Accordion Eulogies

I am hounded by the specter of a grandfather I never really knew. He was a migrant and a traveling musician propelled by the songs that clamored in his chest. A man who gambled his lands away and left his wife and son to go hungry. After his disappearance, my grandmother died, leaving her young son—my father—homeless in Mexico. 

My father was deeply bruised by this abandonment, this subjection to suffering at such a young age. It diminished his trust in others, calloused his heart, and made him, in many ways,  more distant than the stars. My grandfather’s absence echoed through the generations, altering my childhood as well as my father’s. For years, he has lived without closure. I’ve spent my life fruitlessly trying to close his hurt for him. 

Because my grandfather was not present in our lives, I grew up unable to make him answer for the childhoods he denied us. I could never confront him for stripping my father of his ability to express love toward himself and his children in the way we needed. I yearned to tell my grandfather of the great man my father became in his absence, who migrated from Mexico to Yakima stricken with fear and made a family there; of the warrior I have become in the aftermath of my grandfather’s mess, raised by the son my grandfather neglected. I longed to show him that what I am today stems entirely from my father’s hard lessons and that nothing about the previous generation lives inside me.

But this would be a lie. Something of my grandfather is alive inside of me, I know, and it grows stronger every day—an inheritance of the accordion, dark shadows, and the impulse to be always on the move.