"You can do anything but lay off my blue suede shoes"

On losing my hero :: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON SEPTEMBER 12th 2024

Dear soft heart,

On August 28th, my Papi died of stage 4 lung cancer.

I had not seen Papi since December 2019, and I had only had a few phone calls with him in the years since the pandemic began.

My Papi and I were extremely close for the first two decades of my life. I had my mom who was my parent for sure. And then I also had my dad, but my dad came with his two parents as this sort of trio package. They had him when they were super young, so their age gap was a small 18, 19 years. In a lot of ways, I was raised by all 4 of them. If you knew me during childhood or teenage hood or even young adulthood, you for sure have met Papi and he has probably bought you some sort of snack.

In March of this year, my dad told me of his cancer. When he did, I sobbed. I could not stand that he had lung cancer. I feared it would hurt so badly. I remembered a friend in school had a dad who had died from lung cancer and she had told me that by the end, it feels like they are breathing through a straw. Over the years, out of morbid curiosity, I would sometimes quietly try breathing through a straw to see what it felt like, and it was awful. I hated that I had rehearsed what he might feel as the disease took over.

It started off with him getting covid, and then when he wasn’t getting better, doctors did scans and saw he had lung cancer. My Papi was indeed a lifelong smoker. When I was younger, I used to beg him to stop by creating an exchange where every time I saw him smoke a cigarette, he would have to give me a dollar. I thought he would feel so annoyed having to give me so much money day in and day out, he would for sure stop. Of course, as a kid, 20 dollars for the week felt so intense. I thought my plan was full proof. He didn’t stop; he just gave me the money. And I saved it and then we would go to Toys R Us and I would get the toy I had been daydreaming about. We did this on repeat, him and I. At some point I was even glad when I caught him, because it became sort of funny that he still did it. He was immune to my reprimanding. Eventually, I sort of forgot about my anxiety about it and trusted him that he would never ever die.

My Papi was my favorite man. He was only 50 years old when I was born, still full of energy and dreams. And I was a huge Papi’s girl – completely idolizing immediately. He paraded me around like the greatest thing that ever existed. I sat on his lap no matter my age. He listened to Elvis in the car and Bugs Bunny cartoons late at night on his comfy chairs, feet kicked up on the foot stand, adorned with the best slippers I had ever seen. He blew bubbles with me, taught me to drive trackers, and every night in the summer, we would go get ice cream. I loved the mundane with him. We grocery shopped, and went to breakfast when we got up early, and we talked. He picked me up from school every single day for years with his small black dog hanging from the driver’s window waiting for me, he never missed a milestone or a birthday, and he laid on the floor with me when I had panic attacks.

When I learnt about his death on the Wednesday night that was August 28th, I immediately sunk into violent sobs. I assumed a child pose’s on the kitchen floor and I wailed. I did not fall asleep that night until 3 am and I woke at 6 am only to feel so sore from the sheer effort it took to cry.

My Papi died peacefully, with his favorite person by his side, his son. I know he was his favorite person, because he told me once at a bon fire. He said that there was no one on earth that my mamie loved more than my brother and I. And so curiously, I asked him, what about you? And he said, well it’s your dad for me. It hurt a bit, that I wasn’t the chosen favorite one by him, but I also understood. I liked that my dad had someone who loved him this much.

I can’t remember exactly my last phone call with him and there is a part of me that finds solace in this because we talked like we didn’t have to say goodbye and another that feels extremely panicked by this – I cannot ever talk to him ever again. Not as a human anyway. My first waves of grief, the uncontrollable wailing, was connected to this.

There was so much that I couldn’t bring Papi into in the last decade or so of my life. I didn’t know how to be both a granddaughter and a victim of rape. I never told him what I had been through, and I don’t know if anyone else did either. In my pain, I sometimes took too much space. I tend to self-isolate when I am hurting; to remove my energy and deal with it on my own, as to not get rejected for needing. I didn’t know how to be a woman and a granddaughter either. Sometimes the roles felt like opposites. In the sense that a granddaughter belongs to someone else, and a woman belongs to herself. I didn’t know how to become myself and have my own limits and preferences and bottom lines, without feeling guilty or ashamed for it, and sometimes instead of just feeling uncomfortable through it, and letting us all adjust, I just avoided him – too scared of his potential disapproval for my own feelings, thoughts, and opinions. I wish I would have been with him, holding his hand. At the very end and in between a lot more often.

