What We Hide

In most families, it is the daughters that remain who care for their aging parents. A husband is a son until he takes a wife and so on. For us, it was different. Maybe because my father had taken a wife, and also a couple of girlfriends too… Anyway, he sure did take them but could not keep them because of that he forever remained my grandmother's son. My mom would probably roll her eyes and say that he was always a son first. Yet, right until the end of her life, my Abuela had her son, my dad, by her side. She had him and he had me, his only daughter. My brothers had not taken any wives but none were up for the task of helping my dad clean out all that our grandmother had left behind either. Her dying was generous in that it was slow enough for everyone to know it was coming. It was a gentle descending glide. First, the doctor's visits became more frequent, then more medication added to the already hard to keep track of daily doses. Next, more rushes to the emergency room and longer stays in the hospital after. Her illnesses were nothing dramatic, just old age.

For anyone of us to say we were unaware it was going to happen would have been an exercise in pure denial. No one could ever say that to my father, her youngest, her only boy, her Machito. I certainly, would never have told him, "Hey, you should have known." He lost the person who loved him most in the world. Every part of his soul she adored and made it known, he was her favorite. Can anything ever really prepare you for the vanishing of such adoration? No, the best I could do was be there, because although her death's timing was generous enough for some of our hearts, no one took the time to prepare for her leaving her home. I was there to ask what should be thrown away and to pay attention to about half of what he wanted to keep since they both had a penchant for hoarding.

How do you decide what is worthy to keep from a lifetime? Or at least the last ten years, since that's been how long she lived in that apartment with my father. There is another house full of her belongings in Puerto Rico which just thinking of sent shocks of anxiety through my body. I bet my brothers were gonna volunteer to go there! I was here, in The Bronx, coming to a sticky, cluttered 5th-floor walk-up every day during a humid NYC summer. Here, with my sad father; a sad dad, and an irritated daughter.

With every drawer, I cursed her for having so much stuff. The receipts, screws, nails, random instructions from appliances no one had anymore, and old school pictures of unrecognizable relatives. The most random artifacts from her life. Restaurant mints, she could barely swallow; when was the last time she went to a restaurant?! Fantasies of me turning the drawers upside down out the window were consuming me. Yet, I couldn't. Somewhere in this apartment, there were, ‘important papers’ like deeds, birth certificates, etc. Instead of filing them away in some kind of cabinet or banker's box, she preferred to keep them hidden. So, I was instructed to look through it all very carefully as there were legal documents still camouflaged as junk. She hid almost everything that meant something to her. But I couldn't be too mad at her; I was the same way. Worse was, I often forgot where I'd put my things. These treasures throughout the years have ranged from gumball machine prizes, rocks, love notes from crushes, and acceptance letters from colleges that my parents couldn't afford. In part, I understood this logic, of hiding what was valuable.

Though I understood it, every little item I touched and threw into the trash became more infuriating. Earlier that week, almost right after Abuela passed, they were all here, my family. They took what they wanted because we all knew she “put things away”, I am sure people found all of the loot already, definitely her best jewelry. Like all Puerto Rican men, my grandfather's love language was buying her gold. She had too much to wear at once; I am sure it's gone. Thoughts that everyone had raided the place and left me with the hardest tasks made the resentment for the rest of them grow even more. Them, my brothers, her daughters, my cousins, even my Dad, who was taking more breaks from cleaning than taking actual bags of garbage downstairs.

All of them were able to mourn her in peace and just left me with her little junk drawer memories. Instead of being envious, I decide to clean and concentrate on what I remember about her. She loved her plants, humming old trio music to herself, her lack of a filter when she'd tell my high school boyfriends they were too ugly for me. The good stuff. She was sweet when she wanted to be. When anyone would sneeze, she'd bless him or her and make a wish for him or her to win the lotto. Always offered food to visitors. She was great for celebrating birthdays and would get me to sneak her pieces of cake. In hindsight, knowing now she was a diabetic, a wave of guilt went through me. Oh well, she knew it too. What's done is done.

When I finished with the endless drawers of her bureau, her nightstand was next. At least, now there were only two small drawers as my eyes scan the nightstand, I notice the mountains of papers on top, another feeling of defeat. Also, how many bibles did this woman need? How many dog figurines and rosaries could a person have? Poking out of these piles were corners of English newspaper pages she could not even read. With anger burning in my chest and my shoulders tightening, it is best to just rest for a minute. Sitting on her bed, I softened. Her scent was lifting off the pillow. Oh, I can smell her hair. I lie my head down to inhale some more of her. Soon I was back, kissing her crepe-like cheek, looking into her cloudy eyes. During these kisses, she always grabbed my hand in hers and gave me a 20-dollar bill. Sometimes it was a couple. Those kisses were synonymous with giving her grandchildren money. That was her thing. Slipping 20's. There it was, more generosity. My father claimed he never knew where she kept it all. He'd cash my grandfather's pension checks and give the money to her. He only knew she was using it when my brothers or I reported she gave us something on our way out of their apartment. I don't know exactly why we always told him, I guess we figured he should know.

The huge tasks ahead were sobering and I could cry again later if I needed to. How can I keep weeping with her closet staring right at me? Ay, that closet, for she was a clotheshorse too! Lying on the dirty pillowcase I realize no one has changed my Abuela's sheets since she had been admitted into the hospital almost a whole month before. A month! Again, another tidal of irritation. I should be at the beach, with my friends, during our last summer together, not doing laundry! I snatched the pillow from under me, and there as I swung it out, bills; bills scattered onto the floor. Then, I was just counting. On the floor, no one had swept or mopped in weeks, amongst the crumbs she could never keep on her plate, I was counting: 100, 200, 300, 400 and on it went until there were small $1000 batches of 20-dollar bills spread all around me. On that filthy floor, 20 stacks.

"What was this? Was this her? Was it a 'thank you'? An ofrenda, her blessing? Or was it a test? Ugh, she was so sneaky! Something to share? I am not sure." I would write in my small black notebook later on that evening and stick it in under my mattress along with 20 little piles of important papers, so I would not forget.