Chapter 2: Jorge

As the contract on this book was being signed and delivered, my grandfather passed away. His name was Jorge. He was 78 years old. He died quite suddenly after being hospitalized for another chronic condition of the kidneys. My grandmother says he turned over and cried out like something had burst inside him. And he took his last breath. He had apparently been dying for quite some time, but in my family, that’s what you do. That’s what life is: waiting for awful things to happen and then dying when they do.

When I first proposed the idea for this book, both of my grandparents were alive and I had never experienced the grieving process associated with death. I was expecting the process to be terrifying, overwhelming, unbearable. But it was not really any of those things. There are strange moments of intimacy, humor and the kind of familiarity that takes over when you’re with the people you grew up with. There was uncontrollable crying, but also putting on of shoes, sleeping, breathing, trying on 8 outfits for the funeral and trying to determine with my boyfriend which was the least slutty or whimsical (a difficult task with my wardrobe). A black tutu? A strappy tight LBD?

My grandfather wouldn’t have liked it if I wore something boring. He knew that wasn’t me, but my grandmother would want me to look like I make more money than I do so her family would know she hadn't failed. And she was the one who stayed behind, after all.

My grandfather – who raised me, and who I usually call Dad – was what I would call a drama queen and a gossip monger. A chismoso if I ever met one. Anglos hate chisme. It’s like a documented fact. But ethnic whites and immigrants and people of color, we gossip. Apparently some academics have studied this and concluded that gossip functions as a way to share important information in a sort of underground fashion, hidden. Gossip is the language of intuition, not empirical. Anglos hate shit that isn’t empirical. Empiricism makes them feel in control. I understand the impulse.

He gossiped about everybody. He hated most people. It was how he controlled his world. He also used to make predictions about inevitable things – usually awful things. And it turns out that if you predict your own death or the death or illness of others, one day you end up being right. He had been predicting his own death for years and years. My grandparents bought their burial grounds about 20 years ago, back when you could still buy anything in the Bay Area for less than 3/4 of a million dollars. The land they bought was about $3000 when they bought it and now it’s $10,000. It seems so odd that the tech boom even changes the way that death functions. 

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