Latinx Files: A eulogy for my father

Somewhere between the Texas speed trap towns of George West and Three Rivers, my dad uttered a phrase that nearly made me swerve his car off the road.

“Estoy muy orgulloso de ti, mijo.”

It was late November 2023 and we were heading northbound on U.S. 281, one of two main arteries that connect the Rio Grande Valley to the rest of the state, on our way to Arlington to watch the Dallas Cowboys take on the Seattle Seahawks. We were on an eight-hour road trip to make, as one friend so eloquently put it, a “pocho pilgrimage” to AT&T Stadium.

The words hit me like a ton of bricks. It’s not that he hadn’t expressed or shown the sentiment before. He had, and I could always tell how proud of me he was by the way he beamed when at his asking, I would tell him about the projects I was working on. I still remember his hearty laugh and “¡Ay, que Fidel!” when I revealed to him that one of the reasons behind the Día de Muertos digital altar was to sneak my grandfather — his father — into The Times.

This felt different, though. He had spoken like someone who knew he didn’t have much time left on this earth and wanted to make sure that nothing important was left unsaid.

I gripped the steering wheel as I processed the moment, focusing on keeping the car steady on that mesquite-lined highway. I took a beat and cleared my throat, fighting back tears as I tried to formulate a response.

“Yo sé, apá.”

It was the best I could muster.

My father was diagnosed with Stage 4 cardia gastric cancer in June 2022, and ever since I’ve tried to go back to Texas as often as possible.

The first 10 months were relatively easy. I would book a round-trip flight and meet him in Houston, where he was receiving care at MD Anderson Cancer Center. We’d stay a few days so he could see his doctors and get chemotherapy treatment, and when that was over with, we would drive the six hours to South Texas. I would then spend the next two weeks with my family before it was time to head to Houston again. Once his next round of treatment was complete, I’d return to L.A. and one of my siblings or my mother would bring him home.

Despite the circumstances, or perhaps because of them, I came to enjoy those moments where it was just the two of us. I’d long learned that the best way to get my dad to open up was to talk to him about sports, so we killed long hours to and from Houston talking about his biggest love: fútbol. We both bought into the conspiracy theory that then-Mexican men’s national team head coach Gerardo “Tata” Martino was going to sabotage El Tri during that year’s World Cup so that Argentina would win. Such was our pessimism that we correctly predicted that Mexico would not advance past the group stage. Once in a while, after we’d exhausted all our sports stakes, he’d share tidbits of memories from his childhood. More often than not, however, he’d ask me to turn down the stereo so he could watch sermons on YouTube for his spiritual fortification.

When the summer of 2023 rolled around, it became clear to me that he wasn’t going to beat cancer. The round-trip flights booked weeks ahead became one-way tickets purchased days before, and the scheduled doctors’ appointments turned to emergency visits to the hospital. Despite the initial effectiveness of his treatment, his cancer was aggressive and spread to more parts of his body. By fall, it dawned on me that I could likely count with my fingers the number of times I’d get to see him again. This realization only strengthened my resolve to make every moment with him count, to take every opportunity to express how much I loved him. For the first time in a decade, I spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas at home. In between those holidays, I took him on the aforementioned trip to Arlington and my brother accompanied him to Mexico City for the Liga MX final. That way, we figured, if he was truly not long for this world, he may as well go out with a bang.

The wheels started falling off quickly at the start of 2024. By late January, he had lost so much weight and become so frail that he needed a walker to move around. In mid-February, his oncologist told him that they had exhausted every possible treatment. The goal now was pain management and her recommendation was hospice care.

Two weeks ago, I got a phone call from my sister who in between sobs told me that I needed to come home as quickly as possible. I was on a plane the next day.

On April 1, Fidel Martinez Sr. died at home, surrounded by his loved ones. He was 62.

I’ve spent the last few days — months, really — thinking about how I was going to eulogize my dad in this space, and the best I could come up with was to conscientiously avoid painting him as someone who worked hard at giving his children a better life. He certainly did that, but my dad was more than just his labor.

He was also a loving husband who adored his wife of 40 years; a good father to his three children; an amazing grandfather who doted on his four grandchildren; a dutiful son who visited his mother every Sunday.

I’ll miss his quick wit and sense of humor. He was a great trash talker and surprisingly great at nicknaming inanimate objects — in one of his last visits to L.A., he christened my old pickup truck “La Piñata” because of how beat up it was. Most of all, I’ll miss just being around him, being able to call him and talk about nothing in particular.

Thankfully, in the days since losing him, I’ve been able to find comfort in knowing that we had quality time together till the very end, and that he departed knowing that his family would be OK.

Above all, I’m forever grateful I got a chance to say goodbye to him.

— Fidel Martinez

(Jackie Rivera / For The Times; Martina Ibáñez-Baldor / Los Angeles Times)

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