Unbroken Angel: Happy Birthday, Absent Brother Juan Francisco Urrea
Carnal, today is your birthday. I don’t know where you are now. But I know you’re somewhere. Many of our intellectual friends would argue that if you’re dead, you are nowhere. I know you well enough to know you are busy wherever you went. I am sure—as your family insisted a couple of weeks ago when I sat at your seat at your kitchen table—that you are watching over us. Perhaps leaving signs and hints and small pranks to let them know you’re still the great man you were. I suspect you’re living your old science fiction dreams—I imagine you circling, , books. And you sent me the entire space opera series by . I smile, still remembering the galloping space warriors on the good ship Skylark. And in the agonizing months of trying to write a novel inspired by your passing, I sensed you near. I was constantly startled when a scene I had “invented” turned out to have been a very private moment or conversation you had shared with your wife, or your daughter. Blanca, Millie, Alma, Juanito—they are feeling you today. We all are.
