YEAR 66 COMES TO AN END

I'm preparing myself for death as I commence my 67th year. My father lived until he was 87 and my mother is 86, so maybe I should be more optimistic, but I've never been more confused, fearful and angry at any time in the previous 66 years. I live alone and have no beliefs in a god or everlasting life. I have a lingering trepidation that there might be a hell inculcated into me as a result of my Catholic upbringing. Nuns telling six-year-old children that they could burn forever if they missed Sunday mass can have a traumatic effect on an innocent that leaves him trembling in permanent paranoia until he exhales his last breath.

Siddhartha Gautama, before he became the Buddha, was an Indian prince who knew nothing but luxury, but wealth could not blind him to the grim reality that surrounded him. He could not find tranquility knowing that man grew old, became sick and died. These troubling thoughts inspired him to forge a philosophy that would imbue him with contentment throughout his life. He wanted to die peacefully. I have started down that last stretch to oblivion. I will never attain the Buddha's transcendent state. I am 99.99% carnal and .01 spiritual. In the same manner as my age, the numbers don't lie. I am an animal and I will decay like a dog. But that doesn't mean I can't begin laying a foundation for my departure.

I want to move light. I have reduced my belongings in 12 large, plastic boxes containing my published books, my writings, newspaper clippings and many other mementos from my three son's first shoes to their own initial stabs at art to five. I have been looking at photos of my parents when they were young to photos of my boys when they were babies. I have been reading many past issues of different publications to which I have contributed. So many fruitless controversies and so many dead actors. I feel like I have been at a week-long wake as I have discarded and saved these tangible memories. Those that I have kept, I've placed in two plastic containers, one for Carlos and Joaquin and another for Michael. I have been staring at death and time straight in the face and I am shaken backtracking through the past. So much doesn't seem possible, but I am bidding farewell and that is unnerving in itself.

I am at the crossroads. After 42 years of waging the noble war against ignorance, poverty and corruption as a teacher and a journalist, the cockroaches have only multiplied. You eliminate one Brownsville politician and he is replaced by another whose appetite for power and money and the collateral perks condemn Brownsville to the ignominious distinction of the Third World Capital of the United States.

There is no future here. Matamoros is gone. It would take a hurricane to sweep its blood-soaked streets clean. There is no reason to believe that the violence in Mexico engendered by corruption, poverty and drugs is going to change. While we worry about the environmental impact of refineries, we have no idea the amount of pollution the maquiladoras subsidized by slave wages are spewing into the air and pouring into the water. Overpopulation will denude the community of its disappearing pristine beauty. Cheap subdivisions and pavement will turn our oasis into a desert. Let's not even mention the sorry impression our dilapidated downtown has on local folks, let alone visitors.

Am I surrendering? Is this my informal resignation that as a watchdog my days of howling at the powerful for the injustices they have perpetrated against the powerless are over? I don't think so because I can't tolerate blackguards reducing me to a 98-pound weakling they can punch in the face and kick in the balls while they pursue their adolescent pussy fantasies. I am a writer and I have to write. If I don't, I cease to exist. It is my raison d'etre. But I am diminished by court orders and direct threats against my job. Perhaps I am no different from a punch-drunk boxer who has stayed in the ring too long. Perhaps I have met my match. Perhaps time has passed me by. I am intimidated. But never underestimate the ferocity of a trapped beast.

My goals, notwithstanding, are simple and concrete. I have 70 working days left with the district and I want to finish my 39th year and my career with honor. It is important that my colleagues and students remember "McHale" as a good coach and a good teacher. My writing continues. Obstacles don't prevent water from running south. It simply seeks a new path. I am a musician and I must play my songs and sing my lyrics.

I love Brownsville's people. I have profound relationships, lifelong friends and warm acquaintances. I'm a working-class stiff and my sympathies have been with my fellow comrades. I have nothing against the rich. I don't dislike them. I am simply not one of them and I know that they think differently. I don't trust them. As a Socialist Democrat, I can't comprehend how Hispanics can steal from their own people and look at themselves in the mirror as they enrich themselves on the backs of the poor. Am I being overdramatic as I deal with my melancholy mood? I must speak from the heart. The authorities can't take my right to express my sentiments about this existence of ours. Or maybe they can. Lawyers need money and if you're willing to pay, they will prove that the innocent are guilty or vice versa. But unlike other women, my muse hasn't abandoned me.

Whether it's prose or poetry, the confessional style has been one of my favorite genres. I am not afraid to allow my readers to peek inside my closet filled with skeletons. But only a peek, mind you! I have not succumbed to hopelessness and I'm not helpless, but the winds of change are blowing and it's not a norther. Tonight my oldest son and I will share a bottle of wine, maybe two, over dinner and my baby boy will make it a perfect menage a trois. It will be a birthday that the three of us will remember. When it's all said and done, it's only the memories that accompany us to the grave.