Paternal

My father is a hard worker.
He learned it from his father.
The paternal pattern of the men who raised me.
Busy men with Marlboro reds in their mouths, tending to their blue collar jobs to feed their families. They are defined by their ability to work, provide, and remain steadfast men.
Whatever the “White trash” equivalent of the Hispanic value of “Machismo” is, both my father and his father embody it…
I’ve always thought to myself that my dad will likely work until the day he dies. He wouldn’t know what else to do.
Work. Provide. Repeat.
I love them both so dearly for this, because I know this is the tongue they learned to speak their love.
My grandfather has cancer…
Yesterday was the first day my father has seen my grandfather since he started chemo.
Yesterday, neither of them embodied blue collar proud men.
Yesterday grandpa looked so sad, as he talked about how the chemo keeps him idled to his chair. He’s mentally restless, but his body could no longer keep pace.
Yesterday my father didn’t exude strength and detachment, as he has with all the distant deaths in his life.
It was subtle, but I could see the pain and worry in the glances he gave to his father, and in the restlessness of his own body.
Bodies made to work and fix…
Yesterday my grandfather was tired and uncertain and my father was just a little boy watching his father be weak for the first time in his life.
Yesterday neither of them could fix anything by way of work or logic or prideful masculinity.
It is a beautiful thing, to be forced to remember that we are mortal.
To be forced to feel all the love they could not easily express because of “masculinity.”
My father, despite his exterior attempts at bravado and intellectualizing, has always been a sensitive soul. There is no escaping this grief, and he is ill prepared.
As fucked up as it is, I am thankful to watch the unfolding of it.
There are so many things in his life he’s never let himself grieve properly.
So much he’s brushed under the rug.
For once, I want my father to be defined by more than his factory job and his family provider role.
For once I want him to just be the little boy he never got to be.
I want him to be all the love he’s kept inside himself.
And I want him to see the same in his father.
As death draws near, I want to see them echo who they are when they cannot work and resolve the problem.
I want them to learn the language of love that cannot provide or fix, of love that is enough simply by being.