing they had each just aborted us, but if I have to be here I am so glad you are too; how Becky showed up at my second of three middle schools because some eighth grader was threatening me so she let him know she would be waiting for him if he ever touched me; how she survived juvie and smack and got her life together and raised a family and asked me to be the godfather of her first born. I want to tell you all of that except, that last bit isn’t true.

She didn’t survive.

I want to tell you their stories, but I don’t want to get them wrong. They deserve better and I love them too much to fuck it up, so I will leave you with those little snippets. I also don’t like remembering the world around them. The mothers - my aunts - that brought them into this world just to, at best, ignore them, and at worst do horrible things to them.

The world around them was the world that made my mother and my aunts. It was a bad world, made worse because the thing a world of neglect and abuse begets is a surfeit of misery and pain.

And if I don’t tell you at least a little of their stories I would be doing them a disservice. They are a part of me and what I am. More than that, though, they are what I would have become had I not been so fucking lucky enough to have had the father I did. We’ll talk about Big Rudy later, I promise.

I will tell you that my tío Jojo was born in 1900 and wore a patch like a pirate (I know you just went ARRRRGGGGG and I don’t judge). The story I remember is that he was my maternal grandfather’s brother and he lost the eye after getting caught cheating at cards in the state of Texas. Then he was tossed out of Texas and told never to return. I don’t know how much of that is true, I just know he was an old man by the time I arrived on the scene. His wrinkled, leathery skin always smelled like Pall Malls which always hung off the end of his fingertips, the ash ever growing but never daring to fall. Or maybe it was Lucky Strikes. He spent the days playing solitaire, drinking Schlitz, and smoking. He shared his Schlitz with me, but never his cigarettes. Apparently, five is only too young to smoke. He taught me how to play solitaire.

He was a fixture. A tacky piece of decor from a bygone era that always come back around and into fashion again if you wait long enough. I thought he would always be there.

He made it to 93.

He won the race.

This article is from the original Chicano in Paris recently moved here to its new home.

As I was about to begin this letter I noticed that I had not capitalized a word in the title. I keep all these letters on my MacBook in a binder and use a simple naming convention along with the date that I change once I post. One word was not capitalized and that stopped me from beginning until I fixed it.

Is that a quirk I get from you or from my mom? Or am I just weird?

Funny as that is, I will likely be thinking about it for the next few days. I still think about that weekend in Palm Springs. You dragged us to a timeshare sales weekend and we were forced to sit in a room and listen to a sale pitch from some dude in a cheap suit. I was completely tuned out and, apparently, so were you. Sales Dude interrupted himself to make an observation about us.

Do you know you both tilt your heads exactly the same at the same time?

As soon as he said it I think we both knew exactly what he meant. We were busted. I still do it whenever I lose interest in a thing, or just zone out. My head tilts to the left, I take a deep breath, and my eyes go wide. Grandma used to do it, too. Bless that poor little Sales Dude’s heart, he was able to take the hint and we were free to enjoy the rest of our weekend.

My wife has Resting Bitch Face (RBF), I have You Bore Me (YBM) face. Together we are the life of any party that sucks and needs someone to say so without actually saying so.

When I sat down to type this letter I was planning on telling you about her. I was going to talk about the life that lead me to her and the kind of husband I have been vs. the husband I want to be.

But now all I can think about is the two of us out in public giving each other that look that says, can we go, please? And how much more fun it is when it’s just the two of us on our terrace judging people for having the audacity to jog as we pour coffee and cigarettes into our face holes.

The way, if one of us is on the terrace alone, we’ll come get the other if our trumpet player is out there on a Sunday. The way I am obsessed with the woman in pink; she’s a septuagenerian who drives a green Mini and always wears pink. Stylish AF with a gorgeous shock of white hair, usually pulled back into a ponytail.

Your girl is here, my wife will say.

I’ll tell you about Sam, The Gorgeous Blonde, soon. But I got distracted almost 500 words ago and now I can’t put the right words together.

Also, I really miss The Gorgeous Blonde.

I have been writing these letters to you in my head almost from the moment you died. There is no real theme, or end-goal with them; they are just my way of saying the things I would say were you still here. You are the best friend I have ever had so, of course I would want to talk to you about anything and everything happening in my life.

I never bothered writing them down before because I knew some would worry that I was “working through things” and offer unsolicited advice. And you, more than anyone, know how much that makes me want to throat-punch a motherfucker. I’ve learned to rein in that urge. That, coupled with my wife being gone for a long, long time, made me feel that now is the time to get the words in front of my eyes and out of my head.

