To Grandpa

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Your name was Roberto Mosqueda (mo-skeh-duh), but I just called you “grandpa.” I didn’t call you “Grandpa Robert” really, because I didn’t have any other grandfather; my mom’s dad died of a sudden heart attack when she was in her teens, so you are the only grandpa I ever knew (not counting great-grandparents). You were enough for two or three, which is why I’m writing this. The other day would have been your birthday, and I’ve been thinking about you lately, especially after reading this post by Kim…it described so many things about you to a tee. I never heard you complain about anything. Ever. You had so much pride, it sometimes worked against you–you often needed help and refused to ask–but you wouldn’t have it any other way.

People think it’s really cool that your dad actually was a gunrunner who ran with Gregorio Cortez around the time of the Mexican Revolution (1910). Being one of your older siblings, you actually remember your dad sleeping with a gun under his pillow, never knowing who was going to come by the house and exact some sort of revenge. How my life might have been different if things continued down this path for you, but “Papa Juan” miraculously found Jesus and renounced his criminal ways, concentrating on his family and building his future church, eventually becoming a Baptist minister. Like Saul on his way to Damascus, your dad’s life was changed instantly. I thank God that this is the man you grew up with, because I know that’s what forged you to be the upstanding man I always knew.

You faked your papers to go to World War II a year before you were legally able as many other brave classmates of yours did. It was a time when fighting for your country meant both the honor of potentially making the supreme sacrifice and knowing it was an enemy that presented a clear and present danger. You didn’t want to go into the infantry, you elected instead to join the more elite paratroopers, dropped into harms way where it was too dangerous to go in by normal means. You didn’t have the benefit of infrared goggles and other modern devices to allow for night-time jumps; jumping from a plane meant becoming a slow-moving aerial target for the enemy before you could land and finish your objective. One ill-fated day in 1942, the spray of artillery over some part of the Japanese islands was your welcoming committee and a deadly course of tuberculosis your final souvenir from the Land of the Rising Sun.

It still amazes me an Army hospital here in the US actually removed your entire left lung. I would think given the complications of TB in the 1940s, wartime medicine and its often inherent lack of resources, it would have been a more dismal assessment and plan. Perhaps God sent you a female surgeon (that’s right ladies–in 1942, a totally in-charge cardiothoracic surgeon) who felt that she had more to prove–I don’t care, I’m just glad you survived. It amazes me still that you lived as long as you did without it, to the point where I didn’t even know any of this until shortly before you passed away.

That’s because you never complained, you never had anything negative to say about a given situation. If really provoked, you could get angry, but it was very short lived and probably well-deserved. I couldn’t image a person ever having anything negative to say about you. In my eagerness to learn about World War II, I never forget an afternoon on day at your house. I was asking question after question. It was a subject you didn’t seem to want to talk about, but as always, you indulged me. Like a kid given an inch and trying to take a mile, I was probably tiring you with questions, but your reaction when I mentioned if you had seen the atomic blast at Hiroshima never left me. Your look of mild indulgence left, your eyes got glassy and intense, you looked at me while putting your hand on my shoulder and said, “Son, you don’t want to know what war looks like. There’s metal twisted every which way, and what the people look like afterwards are worse. I pray you never have to see what I saw.” And with that, you left somberly down the hall. I was young but I had enough sense to leave you alone at that point. Later, I’d know that you wasn’t there for the A-bombs; you were recounting what you saw with conventional warfare. And that was bad enough.

In high school, I worked a couple of summers at your gasoline station. You worked many years as an auditor for a gas company but saved money throughout the years and eventually bought your own filling station. Times were rough with artificially low gas prices (imagine!) but it didn’t matter–you always had regular customers because you were the kind of man you were. In spite of being a self-serve station, you always offered to pump gas for the ladies, young or old, to which they usually gratefully accepted. To this day, I don’t feel right having my wife or mother pump gas or do other “dirty” chores if I can do it myself. It wasn’t a twisted, anti-feminist thing then to be chivalrous, and I’m glad I was raised as such.

Later, once I was already in college and old enough to know what was really going on, doctors at the VA in San Antonio said you had a diseased heart valve and needed surgery. You made a decision that forever defined you in my eyes–we talked when you got home, and recounted what you had said: “Thanks doc, but I don’t want to die on the operating table. God already gave me my second chance at life 50 years ago, and I’ve tried to make the most of it ever since. If I’m going to go, it’s going to be in my bed or in my home, with my family,” and that was that. There was no changing your mind. You said you were in no hurry to go of course, and you did your best to make the necessary changes the doctors told you, but I never told you how strangely at peace I was with your decision, even though it might have meant prematurely losing my only grandpa on any given day. You showed me dignity, courage, and most of all, gratitude for having a life so blessed. Even today, I can’t imagine being in a state of that kind of sincere peace.