The day he died, I was sitting outside around 3:30pm, about 20 minutes before I got the first text to let me know something had happened. I was having a bit of an overwhelming day, an overwhelming week – there were so many appointments for my injury. And there was this single lone feather that floated in front of me.

I had a thought that said, wow, someone is saying hello to me… or goodbye. But then I immediately told myself it must just be anxiety. Having addiction in my family, my biggest nightmare has been getting a call to be told about an overdose that was fatal. But I couldn’t deny that it had a spiritual quality to it – this feather. It felt ultimately… peaceful. I murmured out loud, I love you to it. Not knowing exactly who I was talking to, but knowing that I did absolutely, without a single doubt in me, love them.

Throughout April and May and June, despite my gruelling pain from my injury and my soul crushing fatigue from autistic burn out, I set off to do a project for Papi. And for Mamie, too. I used every single spare spoon I had for this project. I knew they probably wanted more – Mamie for sure, that I come visit since we don’t live nearby, but I didn’t have the health for that. My dad in March, announcing my grandfather’s cancer, had also told me of my grandmother’s progressively dire health situation, something that has waxed and waned for years now, but looked bad in the spring. In acute autistic burn out, I completely panicked at the news of this. The potential loss of both of my grandparents in the same-ish timeframe; two people who very closely raised me was not something I was prepared for, nor well equipped to handle. I wanted to go visit so badly but I knew I couldn’t physically bare it. In the spring, my injury was so bad I couldn’t even sit up for more than a few minutes before needing a painkiller or needing to lay back down. I became so immobile that I gained literally 25-30 pounds in the span of a few months over the winter and spring. There was the fact that I did not move my body at all, literally, and I stress ate a lot of bread and artisanal jams filled with sugar as it was easy to grab and I was in so much pain and just wanted some damn comfort. I was having trouble with basic functioning – showers, making meals, emotional regulation. Getting into a car or on a plane felt deeply unwise for my body. And perhaps even impossible, especially with the vestibular issues I had been having for months now– movement triggering dizziness, nausea and vomiting.

So I couldn’t do that, but I feared a separation to us by death without honoring the love we had shared. Love that profoundly touched me and profoundly made me me. I wanted to do something really special, so I decided to embark on a card and photo project.

Spring bloomed around me outside, and as the buds tried to emerge at the tips of the branches following a cruel winter, I got all of my baby photos in one place (bed) and began to organize them by year and by theme. And then I picked my absolute favorite ones of both Papi and Mamie and I put them to the side.

Then, I got some really pretty stationery and pens delivered and I made them themed letters. I made 6 for each of them. And one extra one for Papi to open first explaining it and telling him how I felt.

It took weeks, days, and hours, and I cried and I grieved and I felt all sorts of emotions as I worked on it little by little. At some points, it was so taxing on me to process, that I started avoiding finishing the rest of the project. If I finished it, it was like I had to get ready to say goodbye – perhaps soon, and, perhaps we’d get more time. Perhaps he would make a stunning or miraculous recovery. The uncertainty stressed me out beyond belief. And my body’s vulnerable state made me feel helpless and like I didn’t have an agency I craved and needed to feel safe and at peace. Still, the cards represented something for me. An ode. A eulogy that I was offering Papi while he was still living. A way of saying here’s what I have trouble saying out loud sometimes. Here’s my heart’s deepest truth: you have been my hero. There was no one else I wrote down and described when they would ask us in school who we admired. It was always… you.

I wrote a letter about all my favorite things about him. I wrote another about all my favorite memories we shared together. I wrote one about the funny stories he told me. I wrote about all the ways he made me smile, how being loved by him was special, never replicable, and eternally timeless. I wrote about our relationship and what he meant to me.

