“This moment, the
first instant he saw Olivia, would be burned into his memory forever. He knew
that no matter what course his life might follow, the memory of his first sight
of her would be something he would always cherish. She was dressed in a simple blue
dress decorated with small yellow wild flowers. A lace collar surrounded her
lovely slender neck. Her long black hair was tied modestly in the back, held in
place by a matching blue ribbon. Her body was long and graceful. "She's
perfect," Jon thought. He had never seen a woman who was so utterly
perfect. She looked at Jon for a long moment before smiling. He was dumbstruck.
He couldn't say anything. Her dark eyes held his. Her smile radiated like the
sun emerging from a cloud. It overwhelmed him.”
It begins with my thoughts of my great-grandfather, Luis
deTeves. He was born in the city of
Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel, Azores in 1851. I know almost
nothing about this man. I know he immigrated to Hawaii in the 1880s. I’ve seen a
photograph of him taken later in life; a lean, older man who looks like he’s
spent a hard life working under a harsh sun. He was working for his family. He was working for me, a
great-grandson born well after his death.
I was watching Antique Roadshow. People were showing off
valuable items handed down from generation to generation. I have nothing from
my great-grandfather and for good reason. He didn’t have anything. I only have
a couple of things from my own father, so my own great-grandchildren will be in
the same position. Nothing from me, the late dear great-grandpa David Teves.
Except for my writing.
I have cancer. As a matter of fact I’ve had two different
cancers in the last year. The first one, kidney cancer, was successfully extracted
from my body. The second cancer, we’ll this one is different. It’s a tough
bastard called Multiple Myeloma, a blood cancer that can be treated but has no cure.
So it goes.
So it goes.
I used to dream of becoming a successful writer. In my mind’s eye I thought that someday I might be able to enjoy a few things in life that such a career might offer. I know now that realistically, it’s not going to happen. I have been thinking of the road ahead of me. I look at a rock that I keep on top of my writing desk, knowing that it will be around for hundreds of years, heck maybe thousands of years. after I’m gone. And like my great-grandfather Luis, I will be nothing but a faded photograph in someone’s family album.
But I do have a chance at a modest immortality through my
books. I have a feeling that they will be handed down at least a couple of
generations before they are forgotten. And on the Internet, they have a chance
to last for as long as Amazon.com is in business.
I wrote an entry for this blog called “Who will get my
records when I’m gone?” or something like that. At the time I was thinking
(while slightly drunk on a fine Dillian Zinfandel) that it was my ticket to
immortality. Someday I’d have a great-grandchild who will find the records in a
forgotten nook in his parent’s basement and wonder, “Who the heck was this guy?”
My books are an even better chance at living for a couple of
hundred years. And if my future progeny read them, they might catch a glimpse
of what I was like, my soul if you believe in such things. And that’s all I
really want. A chance that I will be remembered and appreciated not for the
things I won’t be able to leave them, but what is in my heart.
So I will write. I will finish my four book "Land of Dreams" series in a year
or so, and if I feel up to it there’s a grand ghost story lurking inside me.