Larger than Life (tissue warning)

I recently attended my Uncle Matthias's funeral.

Due to the fact that my father had about 17 brothers and sisters, there are many of my aunts and uncles that I don't really know all that well, and Uncle Matthias was one of those people. All I really remember was that at the baby shower/Wedding reception we had a few years ago, he and his wife Jane brought us a tree to plant for Lilas. According to his Obit, He was a man who loved life and those that were alive.

Let me explain a little bit further. He had a lot of cats. 11 cats, mostly walk in strays that he took care of. He also tended to his garden a lot. This seems kind of like typical things a 63 year old fellow would partake in, but it is a little deeper than that in my family. We are, from my observations, the stewards, caretakers, and the ones most attuned with life and lives.

See, my father enjoys it when the lake water runs over the bank in the stream. I always assumed it made for good fishing, but one day my dad related this to me that made him tear up a little. "Ryan, when I was younger, there was so much bad around me, so much death, then I would see the water rise over the bank. The water was just so full of life, I could forget how tough things were and revel in the living. There was just so much life..."

I think that we as Riojas's are quite attuned to life. We are sensitive to the little behaviors that are exhibited by living things and life in general. That's why we got a tree. I mean, Karen and I were registered at Target for gifts, and we had no place to plant a tree where we were living, other than at my parent's house. It was not a practical gift at all if one looks as it in a useful way. But this one gesture of good wishing seemed more a representation of Life than something that could be used for any useful purpose. My uncle was saying, whether he meant to or not, "Here is life! I'll give you life for your new life starting."

My father also is a man who is preoccupied by the essence of life. He is a hunter and a fisherman, as well as a 4wheeler officionatto, and spends his day at work providing heat to people who are cold. I myself find myself getting choked up about silly things like when people are offered jobs to be able to continue providing for a family. My dad is also an empathetic man, which I inherited from him in spades. We both have a desire to fix bad emotions in other people, to experiment with human reaction, and to make people laugh. By the same token, I guess I share the same sort of anchor to the well being of life to enrich my own.

The format of the funeral was to collect the family and have people share fond memories of my uncle. My dad took a turn.

"I remember that Matthias had a pretty blue car. He would give me and Danny each $2.50 a piece for our allowance and get into his car. Then he would say... 'Hey, each of you gimme a dollar back.' We would give him a dollar and he would peel out in front of the house. We would cheer and yell and have a grand old time. My brother Matthias was someone who was Larger Than life itself..."

I'm kinda choking up right now as I draw conclusions and parallels with my own life. I am seeing with each day that I grow older and older why my dad was the way he is; why he would ask me where I was going before I would hang out with my friends, and why he would give me 5 or 6 bucks to enjoy the outing without thinking about it. That's what my dad was shown about how to take care of someone younger than himself. To be larger than life is what it means to be a Riojas, to be a part of this family, to be a person so tied to the ebb and flow of life.

I now look at my dad with the eyes of a father. I see things that he is too humble to admit. My father has a million people that would take a bullet for him. The conversations I have with people I meet on campus is "your Tino's kid aren't you" that is followed by "Your dad is a great guy!" There are children being born in the family that people, on purpose, are naming after my dad. As sad as it is to lose a brother, an uncle, a father, a friend, a soldier, a caretaker, and a gardener, I believe it is Valentino Riojas's turn to be what Uncle Matthias was to him. It's my father's turn to be larger than life.

This post in particular made, and makes, people in my family cry.