If there was one thing set in my mind from the time I was a kid, it was that I would fight for people’s rights. I was old enough then to understand that I was different, and as such treated with a certain fragility and ackwardness which I freely took advantage of by high school. I also knew that somehow I was related to an infamous Mexican attorney disguised as my grandfather, so I had to prove myself. Advocacy was a legacy. Not necessarily inherited, but earned.
My grandfather.
I think about him and I remember the man who was literally a jack of all trades. He was a lawyer. Then judge. Engineer. He even went to pharmacy school. That last bit got him into alot of trouble in his later years. My grandfather was a very smart man. Too bad he was so bitter in the end.
I remember the day I found out he died. It was a few days before graduation, and my father called to give me the bad news. I was so disappointed afterwards. At first all I could think was how he had ruined this for me. If he had just followed the doctor’s instructions… Now the majority of my family was going to have to bail.
Then I realized it wasn’t so much the disappointment that they wouldn’t be here that bothered me, but that my grandfather would miss my graduation from law school. He was looking forward to this trip. I know he would have been proud.
His absence in my grandmother’s house is still a litte erie. The rooms are too quiet, yet everyone else is calm but busy. I find myself wondering what he would he think of Mexico’s current situation. Then I stop because I know that’s not a rant I’d want to be trapped into with him. Papa Ricardo did like to rant, and poor ole me had to listen because I was usually trapped in manual wheelchair unable to wheel away!
Those were the days.