I once met a man who was elegance and sport, wit and song, the barrio and love, birth and death, pleasure and pain. Tonight I ponder this man; a soul so fulfilled, yet so incomplete...my eternal paradox. I knew him from the perspective of one who sees the world through a pink glass, who has to look from her 4.9 feet up, who did not yet abandoned the ribbons, but already despised the curls. He looked at me through a gray glass: a life of submission, a life full of chains and, in me, I guess he found light.
He was condemned to death, had been for a decade, slowly corroded by the vicious, earthly poisons, brutally sentenced by AIDS. In life he taught me less than he did after dead. While he lived I learned about his pain, hiding my pain instead. I learned to be strong from his mother. I saw him go from place to place trying to unchain himself, but as much as he tried to set himself free, the tighter his bonds grew to his addiction. No one saw that I saw, that I understood. No one realized I slowly swallowed his pain perhaps hoping it would assuage his eternal hurt. I looked at him and I knew who he was, but I also knew what he was. He had made so many mistakes and walked down all the wrong paths. He hurt everyone he loved. And though I knew this and understood it, I could not judge him. I was still a child, and beyond that, the eternal idealist.
He died fourteen years ago and when he died, I died a little inside. I don't think anyone understands why I still hurt, why I still cry or what I knew or didn't know that day. I've never talked about him this way. Don't be mistaken for I was never ashamed of the man, he was my pride. However, I never talked about how I felt back then. I was broken. I had not said good bye and I love you and the thought that he had left ignorant of the love I felt for him tortured me. I stared at his coffin for hours and I swore he moved. This false and empty hope enabled me to remain standing because the man I knew would not leave me like this. But he was gone and my world collapsed with my first brush with the enigma that is death. Since the day he died, the smell of the flowers at the funeral home haunted me, a constant and unforgiving reminder of death.
Because of him I dispatch the stereotypes. He was one, if you had met him back then. Since the day he died, I cry for those who get lost, I do not loathe the druggies others can't bear to look in the eye, I feel for those who die alone, for those who roam the streets aimlessly, for those who beg, for those who choose the wrong path, all of them like me with the only difference that they carry a different script. Since that day, I carry a little bit of the pain in the world with me everywhere I go.
For ten years I idealized that man I once met as if he had lived his life solely to teach me what not to do in mine. The truth is that he lived just what he was meant to live and suffer. He read the script, played the character, and when he was done, he buried the script. He suffered, not for me, but because he was human and because he was weak. His soul was weak. He was not a Batman or a James Bond like I had envisioned. I made him up to be a superhero. In my world, it was easier to believe he was flawless. We all suffered his pain. For years I pretended that his life ended just because, but I never put into the equation that being on his own death row drove him to find his death. He didn't want to walk the green mile any longer.
God, I thank you now for taking him away. However that may have been, I don't ever want to have certainties. I thank you for not letting him fade away in a hospital bed. The vision alone is blinding and the cries deafening. I thank you man because you weren't a hero. At least, you weren't one academics write about in history books, though I'd argue they should.
I thank you man I once met for the blessing of your life, for these tears, and for the eternal pain. Because when I see others far worse than you, my heart opens up like a flower in the spring to embrace their weakened souls. I thank you for forcing me to be sensitive to this pain, for making me understanding, for bequeathing me strength. I met you man and you were my flesh. I buried you, man, and you became my hero.
When I remember you, man, I remember who I am and where I came from. And I am the girl who buried you man, and with you I buried a piece of my childhood and the pink looking glass.
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My world was never the same after Manuel Mendez died. I was already 10 going on 30 as a child, but when I lost him I was forced to embrace a pain that choked me. Death is not something easy to grasp at any age, but when you are ten, you do not understand how fragile life is. I wanted to heal him, but I couldn't. In my innocence, I believed I could cure him. Perhaps, I did somehow. This man I once met was my uncle. Why is he my hero? Because no one else could have taught me a harder lesson and no one else would come back to let me know he loves me too. I will always carry you with me. You are in my heart every single day of my life. I am who I am in large part because you inspired me. You could have been so many things, but you failed. Instead, your triumph is that you live as the biggest of my lessons and I am forever indebted to you for your strength and for your pain.
I wrote this blog on December 10, 2005. I have since edited the blog and I am thus republishing it to celebrate the man whose existence alone changed my world for good.
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