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29. How has major family deaths changed you and your life and helped you
to grow?
Like I was saying, family is very important to me. When I was 13 I had an Uncle die at the very young age of 31. His name was Daniel aka Danny and he was an accomplished classical guitarist and cyclist. I remember the day vividly when the phone call came. I was over at my Grandma's house and my Uncle Rich and I were shooting rubber bands at each other. The phone rang and after about 1 minute, I could hear crying and screaming. I knew something was wrong. It turns out my Uncle had been coming back from a weekend in the desert and they were driving back in the van. All of a sudden he started talking about how beautiful and green the scenery was. Keep in mind, they were in the desert. Then, he just slumped in his chair and fell backwards and died of a massive heart attack. Daniel was always a nice and mellow Uncle. He was extremely talented on a bike and even more so on the guitar. He was a member of the Orion Duo, which consisted of him and his partner Fred Benedetti. Fred Benedetti is one of the best classical and contemporary guitarist to this day and you can Google his name, if this interests you.
My Uncle's death prepared me for the hardest one as of yet. My Grandmother passed while I was still in college. I was a Senior at the University of San Diego and was taking a class called Sex, Power, and Politics. During this class we were too right journals and I asked my Professor if I could write one on my experiences with what I was dealing with at that time. Because I was at the hospital a lot and missing class, she approved this.
My Grandmother was the centerpiece of our family. She was a very loving lady and would come to all of my soccer games. My Grandparents would drive in their motorhome and follow me around from tournament to tournament. Anyways, when she died our family became splintered for many years and are now back to normal. Its hard when the glue falls apart. It was during this time at the hospital that I learned a lot more about my Grandma from my Aunt Jean and wrote about this for my class. During World War Two, my Grandma was a young girl. She was half white and half Filipino, but because some people didn't know what she was she had to wear a button that said, I am not Japanese. This was during the time when there were Japanese interment camps that were setup in the United States. My Aunt continued to tell me amazing stories about my Grandmother and I continued to write stuff down. Well, when she passed in the hospital, it was the most surreal experience I've had to deal with. My family ended up asking me to read my paper that I had wriiten for class, at the funeral. This was one of the hardest things I have had to do. I got up in front of a packed funeral house and read my paper aloud, about my Grandmother. I almost broke down and started crying, but was all of a sudden got this calm about me, as if she was helping me out. I finished it and my Mom, was so happy I did it, as was the rest of the family.
It is kind of ironic how WW2 affected my Grandmother on my Mom's side differently than my Lolo in the Philippines.
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