True to your stubborn nature (said with love, of course), you lasted almost 10 more years, more than any VA doctor could have imagined. It was easy just assuming that you’d be with us for a long time at this point. I was visiting at home one time when we got a phone call from grandma saying you had fallen in the bathroom and needed help getting up. Dad and I rushed over and helped you up, and even then you were insistent on trying to do it yourself. The jerky movments you were making with your arms were not unlike the shakes you had all your life made slightly worse by a stroke 12 years earlier, but now they were scary in their uncontrollable intensity. Your shallow, labored breathing was worrisome, but I was more concerned about trauma to your head or body from having fallen in the bathroom. Paramedics arrived quickly to rush you to the hospital, me following quickly behind while Grandma gathered your things to arrive later. I stayed with you in the ER for several hours, changing shifts with others since only one person could be with you at a time. You tried talking to me several times, but each time I kept shushing you, telling you save your strength and get some rest–a precious commodity not likely passed over with all the noises of an ER and when three of your four walls are made of cloth.

How stupid I was not to let you talk, not to try to tell you everything I could possibly think of for those few hours when you still had full consciousness. You were in and out in the coming days, but the ER was the last time I was with you when you could actually speak–before the NG tube, before the bipap, before any number of polyethylene invaders. The one last lucid moment I shared with you, you needed help after a BM. I called for the nurse assistant to come attend to you where I’d always leave the room to give you privacy. I looked over at your strained face and saw a tear. I reached over, grasped your hand, and said, “Don’t be embarassed grandpa. You’re just too sick to get up right now. This isn’t like you, and you know it. When you get better, you’ll be back watering your grass, trimming your hedges and all that. This is just temporary.” You didn’t really want to look at me, and I wondered if you could even understand what I was saying.

Then it hit me: “This is a proud man,” I told myself. “A very proud man. It’s not enough to give him platitudes; he deserves better from me, my sincere honesty.” Instinctively, I came closer to you and said, “I don’t think any less of you because you can’t take care of yourself. I’m very proud of you, everthing you’ve gone through, how you are handling this right now. I know this is hard, especially for you.” You squeezed your eyes shut and nodded your head softly, but no more tears came. I reminded you my wedding was coming up and that you had to get well for that, too.

That was our last exchange, you and I, though other family members had their own in the next couple of days before you passed away quietly in your sleep one morning before dawn. Your remaining lung–”Old Reliable”–finally succumbed to the pneumonia, your ailing heart too weak to compensate. I know it didn’t happen the way you would have scripted it–quietly in bed or with a garden hose in your hand outside on a crisp, sunny day–but no one can argue that you didn’t pass away on your own terms, with your family always by your side. You got almost 50 years after a lung removal in WWII, 12 years after a stroke, and 6 or so years after a cardiac surgeon said “well it could be anytime, really.” As your friend and next-door neighbor once told you, “I’d rather have your luck than a license to steal.” How true.

So Happy Birthday, Grandpa. You missed my wedding and you missed having the chance to be called great-grandpa, but I know you’ve seen it all already from your new vantage point. As of last year, each of your grandchildren now has a college degree. One of us is already a doctor, with me on the way. You helped, in your own way, make these accomplishments possible for all of us.

Oh, and speaking of your new home, I could use some of that peace, that comfort, that joy that you now bask in. If you could send some down, I’d sure appreciate it. Until you figure that out, I’ll just look at your life, the example you showed, and the legacy you left behind–I’ll follow that and be just fine. I love you.

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  By claudia, August 11, 2006 @ 5:26 pm

  He was a great man. He left a great legcy in you and your cousins.
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  By Sid Schwab, August 11, 2006 @ 7:09 pm

  Lots of people, myself included, realized the special value of grandparents after it was too late. Sounds like you are an exception. You recognized and were able to partake of the wisdom of a great man.
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  By enrico, August 11, 2006 @ 7:32 pm

  Claudia: He didn’t make our wedding, but he spent a good deal of time with you and passed happy knowing that I finally found someone that was coerced agreed to marry me…
  Dr. Schwab: I could never imagine my life without them. They are more like parents from a distance, less concerned with the details, more concerned with the big picture. ( Now I’m the parent…yeesh…)
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  By Kim, August 11, 2006 @ 11:18 pm

  A great man, a great American, a man with a trust in God that you don’t often see anymore…

  And a handsome man, to top it all off!

  This was a teary post here, let me tell you. When you leaned over and told him you didn’t think less of him because he was sick – that was the best thing in the whole post. He obviously needed to hear that from someone, and to hear if from you was very important.

  Wonderful, wonderful post. I feel like I knew him! And I’m glad…..
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  By Nyomi, August 14, 2006 @ 2:19 am

  What a beautiful biography, it certainly brought a tear to my eyes. I remember him very fondly (and the rest of your famliy too).
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  By Allen, June 22, 2007 @ 4:29 pm

  Do you know if there is a website to check on the medical license of doctors in Mexico?

  Thank you

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