When we feel sadness, it becomes easy to learn what contentment is: a state of happiness and satisfaction. When we find ourselves in misery, we can find laughter in the smallest things: gratitude. When we hold hate in our hearts, it only hurts us; we can transcend aggression into a warrior-like passion: courage through vulnerability! This is when fear becomes the catalyst for bravery, and pain turns into strength and resilience.
My father loved to sing, tell stories, and create lyrics and short poems, but he passed away without saying one word. And I didn’t have the time to absorb what was really happening. I was trying to understand…
Picture this: You’re sick; you’re so sick that you get used to it. And some words can cut like a blade, but deep down inside you might be suffering in silence. Now you’re suffering in silence; you stop responding and start reacting! You’re saying things instinctually which hits rationality in the head and now we have stopped thinking. We’re fighting and it hurts because we can’t express everything we’ve been through and how hard it has been for all of us. We are all trying to live a better life, but some things just do not seem right!
From her bedroom window, my mom saw my dad walking through the neighborhood. She later met him at a grocery store in Troy Ave, Brooklyn, New York. This is where he worked, prior to him owning a store in Queens (which went up in smoke) and then another store on Pennsylvania Ave. In 1979 — during October — right after my parents met, they at once began dating. They took a trip to the Dominican Republic, the following month of November.
Not too long after, a household wedding was arranged and on the 8th day of December, my parents got married. They returned to New York to start their lives together, on the 19th day of December! After many years have passed, my dad searched for a better job opportunity! Finally, he began employment at the Community Supermarket in Pennsylvania Ave, Brooklyn, New York (which he owned and operated with his brothers). He worked overtime on a regular basis before we moved to Florida in 1995 and the property went unattended. I remember waiting almost every night for my dad to return home with a bag full of candy.
In a video excerpt called, Wealth Equals Health (California Newsreel, 2014), from the Unnatural Causes series (Episode 3), studies have shown that as immigrants “become American,” their socioeconomic status becomes intricately connected to their health status. According to Karvonen et al. (2021), the health-wealth gradient is difficult to assess, considering that other determinants come into play. For example, social determinants of health are relative income and social status, employment and working conditions, education and literacy, childhood experiences, the physical environment (e.g., housing), social supports (friends and family), healthy and unhealthy behaviors, and access to health services (Hill, 2020). The gradient of health and wealth is used to describe how people who are less advantaged have worse health and thereby shorter lives than those who are more advantaged, in terms of socioeconomic position (Karvonen et al., 2021). Notwithstanding, having little or no money plays a fundamental role in the development of poor dietary habits! Lastly, recent studies are finding that unhealthy dietary patterns (which contribute to unhealthy lifestyle factors) kill more Americans than tobacco and high blood pressure.
Since 2020, Covid-19 has brought on many challenges for everyone, and so has the environment. My father passed away on January 16, 2021, from “natural causes.” Natural causes that could have been avoided if he lived a healthy life. His health deteriorated; meanwhile, his chronic conditions went unnoticed, amid the pandemic. It was too late for Dad; despite this, with a positive-pessimistic attitude, it does not have to be too late for us!
Our Standard American Diet (SAD) affects each of us in unusual ways; we are all experiencing it in different waves. I hope to continue to improve and support my well-being (e.g., physical, intellectual, emotional, social, vocational, financial, and environmental success). Furthermore, spiritually with every breath I take, I hope to age gracefully. It is our inalienable right — as human beings — to cultivate the soil we share so that we all are given the chance to grow gracefully, thus sharing our different strengths of greatness or brilliance with one another with authenticity and harmony.
California Newsreel. (2014, October 22). Unnatural causes: Explore health equity: California newsreel. UNNATURAL CAUSES | Explore Health Equity | CALIFORNIA NEWSREEL. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://unnaturalcauses.org/resources_video.php?res_id=492
Hill, R. (2020, June 14). Inequality and the social gradient of health. YouTube. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://youtu.be/nNGEQf5TW1M
Karvonen, S., Moisio, P., Vepsäläinen, K., & Ollonqvist, J. (2021, August 4). Assessing health gradient with different equivalence scales for household income — a sensitivity analysis. SSM — population health. Retrieved June 18, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8368020/