December 22, 2018

Two months had gone by since my dad passed away, and I finally had a day to do some cleaning in my home office. Piles of papers and mail had accumulated over months. Life had been on hold since February 12th, 2018, when my dad was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. After all this time, I saw the need for doing some purging and sorting of mail that was seven to eight months old.

A part of me had forgotten he was gone until I paused to look at a holy card stuck in a crevice of my desk. I turned it around and saw his name with "June 8, 1940-October 20, 2018”. My heart dropped. It was real. I buried my head in my arms and started to cry, and pray, and cry and pray repeatedly. I prayed for my mom and siblings. I couldn’t imagine the pain without the faith our ancestors passed on to us.

My phone rang at about 1:50pm. Marc was on his way home but called me to tell me he was running late. He was stuck in traffic and recorded it on his phone to show me, “this is what I’m stuck in”. He got off the freeway to bypass some of the traffic and saw that it was a bad accident. Many people were getting out of their cars to give aid. He heard the sirens approaching and saw the distress of the witnesses crowded around the overturned vehicle, from which he could only get a glimpse of the tires still spinning in the air. He said that he wanted to pull over and help from the other side of the fence that he was on now, where he had a better view of the chaos. But he decided not to and just said a little prayer.

He got home and told me, “I hate to say this, but whoever was in there, I doubt they made it”. As I always do, I started praying for that person and their family. I couldn’t imagine what they were going through. Then, I proceeded with my cleaning and crying, back to the realization that my dad was gone.

Marc and I had plans to attend 5pm mass. As we were about to head out the door, my brother's wife, Dina, called me.

“Are you home?”

“Yes, but we’re heading out to go to mass”, I responded.

“Just stay. Please. I will be right there”.

I wondered what her urgency was. We had just seen her and my brother, “Alvie”, as we called him, a few days earlier when he came over to help make tamales. For some reason that day, Marc felt the urgency to tell Alvie and Dina how much he appreciated their role in the lives of our children. Dina taught the younger ones to swim, they took them on hikes, Alvie introduced my son to a love for nature, and joined him to spar in the boxing ring. Marc emphasized his appreciation, holding back tears. Alvie, seeming uncomfortable with the compliments, told us, “Well, you guys, too. You guys taught our kids a lot, too”. We hugged and said good-bye, and “see you soon”.

Dina would not ask me to stay home from mass if it wasn’t urgent, I thought, but then again, she wouldn’t be so calm if it was.

I looked at Marc and questioned him,

“Did you see the car? Did you see the car?”.

Marc’s face looked at me filled with terror. He said, “I can only see it was white”. Alvie had his prized possession, a white 1977 Toyota Land Cruiser, or “FJ”. He was always very adamant to say that “it’s not a jeep!”. I became frantic, and he tried to calm me. Again, Dina wouldn’t be so calm if it were something so serious.

Minutes that seemed like hours passe,d and I saw Dina walking up the driveway. She walked in, grabbed my shoulders, and looked me in the eyes. I was already shaking my head, “Was it Alvie? Was it Alvie?”. She said, “Alex, all that faith in God you’ve had all your life, right now is when it matters most”. Part of me kept thinking, “She’s calm, it can’t be that bad. God wouldn’t allow two losses in two months for our family”, so I asked, “Where is he?”.

“He passed”.

The life came out of me, and I collapsed. Marc and Dina tried holding me up. I yelled at Marc, “You were there, you were there!”. Even though Marc tried to comfort me, I know he was equally hurt. He and Alvie were more than brother-in-laws. They entrusted each other with their kids, they called each other for help with cars, barbecuing, baseball, or boxing.

“I didn’t know Alex, I didn’t know! I’m sorry!”.

Dina told him to start calling all my siblings and tell them to meet at Mom’s house. She still hadn’t told my niece and nephews, her kids, and it had already been on the news. She was afraid they would release a name before the whole family found out. Marc was doing as he was told, but looking back, he was falling apart too. How do you make six phone calls “meet at your mom’s house, immediately” without losing it?

I was useless. I kept collapsing, but my conscience kept telling me, “If Dina could look me in the eye and tell me this, how could I be so weak?” I had to be strong for her. Two fire captains entered my home, and I tried not to scream while Dina made phone calls to my niece and nephew.

When she got the news, Dina was also on her way to mass at a church across town that was being dedicated for the first anniversary of her cousin’s death. She knew when you got a call from a fire captain, it had to be serious. The captain tried to tell her to just get home, but you can’t sugarcoat that kind of call. She insisted they tell her, and she came back to her house with neighbors out on her court and fire captains waiting for her. Poor Dina, she was keeping it together better than any of us. But we knew eventually the dam would break.

Everyone started to arrive at my mom’s house, one by one, confused about the urgency of the situation. When my brother, Jose, got the phone call, he answered, saying, “It’s Alvie, isn’t it?”. He had just seen a post, “Firefighter Dies in Crash on 99”. One after the other, we had to hear the yells, the screams, the kicking of furniture as more and more of the family got the news.

My brother-in-law had to remain in control to get my sister Irma to the house. She kept calling me, wondering what was going on. I didn’t want to answer, but she was persistent. I finally answered. She wouldn’t accept, “wait until you get here”. Then the words came out, and she let out a gut-wrenching scream.

My kids, also one by one, were hit with the hard news. My grandkids were startled by the screams, not understanding the loss of their vivacious, beloved uncle. We had just been in this state of loss two months before- it seemed like one continuous night. Except for the relief we experienced in October from seeing the end of suffering had now turned into the return of suffering.

After returning home that night at 2 a.m., we didn’t rest much. By 7 a.m., Marc and I were with Dina talking to the Fire Department liaisons to plan the services. I called my mom and she said the exact words she said the morning after my dad’s passing, “What time are we going to mass?”.

I know that God understands the grief that could hold anyone back from fulfilling their "Sunday obligation”, but for my mom, I know it was that much more of a reason NOT to miss. She sent me straight to the priest to ask him to dedicate the mass to my deceased brother, less than 24 hours after his passing.

I’m frequently reminded of December 22, 2018. When I reach to put on the brown boots I was wearing that day or I see the grey striped shirt in my drawer, the smell in the air of cold weather that day, or when we’re exiting the house to go to Saturday 5 p.m. mass, my heart races a bit and my breathing will pause for a moment.

Everyone wondered where Alvie was going. I didn’t think it mattered. I believe when God gives you your time, it doesn’t matter where you’re at, what you’re doing, sickness or no sickness, Alvie could have been in a different car, in his workshop, at the gym, on one of his runs. God was calling him. He fulfilled his purpose, and as we would find out at this funeral, he touched thousands of lives. He was on his way to meet God.