Dad, 1/14/1931-1/10/2007

I'm a fan of the NBC show Heroe's.

I'm not much of a TV watcher though so I find myself watching the episodes online one after the other whenever I can catch up. I was watching one of the episodes yesterday, one where charachter Nikki (Ali Larter) is surprised by her father showing up at an AA meeting. After the meeting they're in the parking lot and there's an exchange between them where what comes out is that her father was not present during her childhood.

Much like my own.

The charachter Nikki, is angry but not at what her father did, but moreso on what he did not do.

Mine passed away this month, four days before his 76th birthday. You're right, it's not very old at all.

1/14/1931-1/10/2007

It hit me harder than I ever thought it would. After all as with Nikki's father I had not seen mine in many years. More than I want to admit and luckily more than I can actually remember. I had been told in October/November that my father had or was about to have open heart surgery. I was told that he had called from a pay phone somewhere in San Diego and that he would call back.

He never did.

I remember being excited when he would call as a child and he said he was coming to get us, my brother and I, for the weekend.

He was froma little town in Puerto Rico called Adjuntas which according to Wikkipedia is nicknamed the Switzerland of Puerto Rico. Appearantly only because of it's chilly temperatures...an average of 72 throughout the year.

I remember as a child standing near the center of town near a large fountain, the like not seen here in the States. The town is nestled in the mountains and surrounding the town is a grouping of hills that translated is "The Hilld of the sleeping giant" since it looks like a giant man laying on his back. There was a car accident there, two small cars, and the two drivers, men, were shouting at each other. Nearby was a push cart where we bought piragua's, which is shaved ice with fruit syrups.

My parent's divorced when I was about 10 or 11. It wasn't pretty but since when is divorce a pretty thing. Those that say it's a good thing are fooling only themselves. My brother is a little over 8 years younger than I am and he has completely different feelings about our father. He doesn't remember those times and likely his opinion is tainted by our mother. But it is also tainted by our father.

The only family vacation, and by family vacation I mean one that included my mother, I remember was to the island of Puerto Rico. I think I was 4 or 5, we were visiting the Capital city of San Juan. We had travelled by taxi there and I was holding the 8mm camera, the 70's version of the video camera. My parents always drilled in me to lock the car doors. After all, we lived in San Francisco in the era of The Zebra and The Zodiac killers. Anyway we got out of the taxi and as it disappeared we realized that the camera was still in the taxi. My father took to cursing in both english and spanish. He was quite good at it but what would you expect from someone who was a Merchant Marine. He also threw rocks when he got angry. I guess that is if he was outside. All that aside, the taxi did come back and find us. The driver had gone to pick up another fare and when the new fare couldn't open the locked door, he turned and saw the camera.

I look in the mirror and I see my father's face. We have the same exact hair that is wavy, and to my chagrin, salt and peppered. I fool myself and say that the "salt" is actually dried hair gel that just catches and reflects the light. It has to be. We even have the same build. Another thing I may not be to crazy about since I could probably lose 40 pounds. I lose plenty of other things, I don't see why I can't lose these just as easily.

I remember dad walking around without his shirt on. This always lead to a sparring match with his shadow or if he caught a glimpse of his reflection, his reflection was made sorry with a left-right-left combination. He and my uncles (he was 1 of 8 children) would gather around the television at family gatherings and they would watch Ali and Frazier, Ali and Foreman (my Uncle hector always called Foreman fat), Leonard and on and on. It was the football of the day.

As far as I know he always loved San Francisco. He worked for Glidden paint company for my entire life. Foreman for part of that. Fork lift driver for the rest. It was near the docks and rail roads. Makes sense for a company to be there near 2 major distribution channels. His clothes would sometimes have paint on them. Sometimes his hair would too.

I remember the last time I saw him he was in rough shape. He was living in a hotel, a pay day to day type of hotle in San Francisco. He was thinner than usual and to be hinest he looked homeless. To see the place he was staying at he might as well have been. Up until those days I can't say I saw him on a regualr basis but I did see him occaisionally. I don't even know how old I was but I can approximate that it was between 91 and 93. I called an uncle and together we found a place that my father could afford. It was a nice studio apartment still in the city because that was where he wanted to remain. We got some clothes, household goods, even some furniture for his place and felt good about what we had found. We drove back to the city and met with the landlord, went grocery shopping and got my father all moved in.

And that was it. The last time I saw him. He left that place soon after and by soon I believe it was within months. I was told he had moved to Apple Valley which is in Southern California to be near his parents. In 2000 or 2001 I went to Apple Valley to look him up. I found the address and when I arrived the people in the home shared my same last name but according to them that was it. I gave them names of my relatives; grandparents, aunts and uncles, my father, I threw out every name I knew and they said they did not know any of those people.

Later I heard that he had gained a terrible amount of weight. He would occaisionally show up at an uncle's house or at my grand parent's house un-announced. It could easily be a year before anyone saw him again. The family thought that he was really sick. Nobody talked about it so it was hard to find out info. My father never had a phone and always lived by himself. Eventually I heard that he "got better".

I loved my father even though I had not seen or heard from him in many years. Many, many years. My son will be 12 soon and they had never met. The last time I saw him is very clear to me and I record it here in hopes of having some sort of proof of his life, aside from my brother and I. Last November he had open heart surgery and appearantly there were complications. Some kind of infection in his leg which makes me think it may not have been open heart surgery but more so the type of operation where a tube is inserted through his leg up through the arteries. He went to a home where he was to recuperate. What that means is that he could not live on his own so it was known that something was wrong. He told my mother in November that he thought he was going to die. My mother told him that he was going to probably live until he was 100. His father died at 97. His mother was also much older when she passed.

He was living in San Diego alone. I imagine he spent Christmas in the same convalescent hospital waiting to recuperate and almost made it to his 76th birthday, which was the day after mine.

I really wish that I could have seen him once more. I guess that is part of life....you never know when the last time is.