“We found a family spot to kick it
Where we can drink liquor and no one bickers over trick shit
A spot where we can smoke in peace and even though we G’s
We still visualize places that we can roll in peace
And in my mind’s eye I see this place, the players go in fast
I got a spot for us all, so we can ball at thug’s mansion”
-2Pac
Death is unsettling. I like to pride myself in being this rational critical thinker who understands death as a common, natural, and expected occurrence yet every time it happens I lose my equilibrium. Better stated, I don’t respond well to death. I read the text at 7:28 this morning. “Hey guys.. Ignacio passed away this morning.” My uncle and I weren’t particularly close. In fact, I hadn’t seen him in years.
Ignacio (or Nacho as we all call him) was an artist. Not just an artist, THE ARTIST in our family. As a kid, I remember running around my Uncle Koki’s house and seeing Nacho’s work scattered everywhere. His pieces were beautiful. He made masks, sculptures, paintings, gizmos, gadgets, and more. His clothes were always ragged, his hands covered in dry paint, clay, and dirt. His eyes were always low, mustache was always bushy, and he smelled like earth. His hair was always a long moppy mess that got grayer as the years went on and he had a slight bent to his walk that wasn’t quite hunchback but made it look like he easily carried the weight of the world on his back. When he worked, he always looked like he was gliding; a natural movement that looked like an orchestrated masterpiece. The only time he looked uncomfortable was in the cold. He always looked stiff in the cold. When I got older, I realized that earth smell was weed. He loved weed. I started referring to him as the Tommy Chong of my family. They had a similar swag except my uncle was much cooler and infinitely more talented.
I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. My ability to draw is so bad that I got a behavior referral as a high school sophomore for cursing out an AP English language teacher who gave me a C on a visually interpretative assignment of the theme in a text (I stand by my position). While I avoided artistic endeavors at all cost, I was pushed into choosing a class to fulfill the elective requirement of my IB diploma program. I choose photography because all we really needed was a digital camera and I figured I could finesse a good grade in the class. The syllabus had one catch: you had to present on art of your choosing in front of the class at one point in the year. I was preoccupied with my other academically rigorous classes and forgot my presentation date until my teacher called me up on a random Tuesday morning to present. “You’re up Jonathon, we look forward to your presentation!” As my mind raced to figure out a way out of this corner my uncle Nacho immediately popped into my head.
“Today I will be presenting on a talented underrated local artist named Ignacio Velez. This artist produces work across mediums and, in addition to being amazingly talented, he happens to be my uncle!” I proclaimed with pride. “My uncle is a sculptor, painter, graphic designer, illustrator, and more. He has experience working with stained glass, tapestry, architecture, graffiti and ceramics. If you will permit me a moment, I will pull up his website now to show you some of his pieces!”
I pulled up the website on my teacher’s projector and sure enough there was my uncle’s name with a full page of his most recent works: a collection of leather pieces shaped as vaginas. The class was silent. I had been in trouble a few times in school (mostly for talking back to teachers) and I was sure this one would lead to a parent conference. My teacher took a second and simply said: “I wonder where he got the models from…” The class chuckled, I breathed a sigh of relief and wrapped up my presentation as quickly as possible. I got an “A”. I never told him, but my uncle saved my ass that day and I am forever grateful for the memory.
I’m a bitter mother fucker. When I feel offended or slighted I feed off that shit like wood feeds fire. A lot of my family and I have a strained relationship that goes unspoken. My father is one of twelve. All but one have lifelong partners and all but two have children. That means that my cousins could field several soccer teams and I have more of them than I can count. While large families are usually welcoming, they can also feel cold if you don’t feel a part of them. The children of divorced parents often feel like the bastard members of the family. We spent less time around our family growing up. We got less phone calls on birthdays, less invitations to major life events, and generally felt less loved. My own godfather (who also happens to be one of my uncles) doesn’t even know how to spell my name. I have a cousin that is so moved by this exclusion that he purposefully does not engage at all with our side of the family. I had heart surgery when I was ten years old. There were over 15 family members who lived in the Miami area at the time and only one of them visited me in the hospital or during my recovery. That fed the fire. When my cousins got married, I wasn’t invited. Gasoline. High school graduation, Eagle Scout ceremony, birthdays, holidays, I was the forgotten one. Bonfire. It got to the point that I made a joke of it. They were my “vacation family”. If my dad was in town, my family treated me like I was one of “Acosta’s”. As soon as he left, they disappeared; it was like he packed his family up in the luggage. As I got older, the joke crystalized into an armor. “Fuck me? Well fuck y’all too!”
