The Man Who Changed Everything

"Some men teach you how to live by what they say. Others teach you by the way they live."

His name was Manuel P. Reyes.

And this was a man unlike any other.

He worked hard throughout his entire life—from the smelter to the grave. He was determined to be an example to his children, to provide for his family, and to live according to values that didn't bend simply because life became difficult.

But to me, he was so much more than a hardworking man.

He was my grandfather.

And in many ways, he was the first man who showed me what a man was supposed to be.

Growing up without my father consistently present in my life, I watched different men walk in and out of our world. Many of them failed to live up to what I believed leadership was supposed to look like.

My grandfather never did.

Not in my eyes.

I lived with him for the first half of my life, until his passing on March 26, 2010.

Looking back now, I believe parts of me died with him that night.

And if I'm being truthful, they were some of the best parts of me.

The humorous parts.

The innocent parts.

The childlike parts.

Pieces of myself that seemed to quietly wither away after he was gone.

But before I tell you about losing him, I want you to understand what it felt like to have him.

Because his death isn't what made him extraordinary.

His life did.

4:00 A.M.

Every morning, before anyone else in the house was awake, my grandfather would wake me.

Four o'clock in the morning.

On the dot.

I'd feel him shake me.

"Mijo. Mijo. It's time to get up."

For years, I couldn't understand why.

Out of all the grandchildren living in that house, why was I the one getting dragged out of bed at four in the morning?

Then came my assignment.

Breakfast.

At the time, I thought it was punishment.

He wanted either an egg sandwich or an omelet.

So there I was, half asleep, pulling ingredients from the refrigerator and cabinets.

Cilantro.

Tomatoes.

Green onions.

Garlic powder.

A dash of salt.

Some pepper.

And just a spoonful of salsa.

But there was one ingredient I never told him about.

A special ingredient I added every single time.

I don't think I ever needed to tell him what it was.

I think he knew.

He just let me carry the glory of believing I had some secret that made those eggs special.

For years, we repeated this routine.

And for years, I thought maybe he was just making me cook so my grandmother could sleep in.

Until one morning, I finally had enough.

I hadn't slept much the night before. I was tired, irritated, and angry that he had woken me up again.

I stood in the kitchen making his breakfast while he packed his lunch into this little old-school blue-and-white ice chest—just big enough for one man's lunch.

Finally, I asked him:

"Why do you keep waking me up every morning to make your breakfast? I don't want to make it today."

He smiled.

Then he looked down the hallway to make sure his wife was still asleep.

And he leaned into our little conspiracy.

"Don't tell your Nana this... but your breakfast is the best food I've ever had. And if your Nana finds out I don't like her eggs, she's going to make me sleep on the couch."

We laughed.

And just like that, I wasn't angry anymore.

I felt seen.

What I had spent years believing was a chore suddenly became something entirely different.

It was our time.

Our ritual.

Our secret.

A secret we kept long after his passing.

Until now.

I guess, Nana, if you're reading this...

I'm sorry.

He liked my eggs better.

White Cheese Chimichanga

My grandfather had a nickname for me.

"White Cheese Chimichanga."

We're a Mexican family, and somehow I ended up being one of the lightest-skinned ones in the house.

So naturally, Grandpa had material.

I had a name for him too.

Doody Doody.

I have absolutely no idea where that came from.

It just stuck.

That was our relationship.

We could laugh.

Really laugh.

The kind of laughter where you lose control of your body.

I once made that man laugh so hard he soiled himself and needed a new pair of underwear.

I'm not sure whether that's an achievement a grandson should brag about, but I'm counting it.

Then there was Thunk.

My grandfather owned this white two-door Chevy pickup with a camper shell over the bed.

One day, we were driving home from a family function. There wasn't enough room for everyone in the cab, so some of us rode in the back.

I was exhausted from running around with my cousins, so I decided to lie down in the bed of the truck.

At some point, Grandpa made a sharp turn.

Apparently, gravity had other plans for me.

I went flying into the side of the cab.

THUNK.

He heard the impact and looked into his rearview mirror just in time to see my legs sticking straight into the air.

And that was it.

I had a new name.

Thunk.

I hated that nickname.

He absolutely loved it.

And because he loved it, part of me secretly loved it too.

Making that man laugh sometimes felt like my responsibility.

I don't mean that as a burden.

I mean it as an honor.

I was proud to be the grandson who could make him laugh that hard.

Because when Grandpa laughed, I felt like everything in the world was okay.

What a Man Was Supposed to Be

My grandfather was tough in spirit but soft in heart.

He was kind, but he was passionate about his family and the values he believed held that family together.

He taught me things I wouldn't fully understand until years later.

He taught me that opening a door for the women in our lives wasn't some grand act worthy of applause.

It was the bare minimum.

He believed that every door I allowed a woman to reach before me was an opportunity I had missed to demonstrate the kind of man I wanted to become.

He taught me to protect the women in our lives.

We grew up in a household filled with women, so compassion, kindness, and protection weren't abstract ideas.

They were responsibilities.

He was also the first man to take me hunting.

He taught me how to fend for myself.

How to survive if I ever had to.

He taught me that hard work pays off.

That laziness isn't something life rewards.

But one of the greatest things that man ever taught me was something much bigger.

He taught me how to dream.

Not the kind of dreaming where you sit around hoping something eventually happens.

He taught me how to work toward those dreams.

How to pursue them.

How to build them.

How to keep going when the excitement wears off.

And somehow, he taught me enough that I could continue chasing those dreams long after he was gone.

Cancer

His final years were hard.

I was entering my freshman year of high school when we received the news.

Cancer.

