I’D ATTACHED MY FATHER’S DOG tags to the cross Gina and Susie had given me. When I got out of the shower, I put them on. I stared at myself. I shaved. My father had taught me how to do that. When I was a small boy, I would watch him in wonder. I got dressed and looked at myself in the mirror as I tied my tie. My father had taught me how to tie a tie the day before I made my First Communion. I tied my shoelaces. My father had taught me how to do that, too. I was surrounded by him, my father.
It was strange to follow my father’s casket as the eight pallbearers walked beside it, four on each side. Sam Quintana was one of my father’s pallbearers, and Susie’s father was too. Over many years they had discussed books, a fact I had only recently become aware of because I had paid so little attention to my father’s life. The rest of the pallbearers were mail carriers. My mother and I walked down the aisle arm in arm. My sisters and their husbands followed behind.
I tried to pay attention to the Mass, but I was too distracted. I was nervous about giving my father’s eulogy and the church was full, all of the Catholic Daughters dressed in white and sitting together—including Mrs. Alvidrez.
Dante and Mrs. Q and Sophocles were sitting behind us. I wasn’t paying attention to the priest when he began his sermon. I could see the priest’s lips moving—but it seemed as though I had lost my hearing.
After communion, the priest motioned to me. My mother squeezed my hand. I felt Dante’s hand on my shoulder. I rose from the pew and made my way to the pulpit. I reached in my pocket and unfolded the eulogy that I’d written for my father. My heart was racing. I had never spoken in front of a church full of people. I froze. I closed my eyes and thought of my father. I wanted him to be proud of me. I opened my eyes. I looked out at the sea of people. I saw my sisters and my mother clothed in their grief. I looked at the words I’d written—and began:
“My father worked for the US Postal Service. He was a mail carrier, and he was proud of what he did. He was proud to be a public servant, and he was far prouder of his service to this country as a mail carrier than his service to his country as a soldier.
“My father fought in a war, and he brought a piece of that war with him when he came back home. He was a silent man for many years but, a little at a time, he broke that silence. He told me that one lesson he learned in Vietnam was that every human life is sacred. But later he told me, people say that all lives are sacred but they’re lying to themselves. My father hated a few things; racism was one of them. He said he worked hard to rid himself of his own racism. And that is what made my father a great man. He didn’t blame other people for the problems of the world. He pointed to the problems of the world within himself and fought a battle to rid himself of them.
“My mother gave me the journal my father was keeping. My father filled the pages of several journals over the years, and I was going through them as I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say. Reading a passage was like sitting inside his brain. When I was thirteen and fourteen and fifteen, I longed to know what my father was thinking, this silent man who seemed to be living in the memory of a war that left his heart and mind wounded. But he was far more present than I imagined him to be. I had no idea who my father was. And so I made him up. Which brings me to this entry he wrote when I was fourteen years old:
“ ‘America is the country of invention. We are a people who constantly invent and reinvent ourselves. Mostly our inventions of who we are are fictions. We invent who Black people are and make them out to be violent and criminal. But our inventions are about us and not about them. We invent who Mexicans are, and we become nothing more than a people who eat tacos and break piñatas. We invent reasons to fight wars because war is what we know, and we make those wars into heroic marches toward peace, when there is nothing heroic about war. Men are killed in wars. Young men. We tell ourselves they died to protect our freedoms—even when we know that is a lie. I find it a tragedy that such an inventive people cannot bring themselves to invent peace.
“ ‘My son Ari and I are fighting a war. We are fighting a war with ourselves and with each other. We have resorted to inventing each other. My son dislikes me—but he is disliking his own invention. And I am doing the same. I wonder if we will ever find a way out of this war. I wonder if we will ever be brave enough to call a truce, imagine peace, and finally see each other for who we are and stop this nonsense of inventing.’
“My father and I did finally manage to stop the war we were fighting. I stopped inventing him and finally saw him for who he was. And he saw me.
“My father cared about the world he lived in. He thought we could do a lot better, and I think he was right, and I loved that he cared about things that were bigger than the smaller world he lived in. In one journal entry he wrote: ‘There are no reasons to hate other people—especially other kinds of people. We make up reasons why other people are less human than we are. We make up reasons and then we believe those reasons and then those reasons become true and they are true because now we believe they are facts and we even forget where it all started—with a reason we made up.’
“My father wasn’t just my father. He was a man. He was a man aware of the larger world around him. He loved art and read books about art. He had several books on architecture, and he read them. He had a curious mind and he wanted to know things and he didn’t think he was the center of the universe and he didn’t think that what he thought and what he felt were the only things that mattered. And that made him a humble man. And I’m going to quote him here. He said, ‘Humility is in short supply in this country, and it would be a good thing if we went in search of it.’
“My father not only went in search of humility, he found it. When he died, he died of a heart attack—and he died in my arms whispering my name and whispering the name of my mother. I thought of a story he once recounted to me of a young soldier who died in his arms. The young soldier asked my father to hold him. He had been a man barely an hour, my father said. And the young soldier, who was Jewish, asked my father as he died, ‘Tell my mom and dad. Tell them I’ll see them next year in Jerusalem.’
“My father went to Los Angeles for the purpose of delivering that message to his parents. Now, some people would think that only a special kind of man would do such a thing. But he would quote my mother, the schoolteacher who is as proud of what she does as my father was proud of what he did, saying, ‘You don’t get extra credit for doing what you’re supposed to do.’
“My mom and dad and I traveled to Washington, DC, one summer. I was about nine or ten. My father wanted to see the Vietnam Memorial. More than fifty-eight thousand soldiers died in Vietnam. He said, ‘Now they are not just numbers. They were human beings who had names. And now, at least, we have written their names on the map of the world.’ He found the names of the men who had been killed in Vietnam who had fought alongside him. He traced each name with his finger. It was the first time I ever saw my father cry.
“My father traced his name on my heart. And his name will remain there. And because his name lives in me, I will be a better man for it. My name is Aristotle Mendoza, and if today you ask me who I am, I will look you in the eye and say to you: I am my father’s son.”
I looked into my mother’s eyes as I finished. Tears were running down her face, and she was standing, and she was clapping, applauding, proud. And I saw my sisters and Dante, standing, applauding. And then I realized that all of the people gathered in that church were standing, applauding. All of those people—their applause, I knew it wasn’t for me. It was for the man they had come to honor. And I was proud.