The shame of it all is that my memories of him are only in the handfuls. I was a baby when I first left for Canada and only a child when returning for the first time. My eight year old self remembers a man who would store bubble gum above the fridge and slyly when no one was looking shared his stash. A man who would sing old Pedro Infante songs in the morning. Above all, the memory I hold the most dear is a man who despite the broken Spanish of a eight year old girl would try to connect any way he could. I would return again at the age of twelve and then again at the age of fourteen. The conversations and memories of him at that time are displaced by a girl who was on vacation as a pre/ teenager and not as pure as those memories of that eight year old girl who's first plane ride was to El Salvador.
I went to go seek him out in old photos. Group photos, solo shots yet for some reason I chose the photo above. It's not the "best" photo of him. He's posing with my grandmother, his hip cocked to the side in a sly stance, zipper half way up. I thought to myself, how did this man remember me as? I got my answer. In the photo I chose, on the shirt he was wearing is a photo pin of that eight year old girl posing in her soccer uniform. That eight year old girl who met her grandfather for the first time.
May you rest in peace
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