But too, I wanted to put these words out into the world for people navigating their own shit. Not just grief, but all of the cochinada that throws at us all.

There’s this kid I know and love who got some of my words in my shitty hand-writing tattooed onto their body. The tattoo artist had to make my writing a little more legible (I am so glad you’re not here to give me shit about that), but still — my words. After some imposter syndrome passed, I realized that sometimes my words do matter. If these letters can make anyone feel less crazy, less alone, and closer to centered even for a moment… well dad, I think we will have done a great thing.

You want to know something I didn’t expect when I started this little endeavor last week? I didn’t expect the usual nagging voice in my head — that little fucker that reminds me of every single shortcoming, mistake, and failure in a lifetime full of shortcomings, mistakes, and failures — I didn’t expect that voice to becomes so dimmed. I did not expect that writing to you would bring me your voice in my head.

Your voice is so much better for my soul.

In case I haven’t told you, and just in case you can read this over my shoulder from wherever you are, I want you to know: you were never anything less than everything I needed in a father. I was a hard child and you were a safe place to land. I was too serious so goddamn always and you did everything you could to encourage me to hold onto my childhood. I didn’t know how to tell you that the childhood was the hardest part without making you feel like it was somehow your fault.

That thing that was broken inside of me wasn’t because of you. The misfortune of your vicinity made you the bearer of the brunt of my anger. I will always be sorry for that.

I told you all of this when you visited me in Ohio. I am so fucking glad I got that opportunity.

You told me to stop talking because you knew. You knew when I was four and beating on you to get away from me because I wanted what I didn’t have. You knew all the times I ran away that I was running from the one thing I couldn’t ever get away from - myself. You knew when I chose my step-monster over you because you understood that, even though she was fucking awful to me, she was at least there. And you knew the day I moved out — the day after graduating high school.

You ate a lifetime of shit served by a mini-you.

I know at times it broke you. But you hid those as best you could.

When I tell people that my dad is the strongest person I have ever known it isn’t because you can beat the shit out of their dad (which, let’s be honest, you could totally do), it’s because you had the hardest son in the history of the world to raise. A boy who would have permanently broken any other type of parent. I was not easy. I was rarely kind to you. I wanted so fucking much to make everyone else feel the cavern of empty within me. I wanted to be loved. Then when I was loved I wanted it to come from someone else.

God, I was a bitch of a child.

So when I finally called you that one day not long after moving out to thank you for making me so much stronger than any of my friends seemed to be — needing mommy to help them set up their dorms, send them money, wipe their ass in college — I was mostly fine.

And a bit of a pretentious twat, apparently.

I would say we fought, but let’s be honest: you were letting me think we were fighting when I had already seen you snap a grown man’s let in half with one punch and put another man in the hospital when you beat him with your forearm because you had already broken your hand on his face.

So, thanks for not killing me. There were plenty of times when you should have because, Jesus I was a little shit.

And while you may not have killed me when you probably should have, you did let me fly, fall, and throw myself against any number of hard surfaces. You were there to pick me up, kick me in my ass when I needed it, dust me off and hug me when I needed that, and reel me back in when I needed that, too. I didn’t realize you were letting me try and potentially fail in the safest possible way.

You never did something for me, though. No, that was a solid black line you never crossed and sometimes I hated you for it. But that day I finally called you to thank you… it all made sense.

In a million lifetimes, dad, I would pick you again every single time.

I had been sober a few years and living in Ohio when I got the call the that you were in the hospital, the result of a drunken night and a brawl in a bar. Or outside the bar. Or who cares where it was, really.

I flew home in time to get to you before checkout. You told me that some assholes were picking on some young gay kid, and you intervened. For your efforts, you got jumped.

Honestly, dad, I was not used to seeing you on the receiving end of a beatdown. My entire life was filled with you doling it out to bigger, seemingly stronger dudes. Here you were in a hospital bed broken by other men.

Once grandma’s fear subsided it gave way to that passionate Latina anger. She. Was. Pissed. At the assholes who did this to her son, sure. But mostly, she was angry at you.

So you checked yourself into outpatient rehab and told me to go back to Ohio - you had this. I said no. I said I would stay as long as it took for you to get your feet under you again. I went with you to a few meetings, saw you putting in the work and, after a couple of weeks I started looking at plane tickets.

You told me my sobriety inspired you. That my example was enough for you to stay on the path of sobriety. I thought that was enough.

This is where my regret begins.

