The Importance of Good-Byes
The Importance of Good-Byes
“Your father shot himself”; those are the words so engraved in my mind that every time I remember them, I hear my mother’s voice as she said them to me that late night in July. I was 14 years old in the summer of 1989 when my father shot himself in the head. My parents had been divorced for about five years and been separated because of problems they had for much longer than I can recall. My father had remarried a former housekeeper with one child of her own and four of his; this was not a man who believed in the vows of marriage he had once uttered to my very young mother at the age of 15 in front of a judge in a courthouse.
My life as a child was one filled with love from my parents, my four older brothers, and older sister. Then along came my younger brother to take away what I felt was my place, being the baby in the family. My father was the traditional Mexican male with a strong belief that women belong in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant; this I know from the simple fact of being one of the seven children he bore with my mother. My father was a very successful landscaper who ran his own business and spoke the minimum English necessary. We were raised in a household in which we were consistently reminded that we were not Americans and we must speak our native language, better said by my father as, “No somos gringos, en mi casa se habla el Espanol.” In the eyes of many people we were from a great family who had it all, but behind closed doors we lived a life in which we were sometimes afraid of the one man we should have felt protection and love from. My father was very strict and set in his ways and no matter how hard you tried he was never pleased. I was fortunate enough to be the apple of his eye and could do no wrong while my mother, brothers, and sister consistently got the bad end of the stick.
We lived in Chula Vista, a decent neighborhood on the south side of San Diego on a piece of land that was about an acre...