A nasty, vile, cruel, heartless disease that, at the time, I had almost no experience understanding.

He began attending treatments weekly.

And I watched one of the strongest men I had ever known become weakened after every session.

Cancer began taking pieces of him.

His strength.

His energy.

Eventually, even his independence.

But somehow, that man continued finding enough strength to show up for me.

My freshman football games became proof of it.

I would look into those stands and there he was.

Every interception.

Every play.

Every moment I did something worth celebrating, I'd look toward him.

And he'd be pointing at me.

Boy, was that man proud.

I could see it.

I could feel it.

Eventually, the disease took enough from him that he couldn't come anymore.

And something started changing inside me too.

The Boy I Was Becoming

As his condition worsened, so did my behavior.

I became angry.

Visceral.

Vile.

Cruel at times.

I started fighting kids who made fun of things they knew nothing about.

I got suspended.

I gave my mother and grandmother an incredibly hard time.

Looking back, I can recognize things that teenage boy couldn't.

I was watching my hero die.

And I didn't know where to put the fear.

So I turned it into anger.

Then one day, my behavior finally pushed my grandfather far enough.

He told me he was disappointed.

Disappointed in how I was behaving.

Disappointed in who I was becoming.

I wish I could tell you we sat down afterward and talked about it.

I wish I could tell you I apologized.

I wish I could tell you we reconciled and I got to explain that I wasn't angry at him.

I was terrified of losing him.

But life doesn't always give us the conversations we assume we'll have tomorrow.

Before we had the chance, a tumor grew in his neck.

And eventually...

my grandfather lost his voice.

Those became the last words he would ever speak to me.

He was disappointed in who I was becoming.

For years, I carried those words.

Because there was nothing I wanted more than another conversation with him.

One more morning.

One more omelet.

One more stupid nickname.

One more laugh.

One more opportunity to tell him:

I'm trying, Grandpa.

March 26, 2010

Eventually, he became bedridden.

And once again, there was a hospital bed in the living room of a home I knew.

His body was failing.

And our family knew where this was heading.

Then came the night.

March 26, 2010.

Strangely enough, I had become sick myself and lost my voice.

My grandfather could no longer speak.

Neither could I.

Our family gathered around him.

But he was waiting for someone.

His son was coming home from deployment.

And somehow, Grandpa held on.

Until he walked through that front door.

Then...

My grandfather took his last breath.

The house changed.

That's the only way I know how to describe it.

The lights felt dimmer.

The rooms felt darker.

The air felt heavier.

The soul-crushing weight of his departure consumed everyone in that room.

A man who had filled that house with so much life was suddenly gone.

And grief immediately began finding somewhere to go.

In the pain of losing his father, his son turned toward me.

He had heard about my behavior.

He wasn't happy about the things I had been doing.

And in that moment of grief and anger, I became the punching bag.

"Get out of the way. Nobody wants you here anyway."

I don't think he understood what those words would do to me.

I don't even know if he truly meant them.

His father had just died.

But grief doesn't always ask permission before it hurts someone else.

So I left.

The Roof

That night, while my family mourned inside the house, I climbed onto the roof.

I sat there alone.

Crying.

Below me was the sound of my family's sorrow.

Above me was the night sky.

And somewhere among all those stars, there was one that seemed brighter than the others.

It twinkled.

Maybe it was nothing.

Maybe it was simply a star doing what stars do.

But to a boy who had just lost the man who taught him what strength looked like, it felt like something more.

For just a moment, I felt hope.

And then something inside me spoke.

Keep going.

Football became part of how I carried him.

Every game after that became dedicated to the man who had changed my heart and my life forever.

Every time I stepped onto that field, part of me was still looking into those stands.

Looking for that finger pointing back at me.

Looking for Grandpa.

The Man Who Changed Everything

Loss is something every one of us will experience.

We can't prevent it.

We can't negotiate with it.

And we rarely get to decide when it arrives.

But I've learned that loss can do one of two things.

It can break us.

Or it can build something inside us.

Sometimes it does both.

For a while, losing my grandfather broke me.

Parts of my innocence disappeared with him.

Parts of my humor quieted.

Parts of that goofy kid who could make Grandpa laugh until he needed new underwear seemed to disappear.

But the things he taught me remained.

Work hard.

Protect your family.

Respect women.

Open the door.

Learn how to survive.

Laugh until your stomach hurts.

Dream.

And then work hard enough to give those dreams a chance to become real.

Today, I understand something I couldn't have understood at fifteen.

My grandfather didn't need our final conversation to know who I was.

Those mornings told him.

Those breakfasts told him.

Those football games told him.

The hunting trips told him.

The laughter told him.

The fact that he woke me at four o'clock every morning told me something too.

Maybe he wasn't just asking me to make breakfast.

Maybe he was building a relationship with a boy who desperately needed a man.

Maybe those mornings were his way of saying:

Come with me, Mijo. There's something I want to teach you.

And maybe I've spent the rest of my life learning what those lessons actually were.

Manuel P. Reyes died on March 26, 2010.

But the man didn't disappear.

I see pieces of him in the way I father.

I hear him when I think about what it means to be a man.

I feel him when I'm working toward something everyone else thinks is impossible.

I remember him when I laugh hard enough to forget whatever has been weighing on me.

And every once in a while, when life gets difficult and quitting starts sounding easier...

I can still imagine him somewhere in the stands.

Pointing at me.

Proud.

So this journey—

the stories,

the dreams,

the father I'm becoming,

the man I'm still learning to be,

the house I'm trying to build—

I dedicate it to you.

Manuel P. Reyes.

My grandfather.

My example.

My Doody Doody.

The man who changed everything.