I should have stayed. I should have moved back home right then and there. I should have walked through your sobriety with you. If I had done that, you would still be here.

But we all know how the movie ended. I didn’t move back to California like a dutiful son. I went back to my life in Ohio. I stayed in almost constant contact with you and with grandma — just to make sure I was getting the unvarnished truth. And I went on with my life.

I didn’t stay sober. The how and why of my drinking again is unimportant for this letter. All that matters is that I was drinking again. I was drinking when you came out to visit me. I was drinking when you fell in love with my little piece of the midwest. I was drinking when I decided — and made a grand gesture of telling you — that I was going to buy a house big enough for you to come live with me once you retired.

I wanted to repay you for all you did for me. It became something of an obsession for me. To the point where I put down money on a place on a lake the next county over.

Then I got that call.

And I got very, very drunk very, very often in the days leading up to your funeral. I behaved in ways that I am so glad you weren’t alive to see, honestly.

We buried you. I went back to Ohio. I kept drinking. I promised I would quit, but that was a lie. When I was sober I was miserable. I would catch myself thinking about all of the what-ifs. When I drank I was miserable until I was numb. Then I was a monster.

I eventually got sober again. The how and why aren’t really pertinent to this letter. What is important is that getting sober meant dealing with my own guilt, my own regret.

Once I started drinking again, it gave you permission to begin drinking again. At least, that was what the voice in my head had convinced me of. The monologue in my head went something like this:

If you’d just moved back to California to be with your dad when he was getting sober, he might still be here. You could have walked him through his sobriety and, in the process, kept your own. Failing that, you could have simply NOT started drinking again. You were a beacon to your father; an example of sober living. But no, you had to be a selfish prick, and this is the natural end result. It’s as much on you as it is on your dad. You could have saved him. You piece of shit.

Dad, I don’t tell you this to make you feel bad. I tell you this because I need you to see that this is not where my story ends. The guilt, the self-abhorrence, the overwhelming desire to drink again - none of that beat me.

Yeah, maybe if I had moved back to California when you first tried getting sober - MAYBE you would still be here. Maybe if I had never started drinking again you would have held onto my example, or at least you would have called me before ever picking up again yourself. And MAYBE you would still be here.

But maybe is a nothing word; it’s a way to pretend a world into existence that is never going to be real.

What is real is that you drank again. And you died as a result. No maybe can change any of that.

I am sober.

Maybe there were any number of times along the way I should have died. Maybe.

But I didn’t.

I wish I had never picked up again. I wish I had moved back to California to be with you while you got sober. I wish you were still here and you could visit us in Paris and you could fall in love with my wife and my city.

And maybe, in some parallel universe, that is exactly what happens.

Maybe.

I wanted to tell you - I wrote a book. Two so far, actually. For kids because your niece little warrior face inspired me.

Since I cannot draw I have had to utilize AI to create images for me. I would explain AI to you dad, but you’d probably make some lame joke like, “AI can’t draw either!” Then laugh way too hard at your own joke.

As I was gathering some images together this morning I caught myself thinking of some of the old photos I have of you. So I dropped this one into ComfyUI and asked it to clean it up. Suddenly, this faded image of my two heroes in the time before my existence came through a lot clearer. I was not prepared for the tears that would come as I sat here staring at my MacBook.

I never asked what lead to this photo of you two, or even how old you were here. I only know it was before my time because Uncle Charlie was away in the military by the time I came along.

Now you’re both gone.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot since last night’s letter. My two heroes are dead and gone to wherever we go next. I know Uncle Charlie was a believer. I know that it filled him with self-loathing because he was a gay man trying to please his church full of fuck-heads who did not approve. I remember when his ex, R- got married to a woman. I thought it was strange. That’s when I learned about conversion therapy. I met R’s wife once at grandma’s house not long after Uncle Charlie died. She was sweet, demure, just sort of there.

I ended up with his journals after you died. He struggled with his faith and homosexuality big time. I hated reading it. The self-loathing of it all was enough to make me wish god was real so I could kick Him in the fucking teeth for causing this kind of pain in a man I knew to be better than almost every other man gracing this big, blue ball.

When you died, grandma took small solace in believing that you and Uncle Charlie would be reunited again. You weren’t the believer that he was. Your god was less defined, less ecclesiastical. Your god seemed to be the connection with… all of us? Nature?

We never really talked about it except that one time I tossed out the Book of Mormon. You weren’t angry that I chucked in the garbage so much as that I did it to prevent you from reading it. I was heavy into my own religious bullshit at the time and, as young believers often do, I believed my faith was the only faith.

