Jose Odeceo Torres was buried March 24, 2001. I talked at his funeral. But there is more to the story than his last days. There is more to his life than fighting cancer and suffering and dying a long slow death. Once he was a small boy, he grew to be a wild strong young man with hopes and dreams, he battled the world and himself, and finally he grew calmer and wiser with age. Life weathered him as sure as water and wind erode the granite mountains. Life’s lessons smoothed out rough edges, etched wrinkles in his face, and calloused his hands.
He was a man, he had a name, many called him Uncle Joe, and he had a few nicknames and titles that described some of his other duties. Husband, Father, Brother, Grand-Father and Friend. None of these captured all of him, but each provided insight to some part of him.
To his wife of 65 years, he was Choongee. It was an endearing name, but when I quizzed her down, she agreed that she wasn’t sure how to spell it, but ensured me it was a tender term; but in the same way that a grandparent might call a dear child, “You are such a cute little shit.” Even writing it makes it sound less endearing, but clearly the inflection and love in the eyes of the beholder has to be taken into account, we will leave that to the reader’s imagination.
My Aunt Maggie, my mother’s older sister gave him a birthday card that probably best described him. “Jack of all trades. Master of none!” She and my mom cackled and laughed for hours about that card. Aunt Maggie was his friendly nemesis because she always sided with my mother. Sometimes, sisters have that bond, “sisters forever”. My mother was blessed to have Aunt Fora and Aunt Maggie living in the same town, working in the same hospital, and helping raise each other’s kids and grandkids. Back then, family was broader and deeper and included some kids that were not even blood related. The term extended family hadn’t been invented yet. Then it was just family.
My dad was a mechanic, a carpenter, electrician, fence builder, a welder, an inventor, a master tinkerer. He was like MacGyver; however, his ingenuity was born of necessity and poverty. It wasn’t until much later in life after I had become an engineer and had built a few houses and restored an old classic car, worked on tractors and assorted appliances or things that had engines did I really come to appreciate what a brilliant inventor he was. He could make broken things work; cobbling bits and pieces together until it sprang to life. Cough, sputter, smoke but sure enough it started. He could fix anything, except his own life.
All these titles he carried with him to the next world…grateful, to have something so valuable to show for his time here on earth. He sure wasn’t trying to haul a box full of gold with him. His treasure box would be of memories and stories about great hunts and narrow escapes from death.
Grandpa Joe taught me many things in life, some were hard lessons, taught to me by the harsh teacher of bad example, uncontrolled passions, and demons of a confused heart and mind. The demons he faced were as dark, dangerous, and as deadly as the places he worked and the jobs he held as Uranium Miner, Coal Miner, and Fence Builder.
He tried his best to teach me practical stuff, like how to maintain a car, or use a cheater bar with a pipe wrench, how to adjust the gaps on sparkplugs, and how to dig a hole in hard dirt with water, patience, and a shovel. He worked hard but he liked working smarter. And, when it came to pounding t-posts for a fence he preferred a 15-pound t-post pounder; nobody could keep up with him, although many grandsons tried. And he had the muscles to prove it. He was always boasting about his slim thirty-inch waist and his biceps that he could flex like a bodybuilder. Every grandson made a pilgrimage to his kitchen table to try and arm-wrestle him; none succeeded in pinning his hand to the table.
Some lessons were delivered with compassion, kindness, and patience. Each lesson was valued. People were drawn to him as was evident from the number of people that gathered when we laid him to rest. He taught us to celebrate living and hard work. His garage was his therapy office and work his remedy for most any ailment. Don’t let the demons sit around too long, they start talking and pretty soon the screaming in your head synchronizes with your beating heart and the madness dims the light and your sense of direction is lost.
He passed on to us an errant gene that makes individuals in our family stronger than we sometimes should be…it makes us stubborn and inflexible. The two-edge sword of independence slices all relationships in life. Now, I believe he would counsel us to be wary the man or woman that cannot ask for help, show love, or say I’m sorry or thank you. Lately, much of his energy was used to show us how to defy death, how to fight the Government, how to endure to the end.
The chronicle of his death, his fight with cancer, his sad but true story was picked up by the Denver Rocky Mountain News, the Albuquerque Paper, the Chicago Paper, the New York Times, and of course…The San Juan Record. Pretty good press coverage for a small Mexican man with an 8th grade education and not a nickel to his name.
I cannot explain his incredible will to live…but he seemed to want to test the resolve of the cancer that ravaged his body. He wanted to make sure…that in fact it was indeed his time to go. He died on a Wednesday afternoon, at 2:31 p.m. As he breathed his last breathe we all felt the weight lifted off our chest and we could breathe again. It was hard to watch him suffer, we knew he didn’t want to be a burden to his family, he didn’t want to be tethered to a bed or to an oxygen bottle.
The last days were painful for him and us. It is hard to watch someone you love hurt so much. Eventually, he was numbed by morphine, which too was sad. But, when he passed on, peace was restored and although we were sad, and it broke our hearts to lose him…we were grateful that the suffering had ended. Just before he died, we gathered around him in prayer. We wanted him to know that he was surrounded by love…his dear sweet wife was holding his hand. We laid our hands upon his head and gave him a final blessing.
