Continued

As I listened to my grandmother recall meeting her brother for the first time, I started to finally remember pieces of the story but I don’t think I fully understood it at the time. I have always listened to my grandmother’s stories of her life very much like a child, no matter how old I was. When you are a kid you receive almost every story with a sense of wonder and innocence. Even the true ones carry a bit of fantasy. We process them with a bit of emotional disconnect as they are once again “stories”. It isn’t until now that I am able to view her life with more emotional awareness, but still enough detachment to sit back and take in the whole picture. I see a man and a family learn that a secret was kept from them for years, one that they try to correct, understand and process. On the other side I see a boy, now a man, who probably felt a huge sense of abandonment and distrust. Someone who felt robbed and kept from a life he witnessed played out for others, but not for him. Someone who was never able to let go of what was to embrace what could have been. 

Long Lost Brother

When we visited Oruro we got to meet our other brother Victor. It was quite a shock because he really did look so much like my dad. He was playing the piano, much like my father did, and we went over to say “hello” and went in to hug him and he stopped us. He was very unsure about us and didn’t know why we were so interested in welcoming him now, but we all tried, including my mom. At the time we felt a lot of shock and overwhelm in the moment but reflecting back on the situation so many years later I wonder if it was that he really felt our own uncertainty of him arriving into our life as well. Even though we tried to put on smiles and really did want to welcome him, I think he could see through us. In reality we weren’t as happy as we tried to seem. We had him over to the house and tried to make conversation but he was never very open to anything. My mom bought him shirts, clothes, and books she thought he might like. He would thank her but then he would tell my mom how much she looked like his mother and wondered why my dad married her instead. So things like that kind of kept us on guard. Even after we met him he didn’t live with us, he lived in a different town and would come visit once in a while but not very often. 

The last time I saw him was when I went to LaPaz when my son Ralph was born. I was in my room changing Ralph’s diapers when he showed up. He wanted to meet the baby and we chatted for a bit. I didn’t invite him to my wedding, I suppose maybe we should have. But anyway he came over to meet Ralph and we started talking and he was asking about my dad. He asked why he didn’t join the army and I told him that he had heart problems and wasn’t accepted because of it. He did work in factories making weapons and played his part that way. He responded “he probably didn’t go because he was a coward”. And oh man that made me SO angry! I said “Victor I want you to leave and I don’t want you to ever come back, you have no right to talk about my father that way.” So he left. Then that evening my dad asked if any of us had seen Victor and I didn’t say anything. It was just such a hard situation. I found out later that he said something similar to my brothers and they reacted more strongly than I did, so I never saw him again. When I was living in the United States I would hear updates of him coming to visit my sisters so I knew he was well. When my father died he immediately called and my sister ChiChi had a feeling he was going to see if my father left him anything, so instead she said “Oh Victor I am so glad you called, we are collecting money from family or anyone who would like to help so we can bury our father.” He hung up and we never heard from him again. So that is a chapter in my life that is kind of umm ‘gray-ish’ I would say.