Dear Dad
Anthony Gutierrez
The ConTextos Authors Circle was developed in collaboration with young people who are at risk of, victims of or perpetrators of violence in El Salvador. In 2017, this innovative program expanded into Chicago to create tangible, high-quality opportunities that nourish the minds, expand the voices and share the personal truths of individuals who have long been underserved and underestimated. Through the process of drafting, revising and publishing memoirs, participants develop self-reflection, critical thinking, camaraderie and positive selfprojection to author new life narratives. Since January 2017, ConTextos has collaborated with the Cook County Sheriff's Office to implement Authors Circle in Division X of Cook County Department of Corrections as part of a vision for reform that recognizes the value of mental health, rehabilitation and reflection. These powerful memoirs complicate the narrative about violence and peace-building, and help author a hopeful future for these men, their families, and our collective communities. While each memoir's text is solely the work of the Author, the images used to create this book's illustrations have been sourced from various print publications. Authors curate these images and then, using only their hands, manipulate the images through tearing, folding, layering, and careful positioning. By applying these collage techniques, Authors transform their written memoirs into fully illustrated books. In collaboration with
Dear Dad Anthony Gutierrez
When I was young, I never imagined having to grow up without a father. I always knew my dad, but he stopped living with my mother and I since I was around the age of 3. That’s one of the youngest memories I think I have of him. I was sitting on his lap in the bedroom, and he’s just holding me. I’m looking at him and my mom fight. She’s hysterical, throwing his clothes and alligator skin boots out the room, crying. And I look up at him and he’s smiling, not screaming, trying to defuse the situation. Telling my mom to relax, but she just wasn’t trying to hear it. I think that was the last time he lived in the same household as my mother and I.
Then my mind goes blank for a year or two. I see pictures of us when I was young, living together, and being happy. I just can’t remember those good times. All my memories after that it’s just him and I, as in he wasn’t with my mom anymore. I used to wish my dad would’ve stayed with my mom when I was little, but I understand him in a way. My dad was still young, around 21-22 when I was born; my mom was 9 years older. He couldn’t give her what she wanted so he left.
I never resented him for it.
I just resented all the times and experiences I never got to share with him, like playing catch or any ball game for that matter.
But I remember always being happy to see him once or twice a week, even when we would just go to his apartment and he would sleep and leave me watching movies.
That was enough back then.
I was just happy to be around him. But he would usually take me to the arcade and I would be able to spend as many tokens as I wanted, or to the movie theatre and also play a lot of the games they had, get the biggest Icee, nachos, popcorn, and a lot of candy. The Sno-Caps and Milk Duds were my favorite. And you can’t forget the Dippin Dots. If not the movies, then we were at Chuck E Cheese for countless hours.
I remember still being happy when he took me over to his new girlfriend’s house. He would take me over and I would play with her daughters, (who I still know to this day).
Then I remember the disappointments of not seeing him.
And I remember the even bigger disappointment when he moved to California due to problems with his girlfriend, really not being able to see him. He came to visit once, then I went to visit once. He was in Mammoth Lakes. I went for summer vacation for a month when I was 9. He had another new GF. She was nice to me, all of them were. But I think she was genuine. I had a good time, rode 4-wheelers and went to the hot springs late at night with him. A lot of sightseeing.
Then I remember when he left to Mexico, more problems, and going to visit him there when I was 10. Meeting my Grandma and Grandpa for the first time and all my aunts, uncles, and cousins, too many to count. He lived with my grandparents. My grandparents would sleep in an Adobe cave, where they built another small room that was our kitchen, with a small stove and fridge. I would sleep in another room, with two full size beds, 2 dressers, and a small tv.
No running water. We would have to go to a well by the river and pump it with water engines. No bathroom the first and second time I went to visit either, so we would have to walk to the nearby woods in the day, the field behind our house at night. I really liked it, the nice mountain view in the morning, learning to ride horses and raise cattle, chickens, goats and swine. The small town consisted of 2 small stores where I could buy chips, pop, cigarettes and beer. A small plaza with a basketball court and a rotunda. A small church, small school and about 20 houses, and a couple old abandoned houses that were falling apart.
