Because its Monday

After an unintentional hiatus, I decided to come back on to the keyboard and type something that had nothing to do with Immigration Law. So here I am.
After this unintentional hiatus, I have come to appreciate my blog, my rough and unedited writing, and to toot my own horn.

While I was gone, I received the news that someone I love is dying faster than I would want them to go. It's a certainty that we will die, but the time frame is what I hate. This dwelling on time forced me to dwell on this word we use, "love".
I had a grandmother that died almost three years ago. It was sad, a lot of people cried. But in an effort to maintain transparency, I only cried because she was my father's mother. Yes, in the last years of her life I had gotten to know this woman through and through, more so than when she was virilent. But it was not until she was close to the end that she seemed to care on who I was and whether or not I came to see her. It was nice to see her so humbled, and in turn, creating an emphatic and humbling experience within me. But the day she died, it was not sadness for me or for my loss, but a sadness for my father who's complex relationship with his own mother has yet to be unearthed. I often wondered if he was sad, regretful, angry? But I have never dared to ask him. And it was for those reasons that I was sad, that I cried. Not for the love of a woman, but for the selfish answers that I will never have answered, and for the father who couldn't seem to bring himself to visit his own mother in life.

Now it is me that is legitimately crying. This will be the first "family" member that I have loved, and will now lose. Perhaps I have lost this person a long time ago. I had stopped my frequent visits to Texas years ago, and only recently resumed on a vacation a few months ago. A wave of guilt went over me. These were people I loved, that loved me. These were people that were excited to receive my call, and embraced me with the largest hugs I have ever felt. And now one of them is leaving sooner than I would want.
I got to visit with him one last time. He sat up at the table, proudly showed off his PICC Line, and told me how the next time I visited, he was going to kill and grill a goat in my honor. He still looked the same, just slightly slower and with a bit more white hairs. That is how I want to keep it.

You will have to excuse the "dear diary" entry. But its been quite some time and there is so much I want to say. I will have to cut it here. I can't seem to continue without shedding a tear.

Antonio

I tell anyone that will listen so many things about you.

I tell them how you loved to dance, that my first memories are of you in the kitchen doing the twist, and carrying me to the tunes of Fats Domino and Ramon Ayala. You still tap those feet despite using a cane and the walker. 

I whistle for the babe, the same way you whistled at my mom. 

I repeat the story of you and my Padrino, that night before his son's wedding in Mexico. I tell them of how drunk you both were, the rose that you bought, or maybe it was my Padrino, and the Mariachi serenade you sang to each other. I laugh at how you both were too hungover to have any drinks at the wedding. 

 I talk about the way I am more your daughter, that I took after you, despite you not being my biological father. 

I describe the days at the ranch, the animals that we had, the gun that you taught me to shoot.

I boast of the bowling trophies, and how you made me a mini bowling practice set in the backyard so that I could be just you. I still remember the little ruby red ball with my initials that matched your big red bowling ball.

I describe the morning breakfasts at the bowling lane diner, how we would take our own cloth napkins, leaving them stained with ketchup. Remember how we giggled when we gave them to mom to wash, how irritated she would be with us. 

I laugh at the days you were trying to teach me how to drive, and remind myself of the day you taught me to ride that purple bike. 

I tell them how lucky I am that I got to call you dad, that I got you as my father in the best time of your life. 

I remind them all, the friends, the readers, the followers on twitter, that you survived that Christmas day. That you will remain my dad for many years to come, that you are a bull, a giant of a man. 

I tell them you are my dad.