You, on the other hand, were always curious. Always searching, but never really explaining what it was you were looking for. You told me you don’t pray to a god in heaven, but you “do pray, or meditate, or whatever you wanna call it,” when you’re alone. That sometimes you removed yourself from places just to do that very thing. You tried explaining that you didn’t need a god in a book when you can see god reflected in the world around you.

I don’t know if you expected to see Uncle Charlie again. When Jen died you didn’t feed me the usual line of “she’s in a better place,”

just,

“she’s gone and I am so sorry, mijo.”

I know that, save for memories and dreams, I don’t expect to see you again. When I die I expect - hope - that the energy that fills my soul will return to the stars and dance around the universe until the stuff of me is needed somewhere else. Not in some reincarnation way; in an energy never dies, it simply transforms sort of way.

That’s why I spend so much of my time looking up, honestly. I like to imagine that the stuff of you is floating around Orion while Uncle Charlie is lingering near the moon. I don’t know why, I just know that when I look at either I think of each of you and you seem not so far away.

I must have been about four when Grandma Lupe died. What was she? 103? 130? To the four year old mind those numbers are interchangeable. What I remember is that she was old, tiny, in a wheelchair, and her hands were soft and blue. Her skin was loose and cool to the touch.

By the time I was five my best friend in the world died. I didn’t know BeeBee was Jewish when we were playing on Augusta. It wasn’t til he died and I saw him with that funny hat in his casket. I thought I was Jewish, too. He was my best friend so, obviously we were the same. I wanted a hat to match his. I don’t remember when I learned it was actually called a yarmulke. He looked like a beautiful porcelain doll. I was too afraid to touch him because I was convinced I would break him.

And, of course, we shared a brick wall with a cemetery in those days.

Death was so much with us.

So were ghosts.

I had an asthma attack and you rushed me to the hospital. Once the doctors took care of me and sent us on our way I was surprised to see BeeBee on the elevator. I thought it was funny that I could see him and you couldn’t. The elevator still had a seat from the old timey days when it had an operator and I had to stop you from sitting on BeeBee’s lap.

There was a lot of death between Grandma Lupe’s time and yours. Gangs, drugs, old age, suicide, accidents, AIDS, and even malaria.

So much death in one lifetime.

You would think it would make me angry, or cynical.

I was angry for a time. When you died. We both know you didn’t have to go. You should be here to see your gaggle of nieces and nephews. You should be here to meet your son and daughters-in-law. We won’t ever know if you drove your motorcycle into that wall on purpose or because you were drunk. We do know that you got drunk on purpose, so…

The anger of you leaving when and how you did subsided long ago. It was easy to process once I accepted that you have so many of the same demons in your head that I have in mine. You have the same doubts and self-loathing that comes of being unwanted by the person who should love you by default.

In your case it was your father.

Where I chose not to have children in part out of fear of becoming my mother, you had me in spite of having one of the worst fathers in recorded history. And you excelled beyond even the most lofty aspirations. All of your broken bits made you the perfect man to raise me with all of my sharp edges.

But that’s not what this letter is about.

Forgiving you for leaving us the way you did was difficult work, but easier to do than forgiving you for how you left one of my siblings believing it was his fault. ‘If’ is one hell of a burden for someone left behind.

IF I had gone with him to the bar…

IF I had called him back…

IF…

He’d still be here.

Watching my brother, C- carry that around with him for years was a little harder to get over. You did that to him. You put your son in a position to carry an unfair, overwhelming burden.

A good father doesn’t do that to his son. Not on purpose, at least.

So I had to convince myself that there was no way you rode into that wall intentionally, right?

Right?

My brother is okay now. Married to a feisty little thing he’s been in love with most of his life. Seeing him happy is one of the best things I have ever seen.

You really should be here for that.

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. You always called me on that day. Which is funny to me because you served, too. I think it was an excuse to hear my voice.

I remember a call you made to me on September 11th. Yes, THAT September 11th.

I was not prepared for the sound of your voice to be so full of fear. You are the strongest man I have ever known so as I sat in that parking lot talking to you on the phone, hearing you almost broken, pleading with me not to re-enlist I found myself detaching from my own mind. I felt my fingers dig deep into my truck’s steering wheel. I wanted to hurt something, someone for what was done on that day.

I have to do SOMETHING, dad.

Not that, mijo. Not that.

You knew I was an idealist. And reckless. Not a good combination.

Honestly, how the hell did you stay sane raising me?

