Straight Up G's...

Words can’t explain the feelings that follow after the checking of one’s voicemail only to hear your father’s broken voice say, “Mijo, hablame cuando oigas este mensaje, mi mama fallesio.”

On November 10, two thousand and five years after this planet lost my boy J.C., I lost the remaining blueprint mother of grand proportions… her soul, as beautiful as the name… Emma.

I’ve never been one to hold back tears as my aunts and uncles can attest to while reminiscing on the fat baby named Lucito, screaming WAHS and pumping tears like oil in Tejas… so bear with me while I type and wipe salty drops from my face – it’s the only way to tell a good story… better to ease the pain.

Flashback to Thanksgiving of 2003… I was supposed to take mi abuelita “Minnie” (my other grandmother) to my mom’s house east down the 10 freeway (those in L.A. know), to Rialto to spend that wretched holiday with my sisters, mom and said character… the woman with hands of steel and a metaphorical 2nd heart – el mio. Plans were nixed early that morning – to my surprise, my grandmother had a minor heart attack and was rushed to the hospital and immediately put in intensive care. The first two things she said upon my arrival, “Mijo, el corazon is muy traisionero,” and “Donde esta Serena?” I gave her a kiss and said, “Pronto viene.”

1 month, a few nights of sleep on an uncomfortable hospital chair, daily trips down Beverly Blvd., hundreds of kisses and hugs, avalanches of tears, curses at GOD, many I love you’s, cries and prayers next to a hospital bed, una bendision, whispers in an ear, a “Pronto nos vemos,” a Rosary, and a last kiss on a cold forehead later… she was gone.

I miss the homemade tortillas, the warmth of her tiny apartment, the angry old lady in the apartments next door, the endless kisses on my cheek, the 11PM phone calls to make sure I was home, the strong smell of perfume, the annoyance a grandmother feels while getting swallowed up in her grandson’s arms to the point of suffocation. I miss her nagging about my not marrying my high school sweetheart. I miss this and much more as much as Che wished for freedom in Cuba – I lie, Che’s Kalishnokov wouldn’t budge me from her side … but the revolution of hearts is never televised as it should never be.

Fast forward to November of 2005… the last of the proverbial Mohicans by way of Torreon has left us. The remaining link to the past… the final beatdown to an already butchered and battered heart has come to a decision… TKO in the 12th round. November has truly spawned a monster – Moz was right. For these reasons I hate this fallacy we call Thanksgiving… para que?

The last time I saw my grandma Emma was about a week and a half before she checked out minus a goodbye. She had been staying at my dad’s place the last few months, seeing her was easiest this way. Lucky for me, she was there when I visited my pops to shoot the shit this last time around. I gave her a kiss and plopped down next to her. I thought to myself, “This woman has a high strain of tolerance, surely my dad’s been watching futbol for at least an hour and she hasn’t moved” She was just chilling there, thumbing her cell phone while my dad flipped through the plethora of Spanish channels Mexicanos are lucky enough to indulge in on the best, I mean west coast – you know how we do it in Califas. That was it, my last interaction with her, a kiss on the cheek and I bounced… nothing poetic, but it was real.

As a kid, she lived with us for years. My earliest memories are filled with her in some scope of my toddler life. I particularly remember her walking my 6 year old punk ass to school to protect me from neighborhood bullies… not that they ever messed with me, but my grandmother never trusted white boys – rightly so grandma, rightly so. A beautiful soul she was – is. Placid, quite, yet hysterical. She and my pops would go at it like little mocosos talking shit on the porch - it was Cantinflas funny. My dad could never get a leg up either… she was cool like that. She had that quite, “I dare you to clown me boy” demeanor… all the while waiting for the right time to counter-punch Julio Cesar Chavez stylo.

But this is life… er, C’est la vie, que no? All the cliché shit people say in respect to losing a loved can be piled onto this orgy of sadness and it will still look tiny compared to the oblivion I dwell in when thoughts of my grandmother(s) resurface… not to say that life isn’t peachy, because it is... I love my life, my family, my loves (lost and found), I write because of these experiences – my first so called ‘piece’ was about mi abuelita Minnie and was written a month after her death… I haven’t stopped writing since.

One day – I envision myself meeting up with them and saying – “Lluege poco tarde pero juntos nos vemos otra ves.” Surely, they’re in a utopian abyss resembling their/my beloved Mexico with strumming trios in the background and two grandfathers – one I managed to watch sleep and one I can only imagine in my sleep.

Obviously, there are easier days… but I find refuge in my love for them – in the idea that their blood dashes through my veins and their mestizo mix shines in my unapologetic inidividuality.

C/S,
- Lucio