There are times when disease seems so far away, but things remind us that is not so. My mother mentioned over the phone, not too many days ago that if my father were alive, we would be worried for him, as his advanced age would be somewhat complicated.

I guess that's what made me remember when I asked my father how his father had died. Por pendejo*..." he answered. "He had gotten sick, and the doctor told him to only drink previously boiled water...and no. He didn't listen."

That comment follows me. Deep down, those things that are always there but you suddenly notice them. Occasionally, I become aware that my father made such a comment and I'm left not knowing how to react.

Now that my father no longer inhabits this earth, I feel it is impossible to remember anything bad about him. This makes it hard for me to believe the way my father had said it. "Por pendejo." It is worth mentioning that my grandfather died when my father was 16 years old. I honestly don't know what the relationship between my grandfather and my father was like, but that comment always made me wonder if my father resented him. He had left him the oldest sibling of what I think were six (truth be told I always forget how many uncles and aunts I have), in the middle of World War II and under British rule. It takes no more than that abandonment and the way he had answered that question to conclude that my father resented his own.

When I was barely fourteen, my aunt (who was like a mother to me) was violently removed from my existence. Sadness is the cousin of hatred, for I remember having fantasies of what I would have done to them if I had found them. A grudge that consumes you so much that it is hard to even acknowledge that it dwells in your heart. I wonder if my father felt such a grudge against his own father. It was his own father who took his father from him. It was his father who was to blame and no one else for the loneliness he felt. Of the fear and uncertainty. I don't know if it is possible to feel this strongly for so long against one’s own father.

I will never know if my father really held a grudge against my grandfather. I will never know if my grandfather really died of cholera or unboiled water. I will never know what it feels like to hold a grudge against your parent. I will never know if my father would have survived this disease that currently terrifies people. For both men now dwell not above this earth but below it.

These seem to be the things that go through one's mind as one waits for the pandemic to pass. These seem to be the things one remembers being within four walls for too long. One is left to speculate not only about the current pandemics, but about the previous ones as well. 

* Por pendejo: Best translated as “due to foolishness.”