What we wanted from the second visit to the urologist was a tube camera surprise reveal of a Cracker Jack toy mucking things up inside my Dad's bladder, with its rapid removal, a pat on his back, and a release note saying he could go home and enjoy the next ten years of his life.
What we got was the laparoscope showing nothing wrong, which meant Dad's impassibly enlarged prostate had already taken its toll on his bladder's muscles, stretching it out to the point where it no longer functions, which leaves us with three options:
1. Wear a Foley cathether up your dick for the rest of your life, at the risk of your dementia forgetting what it is every fifteen minutes, and just yanking it out to cause injurious bleeding and risk of infection on top of the usual risk of infection for just having one up in there.
2. Surgery for a suprapublic catheter through the bladder wall for less discomfort, but still run the exact same risks of yanking it out and infection, with the all risks of surgery on top of that.
3. Remove the catheter altogether, let the bladder fill up until the kidneys toxify & fail, and let my Dad mercifully go.
Fuck you, medical science. You're still fraught with barbaric inadequacies, semi-educated too-late guesswork, and certain failure. Fuck. You.
Now it's just a matter of waiting, and while waiting I'm going to write this eulogy:
“Wealth dies. Friends die. One day you too will die. But, the thing that never dies is the judgement on how you have spent your life.”
― Hávamál, stanza 75 - The Sayings of Odin, The High One
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| [Dad was a Boy Scout.] |
William Maytorena Jr was a simple man with simple pleasures. All he needed to be happy was a good comedy film, ice cream, or a bag of hot chicharrónes in one hand and a beer in the other. When I was a kid, I'd ride along with him every week to stop at Nana Mercy's to pick up a little blue enameled speckled olla of his mom's magic beans. Those beans were home in a pot to him.
Beyond this core of winning simplicity, he explored other things. After he got his first & only awesome rack stereo from Gemco, I would rouse in the middle of the night and find him awake well past midnights, sitting on the floor, listening to classical music on KUAT, fingers paused over the cassette deck's recording button to capture some timeless piece of Beethoven, Mozart, Hayden, or Tchaikovsky, a normal bias tape locked & loaded, pencil hovering over the liner notes. He'd compile nearly a hundred of these tapes, even branching out into some jazz selections, fostering a deeper appreciation for these genres, growing & broadening his artistic points of reference. The late night passion was inspiring, and I think I was the only one to ever see it in action.
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| [First date at the Tucson Hotel, 1968. Que suave!] |
This broadness had its roots: The story goes that Bill was headed off to be a priest, and to safeguard this divine vocation he installed a strict three-date rule with the girls he saw -- but he went on a fateful fourth date with his Maria Elena, my mom, and here I am talking to you about not just another reclusive church father, but my father who chose to embrace right action in the broader secular world, and the reward of a loving wife along with it.
In the marriage, he was the more relaxed partner by far, and he knew when to leave the room when the yelling got louder than the sense. His patience, tolerance, and forgiveness were a saintly inheritance from his properly named mother Mercy. In retrospect, Dad tolerated alot of my gifted childhood arrogance, 1980s sarcasm, unnecessary teen attitude, and sophomoric overconfidence in a graceful fashion. He rocked, as fathers go, way more than I knew at the time.
On off days my Mom would call him useless around the house, and sometimes that was actually true. He never taught me to use his tools, not because he hadn't the time, but because he was hiding the fact that he secretly didn't know how to use them himself. A hammer & some duct tape would often mickey mouse it when it probably shouldn't have. But Gods bless him, he would try, which nowadays is surely more than most husbands.
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[Dad & Mom loved to dance. It was one of their things. 1986.]
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As a family, we had the privilege of travelling alot, and Dad helped show me the value of travel, of fearlessly going over the horizon to see the world in a broader sense. One summer off in my childhood, we hit 26 states, and he was the driver of impossible distances, getting us safely to all the places we enjoyed together pre-GPS. One year we went to D.C. There was a day where Mom was sick and stayed at the hotel. Dad & I got out of the room, and we figured out the city's Metro, and found a Chinese restaurant for lunch. The food was nothing special, but it tasted special to me because it was the first time I really appreciated Chinese food, and that was specifically because of my Dad's company that afternoon, a memory I'll always carry with me.
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| [Dad always used a double sided yellow comb/brush combo for his hair, and favoured wearing guayaberas of various light colours. He was fairly meticulous about shining his shoes, too. With Mom & I, 1985, at my junior high school graduation.] |
Emotionally he showed calm stoicism in the face of a false heart attack, my three scorpion stings, and other maladies that would send normal people into a panic. Perhaps this was military training from the Air National Guard, or let-god prayering from the seminary, but he had faith that things would work out in such situations one way or another.
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| [Looking good in that guayabera at some event, 1981.] |
For years, I didn't get what my Dad did for a living until one day after middle school I sat in his office at the Crippled Childrens' Clinic on Broadway. A weird looking kid who had something wrong with him took a moment to give me the elevator speech to explain his hydrocephalus, about how he would die if my father didn't arrange regular appointments to get his head drained, and find medical coverage to cover the exceptional costs of that. My Dad saved children, he saved families, he saved lives. What he did was that important. It took emotional fortitude & undefeatable optimism.
