It was November, yet it stayed warm in Tierra Caliente Michoacan, our homelands, so we found a place to go swimming. I had brought my dad some trunks to wear. He had refused to swim with me and some cousins in the river days before, and just sat there watching.
He stayed close to me as he had during the whole trip and wanted to swim in the pool. With the help of a male nephew, he got into his trunks and we walked into the pool together. It took him a minute. Somehow he remembered what to do. Having a good ole’ time, laughing, swimming from here to there, yelling at a cousin to get in. I jokingly dunked his head in, which caused us both to crack up so hard.
He had a grand time reconnecting with family he hadn’t seen in a long time, reuniting with his last living older sister of eight, and being silly together. He joked around with my cousins Juvenal and Toribio who treated my dad with so much respect, dignity, and loving kindness. Ran around with my niece Susi in Uruapan while he posed for pictures he asked me to take of him.
He would recount to anyone that would listen that when he went to Mexico, his daughter Pati tried to drown him in the pool. Then he would crack up.
While we visited the Purépecha pyramids in Tzin Tzun Tzan, he looked at me and said “esto es de nosotros.” Si, yes, I told my pops, this is ours.
He passed from Alzheimers on February 18, 2021. That disease took and gave me a dad I didn’t know existed for a few years. That, along with so much more, remains ours.
I feel him still and when the sadness invades me, I conjure up that pool, that final trip to our homeland, and force myself to laugh. I thought for a long time it was his final trip to Mexico; now, though, I believe it was the beginning of his journey. I got to be a part of it–and that remains ours, too.
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