Chronicles Revealed

Epilogue

Papa kept some sort of a diary. We knew about this as we went through his documents in his laptop which had no password control. He called it My Happy Chronicles. It was what kept him busy at his laptop after dinner and kept him awake until past midnight. He wrote everything there that he experienced or witnessed or thought about each day, either in the house or outside, as much as he could remember, it seemed. Maybe the chronicles were something like a mental exercise he had imposed on himself, an hour on hour, day-to-day test of his memory skills to date.

The diary or his chronicles was a no-holds-barred all in kind of data bank that included his misgivings and frustrations with me, our misunderstandings, his hopes and dreams for us, things he aspired for, his fantasies of being a writer and a poet which he said would never come true, his observations, his comments on current events, what he saw in his walks. His diary likewise included the most trivial things like arranging his part of the bed when he got up and I was still asleep, boiling water for his coffee or cleaning the gas range or washing the car.

He wrote his entries as raw, unvarnished and an uncensored truth. He quoted verbatim from memory and reading the chronicles feels like listening to an unedited tape recording. Papa did not mince words in his diary. Did he write his chronicles as merely self-expression and thought no one else would read it someday? Would he have been more circumspect in his writings if he knew his family would be reading his chronicles? But his documents were there for us to see. He probably wanted us all to read his diary and be the judge of what he had written. He was not going to compromise the integrity of his chronicles by holding back on what he wrote in order to please us. Besides, there was nothing hostile or derogatory in what he wrote. His chronicles were sincere, forgiving, and full of love and those are the things that really matter about them.

In one of his later entries, he wrote woke up this morning and I noticed I was alive. I thought I was a long time gone but here I am back to square one. Will it be better this time? None of us understood that. Maybe, it's one of what he called his inanities.

Like his friend Eli, he considered himself a house-husband with more household work than John Lennon. He cooked, he washed and iron clothes, swept, waxed and polished the floor, trimmed the Bermuda grass, pruned the plants, etc.. No need for a helper, he would say. Papa bordered on the manic-obsessive in hisk desire to keep things in the house in order all the time. He hated clutter and would scold his children and grandchildren for leaving things around. Put them in their proper places, he would tell them. Next time I'll impose a fine. It was in jest. He never collected it. Maybe, he just didn't remember it.

His first entry, Day 1, was about an odyssey he was embarking on. It set the tone of what he incorporated in his chronicles in the days and weeks and months and years to come. On his first day, he walked about fifteen kilometers from and back to the house, He was quite proud about his feat as he flippantly boasted to us that he didn't feel tired at all and he felt no soreness in his legs. These old legs are still that strong! Arriving home, he literally jumped into bed and was snoring in a minute or two. He didn't have lunch anymore because he woke up past six in the evening already.

He went out for his walk or journey on weekends and holidays only, minimum of ten kilometers for him. He wore an inexpensive smart watch which told him how many steps he has made during the day and their equivalent in kilometers he had walked. 8,000 steps per day was the minimum goal. The watch looked like a toy watch and he thought it was safe wearing it in his walks to more closely monitor also his heart rate, his oxygen level, his blood pressure, his respiratory rate, and his sleep data. The health indicators of the watch consistently showed normal condition. So there was nothing to worry about his exercise regimen and his health situation.