We plead with our Father in Heaven, if it was His will, that our dad be allowed to pass on to our Lord’s eternal care and keeping. Within minutes, he took his last breath, and a calmness settled upon the room…and we all knew…that indeed closing the door on this world…had opened the door on a new world, where his son Nick, his granddaughter Taunalee and many others were there to welcome him.
The Book of Life is written in the hearts of men with gentle strokes of love and sometimes deep cuts of pain. The heart is the only tablet that can be written on for eternity. His Father-in-Heaven came to welcome him home and embrace him with the light and love only God can give to the imperfect and unfinished souls that struggle with addictions. Grandpa Joe’s body could rest…and his spirit was set free. We hoped that his mind could find rest and peace.
Now he is in our thoughts and in our hearts. I am writing this now many years later because you can’t write about things honestly when you are in the middle of them. I would like to share what I remember about my dad, Grandpa Joe. He loved a good story and he and Uncle Cosme would tell us stories, myths, tall tales, adventures and sometimes outright lies in the early mornings drinking coffee at the kitchen table. The stories and tall tales were Torres family lore.
He didn’t want to die. He loved life, always was cooking up some kind of adventure or contraption to build. He would rather be out cutting a load of wood in the mountains, tinkering in his garage, or hunting. Doing more of the same is sometimes all there is to life. There is comfort in familiar territory. Monks chant their mantra, my grandma Garcia would pray and finger each bead of the rosary asking God to save us from ourselves. My dad would work, that was his mantra, that was his way of finding peace.
It has been my observation that people spend a great deal of time doing the same thing every day. My mother found a great deal of solace in making tortillas. She would knead the masa and sprinkle a little more flour and roll it into a ball and let it set for a few minutes before she would use the rodillo to roll them out into round thin tortillas to be cooked on a cast iron grill. When she was mad, she made tortillas, when she was happy and surrounded by her family she made tortillas. Nothing could be better than a hot tortilla with butter lathered over it and the smell of chili cooking.
Grandpa Joe, did not step inside a church very often but it wasn’t because he wasn’t spiritual. After he left home as a young teenager his formal religious training was over, but life’s battles were just starting. He had real life experiences, with pain and sorrow and laughter and love. He talked about Mi Tata Dios, which loosely translated is his Heavenly Father. And I know in my heart that he had a personal relationship with God. Based on his spicy vocabulary, he apparently had spent some time with the devil too, although, he swore mostly to describe things as easily as you and I might call something blue or red. If he was real angry, mad, or hurt he didn’t say much of anything until the bottle of whiskey unleashed the torment on a mad man like dogs chasing a bear.
He had an uncanny ability to see into a man’s heart and judge his character by how well he maintained his tools. This sixth sense was similar to those of our faithful dogs Sniffy and Shorty who deserve acknowledgement as part of our family saga. Dogs can immediately spot a fake or a danger to the family…so could dad.
My dad had a deep conviction of God…but still kept his lessons grounded in things that his hands could work on. To see him sharpen, fix, and use a chain saw…was to see a craftsman at work and was a thing of beauty. It was religious rhythm…his mantra that he could repeat to help make sense of a world that moved too fast for him and left him floating out of control in a seemingly incongruous universe where the earth was flat, or the sun rotated around the world. He would slide the file through the chain in rhythm, his time in the garage gave him time to think over problems he couldn’t understand…to help him prepare for battle against the dragons in his head.
He was a modern-day Don Quixote de La Mancha, his tilting windmills were real imaginary enemies. These demons were like a genie coming out of a bottle or the goblins of Dante’s hell, but the life blood of my dad’s enemies came from a cheap Thunderbird bottle with 17.5% alcohol that he could afford. That is what let the genie escape from the bottle was red cheap wine. It was always difficult to get the genie back in the bottle. The genie was wily and never went in without a fight, wailing and gnashing of teeth, and screams and howls of the tortured.
From all these hours taking care of his tools he developed his own set of 10 Commandments: The first and greatest commandment is “Thou shalt not leave the truck empty of gas”…and the second great commandment is liken-unto-it….”thou shalt not ever let the oil get low on any piece of machinery.” There was hardly a time when I would return from college that he wouldn’t go out and check the oil in my car. As he grew older, time…the ever-patient teacher, softened his views, gave him insight, and healed many wounds…so he modified his commandments as he grew older and wiser. “Thou shalt bring grandpa a treat…frequently…and come by to visit daily.” He had a sweet tooth and loved company. Both, at the same time was a temporary elixir that quieted the baying hounds.
If for some reason you didn’t stop by and visit…you were certain to hear about it when you finally showed up. It was his way of letting you know that he loved and missed you. He frequently called to invite us to breakfast, although, it was grandma that did all the cooking.
Another commandment, “Thou shalt never waste meat of any kind. You shoot it. You better eat it.” Along this line is where perhaps he showed his greatest dexterity of logic. Somehow, he believed that it was reasonable to bring home as many deer as possible on one deer tag. Mom would get after him when he would bring home extra deer, but he would always slyly say that his tag was still good. Which of course it was, because he was using mom’s deer tag to haul the deer to town with.
