Honoring Dad

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.  

Kahlil Gibran

Cristobal J. Sanchez was wisdom.

Like him, I have the tendency to weep when my soul and spirit are touched by the sight of a new baby, the sound of a loved one crying, or the thought of a precious moment in time. I remember many such moments when a tear would well up in his eye and trickle down his rosy-ruddy cheek.  I remember his silent tears when Mom would say or do something that hurt one of us as she meted out discipline. I remember the silent tear that fell down his cheek when we gathered around the television to watch the Kennedy funeral.

Like him, I don’t often laugh out loud, but I enjoy a good laugh. Dad sat in front of the television set with a huge grin as he watched Fred Sanford, Lucy Ricardo, and the Hee Haw gang. I remember when he reached for butter and got margarine. “Dad, is that real butter?” we asked. “No, es la Margie,” he replied.

I try to be like him at his most unselfish – when he opened his home to extended family and he and Mom somehow managed to feed 20-30 mouths. When Dad came home in the evening from Los Alamos, he brought a package of Bit-O-Honey and distributed the individual candies into the small waiting hands of his children. He turned off the television news in order to sit and pray with the rosary with us. He built the house on Del Norte Lane with only the help of a couple of my uncles, and he lovingly maintained it for his wife and children.

We didn’t buy ties for Dad on Father’s Day – he rarely wore ties, which were too confining around his broad neck. He only wore them for extra-special occasions, like the weddings of his children.  Instead, we bought him Old Spice after shave, and he used it obligingly before going back to his Aqua Velva. We gave him white handkerchiefs, which he always carried with him. I remember ironing his handkerchiefs and carefully ironing in the creases. (My brother Anthony still carries white cloth handkerchiefs.)

I was in San Francisco when Dad went into hospice care in 1973. I remember getting the call on October 25^th to come home, as the time was nigh. I hopped on a plane the next morning, arriving in Albuquerque at about 1:30. Gil Baca picked me up at the airport and brought me straight to his room at St. Vincent Hospital on Palace Avenue. He was in a coma, but I know he was aware we were around. At dinner time, the family left to go home, but Cris and I stayed behind. As I held his hand and whispered, “I love you, Daddy”, his eyes were filled with tears, and one tear trickled down my cheek. He took one long, last breath.

Happy Father’s Day, Cristobal J. Sanchez. I love you, Daddy