The second time I went to visit I had a little brother. Same girlfriend from Cali. My dad was always a happy person. Tough, good natured, and everyone respected him, wanted to be his friend. Plus he had a reputation for being a badass brawler, fighting anybody that disrespected him, even multiple police when they would drive by on b.s. from the nearby town about 20 minutes away.
I went back a 3rd time. Now I’m 13, smoking and drinking on the low. Not enough where he noticed, and also he was still doing his own thing, drinking all night with my older cousins and his friends. When I left this time, I remember saying goodbye to my Grandpa. He told me “Don’t say goodbye. Those are for people who aren’t going to see each other anymore. See you later.” My Grandpa died a couple months after I had left. It affected the whole family a lot. But my dad was really good at holding his feelings in. I never seen him be sad about it in front of me.
I went back again when I was 14, for another month and a half, and now I was more openly smoking and drinking with tattoos. My mom had told him about the stuff she didn’t approve of me doing and the people I was hanging around. Plus she told him about the smoking and drinking. He would tell me something about it sometimes, but he really wouldn’t press the issue too much. And I guess he was trying to figure out how to be a good father to me the little time I would go see him since he missed too much of my life. So he would always try to do fun stuff and make me happy.
He was affectionate when I was younger, but now since I was getting older, I guess neither of us knew how to really show it, except when saying goodbyes. I would also try to act tougher and older in front of him and I guess in a way be like him.
He was my role model even though he wasn’t always there.
In my eyes, my dad was the idea of what a man should be, strong, hardworking, fearless, and the joy of the party.
I came back and went to Lane Tech on the north side, but I dropped out freshman year in October 2011. I regret that now, especially because I was always really good at school. I always had good grades, and it was always really easy for me. I dropped out right around my 15th birthday, and moved out of my mom’s house after my friend and I got shot at in my backyard right in front of her. I went to live with one of my friends for a couple of months.
Things started getting really crazy in the neighborhood. A lot of people getting shot and dying. My momma was really sad and worried about me.
I’m her only son.
She got even more worried when detectives went looking for me for questioning about something that happened in the area. I got worried because the police really didn’t like me or my friends around that time, and I didn’t want to get in the middle of a nasty situation and be a target for them. So I agreed to go live with my dad in Mexico for a couple months. Which ended up being almost 2 years.
I didn’t know how to feel about being there. At first, I liked it but I missed the city, plus he had stopped drinking, and now I was smoking/drinking heavy. I was actually living with him now, not just visiting, so he would get on my ass a lot, but I wasn’t trying to hear it. I slowed down some, as in not drinking every day anymore. And he got off my back a little because I started really trying to help him with all the hard field work he needed help with. And anything else he would need help with. When we weren’t working in our fields, we would go work for somebody else, or for a while we worked for a program in the Government taking out huge rocks from the ground and cutting them.
So sometime after my birthday in 2012, we had just got paid. That night I was at 1 of the 2 stores. It was a little cold outside and I’m sitting with the owner, smoking a cigarette. It’s around 9 pm and nobody else was out. My dad shows up. He seems like he’s in a good mood and starts talking to the owner. Then out of nowhere he says to me,“What, you ain’t going to buy me a beer?” I was stuck for a moment until I realized he was serious.
The joy and excitement I felt that moment was great. This was my first time sharing a drink with him as a man. He had given me a cup or let me drink a beer when I was younger, but this was my first time buying him a drink. We drank two 40oz each and walked home slightly buzzed. After that it was a wrap.
He went from trying to be a good father, to being my best friend.
Everywhere he went, I would go. We would gamble at dominoes and cards at the town store, and go to rodeos and parties when they were going on. We would stay out all night drinking and go home at sunrise to make a great feast in the kitchen, munch out in our drunken haze. Other days we would go work from sunup to sun down in either his fields or wherever there was work to do. There was usually work to be done almost every single day.
He taught me the meaning of work hard, play hard.
Even at times when we would stay out all night drinking, we would go bust our ass working in the hot sun, hungover and all.
