Always On My Father's Mind

"He handed me a greeting card soiled with grease," my mother told me when I asked her how she met my father. They were blind dates in a bowling alley during the glory days of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and hair pomade. How they fell in love. She was charmed by his natural ways, my father smitten by her strong yet graceful gait. They became "Paquito and Lil" to their family and friends.

"He played basketball with his study notes in his back pocket when he was in law school," she said. "I was surprised when he passed the bar exams."

She never imagined the tough kind of life that came along with a husband who thought he was James Bond. Well maybe that was part of his charm that made my mother stay in love with him until the end.

By the time he retired in 1999, he was already in his seventies. The long and arduous battle he fought against corruption in our government had already taken its toll. 

They would have been married for 50 years had my mother waited a few more months before she died.  He was never the same again. All the memories of his once brave and active life had been erased by Alzheimer's disease, except for one.

"Who are you thinking of?" Ann Gabrielle asked her grandfather one day.

"Lil," he answered with a smile.