To love a father: Brief synopsis to my soon to be graphic novel

[Jacob-Estrada]

As a boy my father held me in his arms when I cried, and as I grew and we moved from place to place. He would pick me up and carry me on his shoulders. This was my father. this man was like a raging bull. Broad shoulders that took me from one place to another place when I was nothing more but a bumbling toddler. This man was my world, not to discount my mother or anything, but my father was my hero. He was the meaning of my world, this man with his red burnt skin, and his dark black hair with this insane laugh, and his twisted stories molded me.

Never did I have a dull moment with my father around. A lot of people by now know that I am a pretty bullheaded person that would fight for what I believe in, and to be honest I got this from my father. He always told me to be honest with my feelings and to never back down, if you believed someone was wrong, tell them. My father was a man of many words, and he told me many things. He was a wise man, a person with an infinity pool of internal knowledge of the world and his surroundings. Some people would look at my father as some sort of fool, yet that was far from the truth. He had a truly high IQ, even for a person that only completed the 9th grade.

Unlike myself or my other siblings, who had the privilege of completing high school, my father had to go to work on the finca, and later move to NYC to get work to help maintain his families well being.

My father started at an early age, tolling away at hard labor, never profiting anything for himself. He’d earn a pay check, and turn it right over to his parents. Later he would marry, and start a family, and hand the check over to his first wife. Yes I said first wife. My father was not a perfect man, nor will I ever say that. Yet he had problems with his first wife, and he would later divorce her.

To eventually meet and marry my mother, but there was one thing about my father, he kept in contact with his first wife and he would always take me to her house. She was like a second mother to me in some ways. She would always treat me with great respect and my father would always talk to her, hug her and kiss her.

My father did love her, yet more like a kindred spirit. The relationships my father would hold with people were really truly interesting. If he didn’t like a person he’d tell them. if he had to tell you off, he would, but he would do it in such a way with a play of words that you would just go batty with pure insanity.

He’d basically crush you, in either English which was perfect, or his delicate Spanish. You’d know when he was coming. This man, this iron man.

I put my father on a pedestal. This was a man I always wanted to be just like. A person I wanted to mimic. There was a lot to live up to. I tried to be the perfect carpenter/farmer/mechanic/singer my father was. Yet I failed miserably. I didn’t even learn to speak proper English or Spanish. Heck I was put into special education courses because of my slow manner and behavior. This bothered me growing up at some intervals of my life. When I was close to graduating high school I spoke with my father telling him I would never be like him. That I always wanted to be like him, and all he could do was laugh and hug me.

He sat me down and told me. That he was proud of me whatever I did, and that I didn’t have to worry about being like him. He said I came from another generation, that I was privileged and that I should take advantage of going to college. Yet what truly hit me was when he told me,

“You my son. You will travel far, my tall son, but I will never be far from you even in the event of my own death. You will use the knowledge I taught you and make it your own strength, and teach the world what you have learned. Let it be a book, or a drawing. You will see me as the man I am through your simple eyes, as your life will be the life I dreamed for you, and I will set you on that path of creativity and dreams. In the end Jacob you will become me, through great work and knowledge. Sure we both will have led different lives, have completed many different tasks, but you will be the same man as I am, an honest man, and if you ever face something that is to hard. Remember your old papa, and always be true to yourself and to those around yourself because in the end, all we have son is our own honesty and our own truth. In the end you will be me, and I will be you. The son and the father will be one!”

I remember those words. Like there from some sort of cruel and twisted movie quote. Yet in every context these were my fathers’ words. He was such a humble man. I thought to myself. How could me Jacob J. Estrada ever me my father. Yet as I went to college. I overcame many struggles. I took these lessons as stepping stones, and as I progressed in this life. I weathered the storm to become the man I am today. Not that this man is a great man, not by a long shot. There are still many things I need to learn, and my journey is far from done, but without my father setting me right, allowing me to be who I was, holding me when I was sick, when I couldn’t walk.

Just for the sheer fact that I had 28 years with this man, and he allowed me to fly high in the sky makes me smile.

Yes a part of me is broken for the fact that he is gone. Yet always I will think back to my father whom in the end was so right.

You see in the end I was there with my father. He was right there on my mind. I held my father when he was sick, when the cancer ate away at him. I was there for him to the very end of his life. I lifted him and carried him like he did me when I was a child, and when I did that it occurred to me that my father was right so many years ago, and here I was. I was doing for him what he did for me.

I would go everyday to his house that last month, draw beside my father. I was in the midst of drawing Bocas 5, whom my father always contributed ideas to the book. Well as I drew those final pages for that book my father was growing weaker.

I made him breakfast. I helped him get dressed some. I walked with him, we went shopping together. In the end I even carried him to bed, before the illness consumed him completely. No one realizes how much I did for my father that very last month, and to see this youthful man slowly erode into this gray shadow was heartbreaking. Yet he never fluttered. He just pushed forth and fought for his life, even if there fleeting last minutes.

He never gave up, he lived his life the way he always did. Before he passed. I sat with him. I asked him what he wanted me to do for him when he died. He told me what he wanted, he told me how he wanted it, and he said that it would be a riot. I had to ask my father over and over if he was serious, and he certainly was.

You see my father also was a prankster, something I grew accustomed too. In the end I did what he asked. My father was right to that it would cause a riot within the family, and it seems that so many people didn’t understand my fathers’ wishes, nor did they like them. They would just go and believe that I took control and did it my way.

An anger in me grew. Being I was now like my father, that forceful anger, with sharp twisted words grew. I attacked everyone that dared step on my fathers final wishes. I lost many nights due to this, and lost much respect for people I once loved and I am sure the feelings are mutual.

However, they can’t say anything to me that can hurt me. I am my father. Because of my father I have an Associates degree in multimedia design/ bachelors in Graphic Design and a minor in history.

Plus I am something of a carpenter and I see I do have a green thumb too. As the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The end for now!