I would love to go work my dad’s fields, just him and I. Have lunch over a fire. Have long conversations with him. I felt really connected with him now, not just as a father-son, but also as a best friend. And I feel that he felt the same way.
I’ll always be grateful that I got to experience some of that fatherly love.
The rest of my time with my father was some of the times I will cherish the most forever. All those long conversations and long drives. All those countless hours side by side. We made up for a lot of lost time.
But I wish there wouldn’t have been lost time. Period.
Time went by, and it was now around June 2013. It was time for me to go back to Chicago. As we’re at the airport and we’re saying goodbye, I tried my hardest not to let him see me sad. I was 16, and I wanted him to know that I was strong. We hugged for a long moment, and he told me
“I love you. Don’t be sad. Have a strong heart, like steel.”
I told him I love him and walked away before I started cracking. I could tell he was sad too, and I didn’t want to see him like that.
I’m back in the city now, and soon started working at a meat cutting factory under a fake name, since I was still too young. The work was easy, just a rough schedule. I would have to be up around 3 in the morning because we would start at 4. All the way to 2:30, sometimes longer, putting in overtime. It was tiring.
Somewhere during that time, I fell off, as in I wouldn’t call my dad as much as I should have.
I would send him a little money when I got the chance. I didn’t realize he probably needed to talk to me. I didn’t realize that I really was his best friend, and now he was missing a big piece of his heart. That I was the only person that could understand him and that he would even think about opening up to.
Sometime around the end of January 2014 was the last time I talked to him. I was laying down, high off weed, tired, and on the phone with him. He’s trying to tell me something, but I just didn’t hear what he was really saying.
He was crying for help but didn’t know how to ask.
And then I was half falling asleep with him on the phone, so I said, “I’ll just call you tomorrow, Dad.” I didn’t hear the disappointment in his voice, and I didn’t call back the next day like I said I would.
It had been around a week when I got that call. Early Saturday morning, February 2nd, 2014, is a day I will remember for the rest of my life. I was just laying in bed. I don’t know what it was, but something felt kind of off. I thought it was just the liquor from the night before. I still felt buzzed, so I just brushed it off and started wondering what I was gon do for the day. I never thought I would receive the tragic, life altering news I got that early morning. My mom comes in my room, crying, holding her phone. I get it and hear all the crying in the background and my aunt told me, “It’s your dad.” She couldn’t get it out but she finally did. “He killed himself,” she said.
I was stuck for a minute. It didn’t seem real at the moment. I was wishing and hoping that I was in a bad dream. But the terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and the pain in my heart let me know it was as real as it got.
Once reality set in, I became hysterical.
I threw the phone, punching holes in the wall, throwing and hitting everything around me.
I couldn’t believe it. Not my dad, the strongest person I knew. He just couldn’t have done that. He wasn’t the type. I kept trying to come up with some sort of explanation that would make sense to me, something that would make the pain a little more bearable.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there wasn’t any logical reason for suicide.
That I would never comprehend the reason why he would choose to leave his 2 sons, that were so much like him.
I tried to hate him, but I couldn’t. So I just prayed and asked God to forgive him and allow him to have a spot in heaven, without any more pain and suffering. The following day, weeks, and months were a depressed blur of alcohol, drugs, bad decisions, and sadness.
I was 17 and lost.
Anthony Gutierrez I am from Albany Park.
I’m from a Christian mother, Catholic father
From Timberlands and crispy white Ones
I’m from the windy city, all the way from Mexico.
I am from the blue house by the corner Spacious, comfortable, you could always smell the old woodwork.
Spicy anything with salsa & tortillas,
I am from limes, corn, avocados and sugar cane,
From the hard times both my parents had to endure to meet in Chicago.
Fields full of maize that seem to go forever.
The beautiful mother that worries too much,
I’m from the annual Christmas Eve get togethers
And the strong hardworking father that left too soon.
And the “I swing, you swing” mentality. From Antonio and Idalia
There’s a random drawer full of family pictures that follow us everywhere.
I’m from the good children and troubled men
I can regret a lot of shit,
From “If you do something, you do it right.”
But I can’t regret where I came from.
And grilled steak soaked in lime.
And “Don’t feed the rats.”
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