It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have the family I wanted growing up. It also wasn’t my uncle’s fault that my family dynamic ended up the way it did. Yet in my bitterness, I pushed him and the rest of my family away when I was old enough to initiate contact. Regret is the worst fucking feeling. I have two regrets regarding my uncle. The first is that I didn’t see him this past winter. I spent three weeks in Miami and I couldn’t work up the energy to go see him knowing that he was ill. The second regret that I have is that I never told him that I love him. As I get older, I’ve been struggling to shed some of the toxic masculinity from my youth. Part of that was an aversion to expressing love, particularly for other men. Not having told him is just another reminder of why I need to get rid of that shit. I tell my closest boys I love them at the end of every phone conversation now but for some reason it’s been a bit harder to do with my family. I think it’s because I choose my friends, but I didn’t choose my family. Losing Nacho puts some of this into perspective and reminds me that I need to put that family fire out and replace it with love.
After reading my cousin’s text, my immediate reaction was to look for a drink or a joint. Then I remembered that I must lead wrestling practice this afternoon. After practice, I have a dinner with a former student who is going to tell me about their college plans. Life goes on; it always does. But before letting it do so, I want to put these words into the universe in the hopes that the love they contain for him drift towards his spirit. I hope that one day we can sit on a stoop and share a smoke together on the other side. I tried to go about my morning. People who know me well know that I’m a disciplined-ass mother fucker in the morning. Everything is timed, and I keep to a tight schedule. It takes me one minute and 45 seconds to fill my thermos and pour my morning iced coffee. My morning shit takes four and a half minutes where I use part of the sitting time to watch two snap stories max. I’m brushing my teeth by 7:18 in the morning and out the door by 7:27. I saw my cousin’s text and the world slowed down. Over the next couple of hours, I kept bumping into things, dropping things, and tearing up. I went to the gym and tried to carry on my normal workout but kept finding myself staring into space. I feel weird because we weren’t that close, but I guess he impacted me more than I can recall. I built a fortress around my emotions in response to feeling rejected by my family and I think that included forgetting the good memories that we shared.
When I was still working in a school, one of our student’s parent died from an overdose. Months later, I overheard a staff member comment on how the student needed to “get over it” and “focus” on their academics. It seemed like harsh tough love at the time, but I can’t help but empathize with that student now. I didn’t lose a parent and, in many ways, we saw my uncle’s passing coming, yet I’m still unsettled. I tried reading a page of Habermas and the words all just blended together. It’s not easy for life to just “go on” and everyone has a different way of coping. These words are part of my attempt. They’re not for the reader but for Nacho and myself. I hope they fill in for the conversation we never had.
The last vivid memory I have of Nacho was from Copacabana. When I was 15, my father and I took a sort of pilgrimage trip to visit the town where he grew up and to get to know each other better. One day, while we were walking in the town plaza that was foreign to me, I spotted a Tommy Chong looking mother fucker from across the park. This cat had longer grayer hair than I remembered but his ripped cargo shorts, baggy tank top, paint covered arms, and the joint on his ear were a dead giveaway. “Dad, ese es Nacho, no?!”. “Si papi, he loves it here. Let’s go say hi.” Nacho looked happier than I remembered him in New York and Miami. The bounce in his walk looked natural and his mustache grin was never wider. He gave me a hug and asked us what we were doing in town. My dad told him that he was showing me where he grew up and Nacho nodded in approval. We parted ways and I turned to watch him glide away. “Apa, se ve super feliz aqui” “Oh yes papi, this is his home. This is where he first became an artist. He lives on a farm with your aunt. He’s got plenty of space to work and he can grow some of his stuff, you know.” As his health declined in recent years, he and my aunt relocated to the US to get better medical attention. It saddens me a bit that he didn’t get to be “home” in the end but I’m glad to know that he was close to his wife, some of his children, and some of his grandchildren.
Today, we lost an artist, a father, a husband, an uncle, a brother, a person. He was flawed like all of us. Like most artists, he wasn’t particularly responsible with his finances and the family moved around a lot, even when he was older. He had four children, three that most people recognize (with my aunt) and one that is forgotten or ignored in the classic Garcia-Marquez story line. I haven’t worked up the courage to call my aunt or my cousins yet. I’m not really sure what to say. I don’t know what I would want someone to tell me the day I lose a parent. I hope that he went without too much pain. I hope that they feel like they were able to say their goodbyes. I hope they find a way to “go on.” I’m not sure any of that shit helps but it crosses my mind as I think about him. Tonight, after practice and after dinner, Jack Daniels and I will meet to reminisce and talk about Nacho, his art, his smile, his plants, his family, and his memory. Since it’s never too late: I love you Ignacio Velez.