As a kid I don’t recall being as fond of this next commandment as much as I am now as a parent “Thou shalt work from sun up to sun set and never want to take breaks or vacation and receiving minimum pay should be adequate for anyone less than eighteen and you should just be grateful that you can work.” Now that I am old enough to have raised teenagers this all sounds like sage advice straight out of Psalms or Isaiah. Back then, I called it slave labor, or indentured servitude.
Of course, this was modified as he got older. Soon it became a requirement that any job he bid on would not interfere with his afternoon nap. There were other commandments…too many to discuss now…but there was a charm about him that let him get away with things that perhaps he shouldn’t have: For example, making coffee in your underwear is acceptable at 4:30 a.m. with the blinds wide open. Each morning my uncle Cosme would walk over to our house and over the years it almost seemed like a contest between him and Cosme; who could get up earlier.
Cosme would start on his walk before it was light, him and his little dog. Dad would wake up and put the coffee on and wait for him to get there so they could discuss the weather and the aches and pains of growing older…and other things they could do nothing about. I learned that visitors were always to be put to work to help feel at home.
Luck, some people have it some don’t! Grandpa Joe always had it. Hunting and fishing always seemed to go his way. And on top of that, he would always quit once he had the biggest deer, fattest rabbit, or prettiest or biggest fish. However, his rules changed; they were as hard as steel and as flexible as noodles. If he didn’t catch the biggest fish, he was sure to have caught the prettiest or tastiest.
Chili, tortillas, beans, potatoes, and fresh venison are all anyone needs to live. Everything else is extra. Perhaps one of the most endearing things was his sense of humor. With his family and friends, he would lend his insight with acidic one-liners, or he would mimic peoples’ voices and mannerisms that would frequently get the entire family chuckling and laughing.
His garage was like a therapy office for him and the continual stream of friends and visitors coming to visit; some to complain, some for help, some to borrow tools or some just to hide from their wife. I finally figured out we were part of an underground railroad where Mexicans from Mexico would stop by and ask for five dollars or have him work on their truck. They were always welcome, and they were almost certain to be put to work and get on their way or go home dirtier and happier. He believed that no problems were so big that hard work would not fix them. I truly believe with enough time; he would have found a way to beat his cancer.
His ability to make things work or will them into working was astounding. He loved to fix things. If things were not broken, he would enhance them. Once an educated engineer upon looking at one of his contraptions that he had created from excess hardware out of his garage told him, “Joe…that is not the way it goes, it almost defies the laws of physics…but it works!” His great and final validation that what he created had value and worth was when he would sell his invention to someone. That was proof in his world that in fact he was the genius that he thought he was.
I cannot begin to explain in words…all that I felt in my heart when he was dying. I was conflicted for sure. I gave him a picture of Christ as a reminder of the comfort that God gives to each of us and the suffering that He went through for each of us. I tried to explain to him my view that God knows us personally, He knows that we get scared, He knows that you don’t want to leave your family, He knows that it hurts, He knows and cares and loves each of us. He knows and perfectly understands our pain.
Indeed, to know that Jesus Christ trembled and was scared as he took upon him the sins of the world and said, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me, nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” brings some comfort to a dying man. To know that comfort can be offered to even the strongest helps those that are too strong. “And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
A few months before he died, I wrote a letter to him it said, “I cannot give you your life to live over, I cannot take away the pain, I cannot give you a new liver…if I could, I would give you my own to see you walk tall and proud and do those things that you have cherished in this life. But this is not mine to give. I cannot give anything really, but I can share, I can share my life with you. I have brought my kids to your house, to your table to be with you. To learn from you, to know you.
I thanked him for being here for them, sharing with them a part of his life. He was older and could feel the nagging pain inside knowing that something wasn’t right. As he neared death, staring at the heavens wondering what was next. I told him what I believed to be next.
I told him that he was going to heaven where a kind and loving God would welcome him into his arms and hold him and comfort him and wash all his pain away. I told him that he would see his parents and brothers, that he would see Nick and Taunalee, that they would be there too, and they would welcome him and be glad to see him. I told him we would be sad to see him leave this earth.
But, that someday, we will all be there…I don’t know if we will gather around a kitchen table like we do now, but as surely as there is a God, we will have a chance to be together. This I do know. I know dad, that you are a good man that can look back at this life and be proud of yourself. You had hard teachers in this life, but you are ready now. You have been through the refiner’s fire. You have seen miracle after miracle all bearing testimony that God loves you, has always loved you, and will love your family when you are gone. He will be there for you and for them.
I do not understand everything dad, but I know that if I could give you any gift it would be to tell you that soon you will find that God is as real as all that your eyes once perceived here on this earth. You brightened our lives. Your death is our chance to learn one more valuable lesson.
We learned by his example, that when you are in the service of your fellow man, you are only in the service of your God. What he has done was marked under in the Book of Life under faith…hope… and charity that never faileth.