My Dad knew everybody because he would talk to anybody. He was socially fearless like that. Someone in any store checkout line everywhere knew him, which also meant leaving took an extra 20 minutes. And he'd always talk to babies or toddlers, making that strange elephantine noise with his compressed lips that always got their attention. I repeatedly suggested he should run for mayor, but he was too good a man for politics, and he knew it. At work he'd wear this completely ridiculous sculptured Mickey Mouse head watch with a mouth that moved and spoke the time. He wore it at the cost of any personal dignity because the kids he had appointments with loved it, and the spectacle of it saying the time allowed him to finish talks with their parents, who we're appreciative of this clever ruse.
Sometimes he'd uncharacteristically call himself a "rabble rouser", usually referencing his early days marching with Chicano activists & organizing the brown citizens to get El Rio Community Health Center built in the first place. After this feat he worked there for decades until they forgot who helped get them built & they laid him off.
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| [Dad doing his daily legwork on the telephone at El Rio. 1974.] |
After that, he got an awful job at Child Protective Services working for the county, which was too many cases for any one man, but he soldiered through it better than most. One afternoon I happened to be in the car when he decided he was near enough to a case for a home check. He drove our humble VW bus up this driveway, and he suddenly stopped. "You see that dish?", he said, pointing at the two thousand dollar huge saucer currently following an invisible satellite in orbit. "These people are getting money from us because they told us their kid needed it. They don't if they spend that much on TV. You wait here." He got down, adjusted his belt like a gunfighter, and went inside to have some hard words that the parents in there needed to get told. He didn't shirk that kind of confrontation when it needed doing. He was brave & honest like that.
The trouble started when Dad fell into a hole. There was a dwarf lemon tree at the new house that needed planting and he was moving some rocks in a wheelbarrow past the hole for the tree when the load unbalanced, and he fell in. His back was never the same, and he would never stand straight or tall again. Suddenly looking at the view from a few inches less and down at your feet has to change you, and damaging falls when you're older change you. The memory issues began sooner than later, and, unlike alot of people who get angry, violent, or depressed, Dad didn't fall into those emotional holes. He kept his sense of humour in the face of dementia with Lewy bodies & Parkinsonism because, under the shuffling, bent form he now appeared to be, Dad had the strength of character to remain the man he was: Funny. Lovable. Winning. He flirted with a nurse near the end. "You have pretty eyes," he said like the old smoothie he always was.
One night while at St Mary's Hospital for one of series of medical issues, he raised up his arms and "called a meeting". He told me to be quiet while he talked. For the next hour and a half he elaborated to Michelle & I a plan to take over the city. He called it "The Working Joes' Plan". Tucson would be divided into sectors, each ruled by a "working joe" to keep the people in line and see to their needs. These everymen would meet with him for updates, and he would problem solve with them, and personally see to the defense & control of all Tucson. There was to be a train with orphans & needy children who would be transported, fed, clothed, & cared for somewhere in there. And when he stopped speaking, we were amused, and more than that, amazed.
You see, this 81-year-old's plan was a metaphor for control of the world he could no longer neurologically understand. Mom would by habit put on the news, and on some level he saw things spinning out of control. Against this he came up with his plan for Tucson, the city whose people he loved and cared about all his life, an ultimate plan for municipal succession & protection of the city he grew up in, to safeguard it from rampant criminal elements within and political-economic forces without. Bill Maytorena would wear an iron crown and a velvet gauntlet. His heart was so large, he would've taken care of it all, for us, for you.
“Cattle die, kinsmen die, you yourself must also die, but he who wins word fame lives forever.”
― Hávamál, stanza 76 - The Sayings of Odin, The High One
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| [Dad's hesitantly humble grin in front of the room at El Rio that bears his name on the plaque behind him.] |
Myself aside, an attentive wife, the countless children he saved & helped, and a room at El Rio Clinic named after him, his legacy is how much he cared & worked at caring with successful results. That was the grandeur of his life, besides knowing how to appreciate creature comforts, laughter, simple times, and priceless moments.
I know you people here won't forget Bill Maytorena Jr. As long as you tell his story and carry forward his nobility, he will be alive, and we will always be better people for knowing him. And he'd want you to have a good time at this thing, so go live it up for him today, and for the rest of your life, with his spirit in mind.
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Addenda: A few nights after writing this, my father shushed everyone in the room, asked if "the papers to leave were in order", kissed us on the hands, told us goodbye, and closed his eyes. We thought that was it. My aunts showed up with a priest at my mother's request the next morning, who administered last rites, but my Dad was none too pleased to see him, spat out the host, and grabbed his bowl of oatmeal from his caretaker and fed himself breakfast for a change. There's fight in my old man yet.
Since then we've spent time together playing Crazy Eights, drinking fancy strong beers, and watching some Northern Exposure, which has been priceless because it's all something we both love. Still, I know the other shoe's going to drop, and he's going to swing the other way sooner than later, and die. Mentally, I accept that. Emotionally, I'm going to be a fucking trainwreck, but I'm glad I took the time to write the above so I'll have the right thing to say when that time comes, and "word fame" to give him so he will live forever through those words. Until then, my Dad'll still be beating me at cards, and I'm grateful for every hand he can still deal.
I love you, Dad. This is for you.
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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.
