I woke up thinking about two men I admire and love very much this morning: by baby brother Anthony and my dear friend Joshua. My favorite thing about each of them is the father that they are to their children. But even in thinking about them I realized they were background to what was really in my heart. I was thinking about their children. So… this next part is for them…
I want you to do something for me since, like me, you have an amazing father; I want you to go to him right now, take his face into your hands and look at him. Study the lines on his face, the cracks around his mouth from laughing and smiling, the slight bags under his eyes the moles or freckles, the blemishes, the beauty. When he asks what you’re doing you shush him and tell him, “just let me look at you, dad.” Then look into those eyes of his and consider that you are looking into the eyes of a man who is your safe harbor. Not every kid has a father like that, but you do. Let his eyes, his face, his beautiful imperfections sear into your memory and you hold onto that.
Twenty years ago you turned fifty-two. We had no idea that would be your last birthday. I called from Ohio and we did the dance we had been doing for the previous fifteen years; I didn’t mention Jen and you didn’t ask about her, but she was there taking up space.
It’s been thirty-five years since I walked into the hospital and they told me she was gone. The nurse literally said, “she’s not here anymore,” as if that somehow made things clear. My dumbass thought that meant they’d moved her to UCLA until the bosslady said, “no Mr. Martinez, she died.”
Mr. Martinez - was that the first time I had ever been called that? I mean besides all the times I pissed off teachers. I think it was.
This is grown-up news I am about to deliver so I am going to address you like an actual grown-up.
I don’t know how our story would have culminated. I only know that she was the only thing that mattered from the time I laid eyes on her so many years before. Whether we would have lived happily ever after, or crashed and burned the way two passionate people in a relationship often do is of no import anymore.
It was enough to know that for a time you were enough and so was I.
I’ll be your champion
and you will be mine…
She died. In my grief I made a mess of my life for quite some time.
But that moment, when the nurse said the words… Mr. Martinez… I got stuck there. I left a part of me in that hospital on that day that still resides there thirty-five years later.
When I got to your place that night your birthday was an afterthought. Since that day you carried a certain amount of… guilt? You said, “I hate that my birthday is always going to be a reminder of the worst day of your life.” All this time later and I can chuckle at the irony of you managing to push it to second place on the level of worst days of my life. A different part of that same hospital has a different part of me that will never leave.
Yesterday my favorite of your children messaged me that you’d visited her in a dream. I was not jealous at all. My baby sister learned that her clinically rational older brother does actually believe in some hippie-dippie shit. I told her that while I don’t believe in god, I do believe that you really did drop in to say high and give her a hug. I am confident that one day science will prove me correct.
I am older now than you were when you died, but I have still lived more of my life with you than without. For thirty-three years you were the singular constant in my entire life. No one will ever know me quite the way that you did. No one will ever carry me the way that you did. And no one will ever endure the unrelenting torment of having had me for a child.
You loved me when even I did not love myself. That is some seriously heavy lifting. But then again, you are the strongest man I have ever known.
I don’t know if they do birthday’s where you are, Dad. I just know that you can let go of whatever you carried most of my life. And if you see a certain fiery red haired girl, please tell her I said hello.
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Rudy, thank you. Today is my birthday, 66th. And you have given me, here, a wonderful gift. The reminder that love is the source of our existence and the greatest experience we'll ever know. <3