At some point, I realized I was grieving my Papi for sure, but I was also grieving my youth. I was grieving this family belonging that I still hope to have one day, that didn’t feel solid in the moment. 

I received a photo of Papi reading the letters at the beginning of July. He looked pretty good, I thought, eh, this doesn’t look like a man with stage 4 cancer at all. He looks great. I even harbored excitement that as I healed, perhaps I could go visit and spend some time together in the flesh. I would sometimes picture myself arriving at his house, moving toward him to hug him, when I couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night. He would be so happy.

Our last texts wish me a happy birthday in June and they tell me how much I am loved.

One day recently, my symptoms were manageable, and I felt up for a phone call so I called his landline. I got all the way to the answering machine and he didn’t pick up. He must have been out. I didn’t leave a message. I wish I had now. I told myself I would try again another day when I felt good. That day never came before his death.

As I write this I can still hear my grandparent’s lifelong answering machine message announcement. It’s in his voice. And then, oup, it’s in my Mamie’s voice. I memorized his voice. I can hear him saying Chere to me. I can hear him saying my grandmother’s name. I can see him laughing, feel the creases of his face, contorting in joy, like they are my own. I can still feel the swell of love I felt when I flipped a four-wheeler in the middle of the forest when we were out riding one afternoon when I was a teenager. My friend and I were laying underneath it, and he realized it quickly, hopped off his, and came to whip it off us, as if it was easy to lift all those hundreds of pounds of machinery in a few nanoseconds. I still feel the gaze of his eyes taking me in, relief on his face, when we were completely unharmed. I can feel the ecstasy he transmitted from his heart to mine in that moment – the one of not having to feel grief or guilt or loss. At least not now, not for a while longer. It was because of this moment and so many others between us that I knew that I was very loved.

More than anything, I wish I could have told him a story the night he died. A story like he had been telling me all my life. He loved his stories and never broke character. I was never able to get him to admit he didn’t actually know Santa Claus personally – even if I had been told Santa wasn’t real at 3 years old by my mother as a way to decrease my paranoia about a random unknown man entering our home in the middle of the night. He knew that, and yet, he still told me he knew Mrs. Clause super well. I loved him for it. Even though I had to check with my mom all the time that it was, indeed, not true. My literal brain troubled, and my humorous heart inspired. I wish I could have made him laugh. I find his sense of humor in mine all the time. He lives with me, as me, in these ways. In ways only the people who raised us can.

I wish too that I would have sat in the car and listened to Elvis one last time with him. I wish I would have smelt him – full of smoke and lavender essential oil that my grandmother diffused my whole life – two smells that don’t belong together mingling and smelling of home. I wish I could have felt his body against my chest, his lap under my legs. I wish so many things in this grief. I feel anger too - at autistic burn out, at the injury I’ve had, at how sick and injured and disabled I’ve been that I couldn’t go and be there and light a candle and brew some earl gray tea and mix it with the exact milk and sugar ratio that he liked. I wish I could have bought him an entire sugar pie and watch him eat it at the table– without adding in our usual petitions against this. Hell, I would have gotten him a strawberry rhubarb one too and put it in the oven and topped it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I would have loved to go to one more dinner breakfast with him. I would have loved to see one more confused store clerk’s face when he announced to them that I was his girlfriend at check out, thinking it was hilarious to mess with people like this. The most gorgeous girl in the world, isn’t she?

I can only keep on under the weight of the grief because I feel lucky that I have so many beautiful memories with him. So many that I cannot count them or even recall all of them. Even with my pristine autistic memory. There was no greater gift than the gift of his quality time. Doing life side by side for so many years was so meaningful to me.  

I am sad that my disability stood in the way of a preferred goodbye between me and my grandfather. And I am also happy that we loved each other in this lifetime. The night he died, I felt afraid, I realized I had no immediate items of his, no gifts I could hold; no ring, or necklace or earring he got me, and I longed for this. How would I hold onto him? Suddenly, I got it. I have his name. I will carry him with me forever. I hold onto him by being alive.

Papi’s girl <3