It’s a January day in Texas and I'm spending the day riding in the truck with my cousins and my brother checking out some ranches in the hill country and keeping our eyes out for some Axis deer. Just the thought of randomly snagging a deer to make deer jerky has my mouth watering. My Tio makes the best deer jerky and I can still remember how amazing it tasted even though I haven’t had any since 6th grade. But alas the Axis deer are elusive and we miss our chances. Between the jokes, the small talk about small town happenings and the laid back beer in hand I can almost forget why I'm here. I almost forget that tomorrow will be my dad's funeral service. It's my birthday weekend. I'm back home with family not for celebrations but for a final goodbye. Every now and then through the fun I'm having with family and the nostalgic feeling I get while riding through town I remember that this trip is not to bring me back home but to bring my dad back home.
There’s a small little village like town across the bridge where my dad grew up. It’s mostly Hispanic families and you can walk around the whole place within about 10 minutes and have enough time to stop by the Quick Stop to get a coke and a candy too. I’ve come here many times as a kid and done just that. I’ve been to the cemetery here with my dad plenty of times growing up. My grandparents are buried in the cemetery and my dad and I would take flowers. I guess now I’ll be brining flowers to him too.
The house my dad grew up in is only a few streets away well I guess everything is only a few streets away. No one lives in his old house now but you can see a glimpse of what it must have been once. It’s a cute house with worn white paint siding with burgundy red trim framing the windows and doorframe with a tin roof. There is a small yard around the house and I can imagine my dad being a kid with few worries running around outside with his brothers while the Texas sun warmed and tanned his skin. I get nostalgic as I walk along the roads that my dad's feet had walked before. I realize that the school I had gone to as a kid, the river I swam in and fished in had been his playground before it was mine. I realize now how much he shared with me that I didn't know at the time.
I make my usual rounds when visiting one of my favorite small Texas towns. I go by the school and see that it hasn't changed much and I like that. There's very little in this day and age that stays the same so when I go back home and know that things are just how I left it, I feel like that piece of me I left here is still untouched. The Little Store (yep, that's actually the name of the store) is still across the street where my friends and I ate lunch during our middle school years. I stop by the Eagle statue in front of the high school and find my grandfather's brick lay among the others and I dust it off. He had once been a football, track and basketball coach here and my mother and her siblings went to school here too. Like I said, this place gets in your veins. After seeing the football field we run to get some lunch. There was only one thing I wanted to fill up my appetite and it was some Texas BBQ from one of my favorite places. From the outside people might think it's a gas station with BBQ. No my friend, it's a BBQ place that just happens to also sell gas.
After lunch we take the usual route of driving through the park where we've had plenty of cookouts as a family and swims in the river. The river alone is beautiful. There's a dam towards one end of the river and brave kids have been walking across it for years. I've heard plenty of stories from my mom about how people walk or slide across. It's extremely slippery with moss but from what I've seen it looks like fun. I've never been brave enough to cross it myself or walk more than a few steps. But I've watched plenty of my daring friends give it a try on hot summer days.
I'm supposed to speak at my dad's service and at the time I volunteered to I never realized how difficult it would be. My dad was 44 years old when I was born, he lived almost half a life before I had taken my first breath. I realize the audience may have an entirely different view of who he was. But what I mourn, what I lost is mine. I’m only dealing with my own grief and my own missing. Because when everyone goes back to their routines it will be my own sorrows that I carry with me each day. As the ceremony starts all I can feel is fear. I have to speak in front of my family in a town I’ve been away from for so long. I feel a part of it all and I feel like an outsider all at the same time. Finally my name is called. All I want to do is cry as I step up to the podium to speak. I want privacy to release this pain I’m feeling. Instead I take a deep breath and I speak. I know that my voice is quivering and my hands are shaking and I take some breaks to look out onto the crowd. I know what they see when they look at me. They see the little girl who used to visit her Tia’s house and pick pecans in the front yard, a little girl who dressed like a cheerleader every Friday for school, the little girl who lived out north of town in the country climbing hills and catching frogs, the little girl who is still at my core who misses her father. My final words are spoken and I take my seat next to my husband and siblings and I hope that I’m keeping myself composed but I’m sure that I’m failing.
After the church service our family travels across the bridge to the Little Mexico cemetery. Hymns are sung, words are spoken, hands are shook, sad looks are exchanged and tears fall. Like all Hispanic families we go back to the church to eat. Goat and brisket prepared just like I remember cookouts as a kid, rice, beans, and guacamole. Plates are filled and stories are shared. For a few moments I forget my sadness and I look around at all the life in our family. All the things my dad left behind in each one of us, living and breathing. It’s a beautifully broken thing, the circle of life and death.
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