prior probability

Don Francisco Florentino Guerra Fernandez Suarez Vazquez: 16 October 1943 — 2 May 2024

To paraphrase the song “Seasons of Love”, how do you measure or evaluate a life? This is the solemn question I find myself asking these mournful days, especially when I think about my father, Don Francisco (1943-2024), who died last week at the age of 80. Do we appraise a man’s life and legacy simply by counting up his most valuable material possessions–his real property, for example? By this measure, my father was a modest man. Ten years after leaving his beloved Cuba, he bought his first and only house in the early 1970s, a small two bedroom-one bath cottage in Glendale, California. His abode was thus a small one, but it was located on a quiet tree-lined by-lane nestled between a leafy city park and the San Rafael Hills in one of the prettiest towns in the greater L.A. area. It was here where I lived until I went off to college, and it was here where my father lived until just a few days before he died.

Or should we measure a man’s life by his profession or trade, i.e. the things he had to do to make a living and support his family? My father, for example, always worked with his hands. He became a plastic fabricator by trade when he relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1960s, and he landed his first good-paying job at the original Weber Aircraft Corp. in nearby Burbank, California, where he spent most of his work week retrofitting the interiors of Boeing 747s. He then found an even better-paying job at the Hughes Aircraft Ground Systems Group in Fullerton, California (see here), where he built advanced radar and other air defense systems for the U.S. military’s Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS), but God bless his soul, this pay upgrade now meant a hardcore one-hour (each way!) daily grind of a commute in L.A. traffic! (That alone tells you what kind of man my father was: that he refused to uproot his family so that I could attend good schools and keep my circle of friends.)

In the alternative, should we judge a man’s life by his favorite hobby or pastime, by the things he loved to do? In the case of my father, he spent a lot time gardening, especially after he retired. Alas, I don’t really know if he actually liked to garden because (whenever I was in town at least) he was often grumbling about one thing or another when he was outside, but I do know this: in the spring his little garden was always full of pastel and ruby-red roses as well as azaleas, carnations, dahlias, gardenias, irises, lilies, orchids, and sunflowers, just to name a few of the most colorful varietals in his back and front yards. He also cultivated many tropical fruits and vegetables, but I can safely say that his most beloved plant specimen was his prized night-blooming cactus flower that would bloom just once a year and just for a single night–a fitting metaphor for the fleeting nature of our lives.

Or maybe the best way of appreciating a man’s life is by visiting the places where he most loved to go during his free time. In my father’s case, his three favorite L.A. hotspots by far were the Venice Beach Boardwalk (he especially loved the small vendors and street performers); the original Tommy’s on the corner of Beverly and Rampart, open 24 hours a day (the original chili burger was his favorite L.A. staple); and the José Martí Monument in Echo Park, off of Glendale Blvd. (the Cuban poet was his hero). My father also loved Baja California, Mexico, especially the south-of-the-border beach towns of Ensenada, Rosarito, and San Felipe, where we spent many family vacations while I was growing up.

Alas, no single metric or criterion can fully capture the true meaning of a man’s legacy, for a life is more than the sum of all these parts. Instead, I will ask, “Who loved Don Francisco the most?” because a lot of people loved and admired my father, including his wife of 60 years (my mother Oilda), his sister and five brothers (my aunt Loida and my uncles Angel, Chucho, Emilio, Israel, and Manolo), his only son (yours truly) and daughter-in-law (Sydjia), and his four grandchildren (Adela, Adys, Aritzia, and Kleber). We will continue to remember him forever. Requiescat in pace. (Below is one of my favorite pictures of my father, pictured in his favorite chair napping with his youngest nieta.)