On a day that we were tender hearted over the loss of my father we let our children do for us what we had not been able to do

By Ma. Eugenia Guerra

When I was younger and reckless about love and arrogant about how life should be lived, I did a shameful thing. I let a difference between my brother and me escalate to a decade and a half of not speaking to one another. Shame on both of us for letting pride and stubbornness come before the lifelong relationship we had shared as siblings, playmates, and confidantes. And shame on us for letting our father leave us without knowing there would be kindness between us again.

The chance grouping of three pallbearers, three cousins, in one vehicle at my father's services set in motion something neither my brother nor I could have planned. My son George, my sister's son Lee, and my brother's daughter Sara Alicia, en route from the funeral home to a church service about forgiveness and redemption, lamented lapses in relationships in our immediate family. Among themselves they resolved that their own generation of cousins would inherit none of that disparateness. They resolved, too, to come to know each other in ways that had not been possible.

My brother and I have not had cross words over all these years. We have simply not spoken, keeping a distance that grieved my mother and father. My brother and I perfected moving from each other's paths, and that is what we did on the afternoon after my father's services.

I heard my brother invite my son to his house, and later in the day George said he was going to visit with him. I asked George if he might find a way to ask my brother if there was a way he and I could stop this futile sidestepping that in each of its enactments denigrated how we were loved as children, how we were raised.

An hour later George called and asked that I come to my brother's house, which I did. My son took me by the hand to my brother and we embraced and talked for the next two hours, not about the point of contention that had set us apart, but about our father, our home, our mother, our lives together as my father's children.

That such a thing could happen and so easily seemed just short of a miracle, except that on a day that my brother and I were so tender hearted over the loss of my father we let our children do for us what we had not been able to do over the years.

On the day we buried my father, the cousins went off to a kayak cruise at sunset, playing together as they never had, and my brother and I talked into the evening.

That my brother and I made peace was just one of the beautiful rarities surrounding my father's death. We marveled at the meaningful funeral services for my father offiiciated by Father Alesandro di Taddeo, a former service chaplain. Father Alesandro, in tandem with my sisters Amanda and Melissa, came up with a service so appropriate that it was personal and had resonance and accorded my father the dignity and honor he merited. There were so many beautiful touches -- Father Alessandro's eloquent commendation of my father to God, the military escort, that our cousin David played taps, that our cousin Armengol and our friend Carol read at the services.

There were so many good folks who helped us as my father's decline took its charted rush forward less than a year ago. Our family gives special thanks to Linda Cruz, Jorge Armando Medina, Luz Vivian, and the caregivers of Champion Care, Inc., who so ably cared for our father and in doing so also cared for us -- Pete and Susan Decker, Maria Saucedo, Olivia Espinoza, Christine Laureano, Irma Martinez, Juana Valdez, Juana Roath, Maria Elena Verastegui, Aurelia Hernandez, Alma C. Slown, Julia Garza, Patricia Aranda, Lilia Ordonez, Dominga Gonzalez, María G. García, and Beatriz Obregon.

When we signed up for hospice care with Sister Rose Tresp at the Laredo Medical Center, our lives changed in many ways. My father would be able to die at home rather than at the hospital. We thank the social workers and medical members of the LMC hospice team -- Melissa Cerda, Cindy Ramos, Sister Tresp, Tennie Dickie, Marta Perez, and Dr. Leo Cigarroa. We thank everyone who helped us let our father go and who made his release from this life a lesson in love and compassion.

And most especially I personally thank my little sister Melissa for shouldering all the hard decisions.