I used to worry about my father all the time. I worried about his health especially, because he was always sick. At the time of his death he had diabetes, Parkinson’s, and some heart problems, not to mention the fact that his medical coverage was due to run out at the age of 65; he only had two years left before that would become a huge problem. He always said, “Don’t worry guy. I’ll be fine. It’ll work out.” I worried anyways, sure that his nonchalant attitude was just going to leave him and us in a really difficult situation. As it turned out, he was right, and I was wrong, though I doubt he ever expected the solution would be his death—I know I never did.
People talk about regrets. Young people are always firm in the belief that they will never have them; I used to be firm in the same belief. Everyone has regrets. I don’t have many, in fact, I might only have one. Once, while on a camping trip in Yosemite, my father and I got into one of our worst arguments. To end the argument, I turned to him, looked him in the eyes and said, “I feel sorry for you. Do you understand that?! Your son feels sorry for you.” His stance shifted, and he looked weak. I had taken something from him, and I knew it, but full of anger I stormed out of the camping area alone. I was 18.
That is not my regret. As ridiculous as it is for an 18 year old to think he knows his father’s life, I meant what I said. No, my regret is that I never told my father that I was proud of him. That’s the one thing that still haunts me, and no matter how many times I shout it into my pillow on those nights when I can’t get him out of my head, it stays with me.
Our lives are not perfect. We fuck up. We fail others, and we fail ourselves. We fall short of the goals that we set for ourselves, and that is hard. With that said, I don’t believe much in excuses, because they’re worthless. As I used to tell my students, “It’s not like you can cash in all your excuses when you’re old and get a car or a house. No one is going to care.” Still, as hard and unforgiving as I might be, I accept that no matter how hard I try, my life, like me, is going to have its flaws…lots of them.
In June 2006, my dad had just entered his fourth marriage, and it was already on the rocks; he had no job, and was living on the futon in my cramped Burbank apartment; his health was failing, and he had no real prospects of how he was going to change his life. I loved the man more than you will ever know, but during that time I looked at him and thought, “My poor father, what a sad life he leads. What is he going to do? He needs to better himself. I still think he needs to find God.” His present, his shaky future, and all the failures of his past bounced around in my head, but then he died, and all of the sudden, all my fretting was proven for naught.
Nothing frames a life like a death. The moment my father died, I hung that frame, his life, and I looked at it, and something happened for the first time in my life—I started accepting my father for what he was, for who he was. Did you know my father had a PhD and two master’s degrees? Or how about that he attended UCSB, UCLA, Middlebury University, and Stanford (he was one of the first Latinos to be accepted there)? Did you know that my dad had been in the Amazon with the Peace Corps in the early 60s, and then worked as a diplomat to both Argentina and Brazil for the U.S. in the late 60s and 70s? You didn’t know those things. You also weren’t aware that my father is the one that taught me the most about service to others and helping the poor. No matter how bad things were, no matter how little money we had, my dad was always willing to help people down on their luck. There was nothing, and I mean literally nothing, that he would not do for his children, and in the end, it is that great love, that great compassion, and that great fervor for life that I remember most about him. Yes, my father had great imperfections but who doesn’t? In some ways, all his mistakes now seem somehow comical; expressions of the quirks that made him him.
On Thursday, my girlfriend and I were at a museum when we found out about Michael Jackson’s death. She is the biggest MJ fan I’ve ever known, and it cut me to see her hurting so much. I don’t think the loss really hit me until after I’d dropped her off at the house; the world had just lost the greatest entertainer of our time. I watched the news, partly to be up on it, partly, in some weird way, to support my girlfriend. Some of the comments made by people shocked me.
“Well, at least he’s not touching any more boys.” That was the worst one.
“Who fucking cares? Like seriously? Who wants to go to the beach?” posted on facebook
“Why was he trying to be white? Gross, and his face! What a tragic life.”
We are pompous and arrogant. We think we know so much, but we know nothing. Who are we to pity others, to judge others? Is our existence so grand and unblemished? He was a human living in this world, and I think that anyone is worthy of compassion, respect, and love. One of my favorite quotes of all time, comes from a Jacobean Poet named John Donne. It says:
“Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind…”
And the thing with Michael is, he wasn’t just another person, he was someone that touched us, billions of us. How many people have danced to his music? How many people have made love to his songs? How many people have been inspired by his lyrics? Yes he was a tormented soul, yes he had become almost monstrous in appearance in his last years, yes he did some things that people didn’t understand, but he created some of the greatest beauty this world has known. Was he a good man? Was my father a good man? I don’t know. The discourses of good and evil fill up the annuls for the ages, and men will debate it until that last meteor crashes and destroys us all. Perhaps, however, it doesn’t matter if we’re good or bad. Perhaps all that mattered is that we were, and that is valid, and that is of worth. We shared in this thing called life, in this human experience, and each of us deserves respect for that.
R.I.P. Michael.
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