I didn’t re-enlist. Between you and me, I am not sure they would have even taken me back. Being invited to leave the military- not kicked out - just told, “we want you to stay, but we’re not sad you’re leaving,” is a weird breakup.

When Dick Cheney died last week I wished I could call you. I played the conversation in my head.

Dick Cheney died, dad.

I saw the news.

The world’s a better place.

Not for everyone, mijo. I’m sure his daughter is going to miss her daddy.

Yeah, well-

Yeah well nothing. A little girl is burying her daddy, whatever you think of him.

And I would have said something smartass and you would have reminded me that I was lucky not to be close enough to smack.

Then… well then we would have had the real talk. The hundreds of thousands dead because of him. The love of money guised as love of country. And my belief that, as I observe what has become of my beloved country, the terrorists have finally won.

And you would listen. The silence would hang between us for a moment that feels like an eternity.

You wouldn’t disagree with me. You would simply remind me that I am still here. I still have love and beauty in my life. You would say something like the type of government we all live under doesn’t change any of that. If it ever does change that it will be because I allow it to change me.

Your peace is your responsibility, mijo.

Why do you always have to be right, Viejo?

And you would laugh that big laugh of yours that fills the entirety any and every space you occupy. Then some part of my soul that I wasn’t even aware was lacking would fill to the brim again.

It’s a Sunday in Paris. I have been here a little over two (three) years now. I sometimes remember how surprised and impressed you were that I wanted to move here after Jen died. You, more than anyone, seemed to understand that I was adrift and needed something, anything, to steer by.

And Paris seemed like a good idea. You tried to help, but money was always tight.

So I changed course and joined the Air Force. And honestly, could you really see me sticking with Disney for any length of time? That insufferable little twat mouse and all his annoying friends; and so many children. So I went to Texas for six weeks instead.

But your boy did eventually make it to Paris. With the help - honestly, because of - a beautiful woman who somehow celebrates those parts of me that I have always felt I had to hide away. I’ll tell you all about her in another letter.

Within days of arriving in Paris one of your other sons showed up for a visit. We’d barely had time to put towels in the guest room when A- showed up with his little minion.

Dad, you should see her. Your granddaughter has the beautiful oval face of a Mexica warrior. She is fierce like one, too. Maybe a bit too surly for my brother’s liking, but she reminds me a lot of me. She’s a young girl with an old soul.

Nobody is born with an old soul. ‘Old soul’ is one of those misnomers that hides the reality; she grew up fast because she had to. My niece is being forced to grow up without a mama. A kid needs their mama and when they are forced to go without a part of them breaks and never heals quite right.

You saw that with me and I could see it immediately with her. This amazing little girl was carrying a burden without the ability to really articulate that so someone might help just a little. I tried to be for her what I needed at her age. We had one of the best talks, ironically enough, at Disney. Waiting for A- and my wife to get through one of those horrible rides that drops you so suddenly your stomach is still a few stories above you when you land. We sat - I on a bench and her on the ground - and talked about so many things.

My amazing niece let me in ever so slightly and I saw it.

I saw the broken bits and the beauty.

I wanted to scoop her up and assure her that it will all be better one day, but the more she talked the more I heard my wife remind me that sometimes a woman doesn’t need a man to fix anything, she just needs him to shut up and listen. So I got down on the ground with her and did just that.

Honestly dad, I caught myself hoping the other two would be in line for hours and hours. There is a part of me that is always going to live in that moment. She talked about, well, things that are hers to share so I will only say she gave me a part of herself that I cherish more than a thing that can be bought in any store. Even a Parisian store.

Throughout their time visiting - and especially after that little conversation I started to notice something beautiful.

I noticed that your son and your granddaughter are the best of you.

Don’t come at me with your, “I love all my kids equally,” bullshit. This isn’t that; this isn’t about quantity.

My baby brother is the father you would want any of us to be. He is the man who exceeds the lot of us. I watch him with my niece and think, “my god, he doesn’t even realize how good he is. He just thinks he’s doing what he’s supposed to and nothing more.” So many parents can’t even be bothered to do the minimum and here is your son creating a world for your granddaughter to thrive in.

And in the time since they’ve visited I have watched your granddaughter take flight and find her wings and her voice. You would be so amazed by her. My baby brother - your son - is raising a warrior queen and I wish you could see it.

I wish you could stand on the periphery with me and, from time to time, put a hand on A-’s shoulder and whisper, “I am so proud of you, of the man that you are, of the father you’ve become.”