Axiom Days
Devil Summoner
People do not like to talk about what happened around that time. An entire genocide and civil war that lasted three whole decades, the span of a quarter of my life. When you grow from a small child to an adult in times like that, you do not come out unscathed. You do not emerge out of a lifetime of war and say "that is that". Your wounds, whether you feel them or not, run as deep as a knife can pierce you. Sometimes deeper.
I remember hiding during countless nights with my father in our cramped, dark basement when the fascistas marched through our town. My father always chain-smoked during times like these; the repetitive inhalation was one of the few things that could calm his nerves. I cannot tell you exactly how I felt when we heard those heavy boots march down our street. It is not fear or horror that occupies your mind; it is a quiet numbness, an absence of feeling as your mind and heart realizes that you are about to be ripped from this life and buried in a cold, isolated ditch, and the world will forget about you.
When they came into our basement, it took little time for them to find us. Fascists have a natural talent for finding those that wish to preserve themselves. All it took was a lit lantern, two looks into the corner, and we were dragged by our hair out into the streets. My father said nothing. A man cannot look into the eyes of his teenage son and tell him he is going to die by a bullet to the back of the head. If he does, then he has admitted to the failure of his greatest duty as a parent: to protect his child. So he sat there, silently awaiting what we both knew would come.
If not for the intervention of a young woman that could vouch for our papers and pose as my father's wife, we might have died on that very street. It took a long while for that numbness to recede; to recognize that we had stood on the edge of the abyss and held on tight by the gift of human kindness. To recognize that by the grace of God we lived.
And yet two years later, by that same grace, my father was taken from me. Not by the facistas. Not by the rebels. Not by the American insurgents. But by himself. By his refusal to quit smoking until the foul concoction ate him away from the inside. It was not a quick death. It began as a deep, rugged cough that he would dismiss as a cold contracted from his long days at the fish stand. Slowly, it manifested itself in more serious ways; a speck of blood in a tissue, more hours in his old recliner, or even a growing disdain for delicious meals he once enjoyed. The last thing the gentle man ever told me was that his carne guisada tasted too "ashy". I wish I had known enough at that time to realize what was happening.
I was only 17 when he passed away. Sitting on that worn recliner, a purple tinge to his face, eyes wide, nostrils flared, mouth agape - the visage of a man hopelessly gasping for air. The doctor had told me that the cancer had weakened and torn asunder his lungs so greatly that a simple coughing fit was his demise. I remembered when my father would sit at the dinner table and laugh about how he "wanted to die in a plane accident" because he was deathly afraid of realizing he was going to meet his end. I try not to think about what his last thoughts were, gasping for oxygen and gripping an armrest, knowing his son would come home from school to the corpse of his last remaining parent.
With the death of my only family left, there was little keeping me in Guatemala. I was offered a foster family, but I declined and went north. Never since the night the facistas had dragged us from our house had I felt that same numbness in my heart. I was alone. And for the next five years I was alone.
Since that day, it has taken a lot of personal thinking -and the love of others- for me to truly accept that the events of my childhood had scarred me. The late night bombings, the screams of those executed in the street, the death of my father; I had erected walls of stone around myself to ensure I did become hurt again, as I was so many times in my young life. Our wounds -be they of the flesh or mind- do not harden us. They slash and break our tendons and bones. They remove the foundations we need to stand tall. We might still hold ourselves upright, but we does so with a quiet agony. Only by the love of many others in my life -my wife, my friends, and my two beautiful daughters- was I able to truly realize that I was a broken person needing others to live.
Now, since coming to the United States, I have become a leader in researching cancer as caused by carcinogens. Today, I have the privilege of working with some of the brightest minds in the world as we try to combat the effects of this vile disease that takes our mothers, fathers, and children. Our progress has been tough and our nights long. It will be tough for many, many years. But my greatest hope remains that one day, I can rest easy knowing that my friends, my wife, my children, will never have to worry about their father being ripped early from this life before they experience their own.
But all that doesn't matter, because this site gave me cancer anyways.
I remember hiding during countless nights with my father in our cramped, dark basement when the fascistas marched through our town. My father always chain-smoked during times like these; the repetitive inhalation was one of the few things that could calm his nerves. I cannot tell you exactly how I felt when we heard those heavy boots march down our street. It is not fear or horror that occupies your mind; it is a quiet numbness, an absence of feeling as your mind and heart realizes that you are about to be ripped from this life and buried in a cold, isolated ditch, and the world will forget about you.
When they came into our basement, it took little time for them to find us. Fascists have a natural talent for finding those that wish to preserve themselves. All it took was a lit lantern, two looks into the corner, and we were dragged by our hair out into the streets. My father said nothing. A man cannot look into the eyes of his teenage son and tell him he is going to die by a bullet to the back of the head. If he does, then he has admitted to the failure of his greatest duty as a parent: to protect his child. So he sat there, silently awaiting what we both knew would come.
If not for the intervention of a young woman that could vouch for our papers and pose as my father's wife, we might have died on that very street. It took a long while for that numbness to recede; to recognize that we had stood on the edge of the abyss and held on tight by the gift of human kindness. To recognize that by the grace of God we lived.
And yet two years later, by that same grace, my father was taken from me. Not by the facistas. Not by the rebels. Not by the American insurgents. But by himself. By his refusal to quit smoking until the foul concoction ate him away from the inside. It was not a quick death. It began as a deep, rugged cough that he would dismiss as a cold contracted from his long days at the fish stand. Slowly, it manifested itself in more serious ways; a speck of blood in a tissue, more hours in his old recliner, or even a growing disdain for delicious meals he once enjoyed. The last thing the gentle man ever told me was that his carne guisada tasted too "ashy". I wish I had known enough at that time to realize what was happening.
I was only 17 when he passed away. Sitting on that worn recliner, a purple tinge to his face, eyes wide, nostrils flared, mouth agape - the visage of a man hopelessly gasping for air. The doctor had told me that the cancer had weakened and torn asunder his lungs so greatly that a simple coughing fit was his demise. I remembered when my father would sit at the dinner table and laugh about how he "wanted to die in a plane accident" because he was deathly afraid of realizing he was going to meet his end. I try not to think about what his last thoughts were, gasping for oxygen and gripping an armrest, knowing his son would come home from school to the corpse of his last remaining parent.
With the death of my only family left, there was little keeping me in Guatemala. I was offered a foster family, but I declined and went north. Never since the night the facistas had dragged us from our house had I felt that same numbness in my heart. I was alone. And for the next five years I was alone.
Since that day, it has taken a lot of personal thinking -and the love of others- for me to truly accept that the events of my childhood had scarred me. The late night bombings, the screams of those executed in the street, the death of my father; I had erected walls of stone around myself to ensure I did become hurt again, as I was so many times in my young life. Our wounds -be they of the flesh or mind- do not harden us. They slash and break our tendons and bones. They remove the foundations we need to stand tall. We might still hold ourselves upright, but we does so with a quiet agony. Only by the love of many others in my life -my wife, my friends, and my two beautiful daughters- was I able to truly realize that I was a broken person needing others to live.
Now, since coming to the United States, I have become a leader in researching cancer as caused by carcinogens. Today, I have the privilege of working with some of the brightest minds in the world as we try to combat the effects of this vile disease that takes our mothers, fathers, and children. Our progress has been tough and our nights long. It will be tough for many, many years. But my greatest hope remains that one day, I can rest easy knowing that my friends, my wife, my children, will never have to worry about their father being ripped early from this life before they experience their own.
But all that doesn't matter, because this site gave me cancer anyways.
