What "Be Safe" Really Means

Since I was born, my father has worked in hospitals. As an engineer, his jobs were all about safety — making sure the machines worked well to keep people alive, prevent illness and infection.

​Now he’s almost 80 and we’re closer than ever. We talk or text every day. He sends jokes. I send photos of my daughter, his youngest grandchild, or concert videos of his cousin Oscar, who also spent childhood in the Bronx ghetto and now has four Grammys as composer and pianist of the Spanish Harlem Orchestra.

me & my cousin Oscar Hernandez at SF Jazz Fest, 15 Dec 2023

The NYC ghetto isn’t known for safety. My dad used humor to cope. It served him well and still does. Yet even though he’s lived in safer towns for almost 50 years, his brain is still wired with these words: Be safe. 

At least once a day, his texts say, “Be safe.” What does this really mean?

It means his love for me runs inexplicably deep. It means he doesn’t want me — or my brother or sister — to die before he does, and he’s afraid of the grief he would feel if we did. He got a scent of this possibility in 2021 when I was diagnosed with a massive brain tumor (which, thank God, was benign) and was anesthetized for nine hours with my skull cut open. Perhaps the same fear surfaced when my brother joined the Army. All parents I know agree that losing your own child is the most awful heartbreak. 

When my dad would say, “Be safe” in my 20s and early 30s, I sometimes found it annoying because it seemed to come from fear. 

With a bit more maturity in my veins now, and a lifelong devotion to Love as my “religion”, I see through its eyes and am filled with gratitude. Love knows tenderness. Compassion. How fortunate I am to have a father who loves me this much! 

Every day now — when I read a text that says, “Be safe” — what I am seeing is:
​
You mean so much to me. There is risk and danger in the world that I can’t control. I don’t want to feel the pain I would feel if you died before me. I love you so much. P.S. Text me later when you’re home safe... and get a real job.

My heart’s response back is:

Dad, you’re the best. Keep those Bronx, New York jokes comin’ strong. I am vibrantly alive and I intend to live for many more years. My heart will break when your body dies, and that’s OK — I am not afraid of that grief. Love is what we’re made of, and you will live with me forever.

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