Death changes how you live life. No two people touched by the same loss will come away from it with the same lesson or message. As our beloved move on from our physical existence, our s+ense of self changes and we redefine ourselves based on this change.
Depending on your age when you are first confronted with death, its occurrence in your life will mark a changing point in your philosophy.
My first personal experience with death was very close and personal. I was young, I was a child and yet the enormity of the loss overwhelmed my senses and my inner compass spun around aimlessly. Teco was more than just an aunt, she was my friend. I hadn't known her long, I was only a girl, but in her I found a kindred spirit and a loving heart. There are very few people who as adults really know how to listen to a child, instinctively she did and she let me pour my heart out to her and gave me an anchor in this new world. I do not dare compare my loss and its impact with what others, who knew her and loved her felt, I just know that at that moment, everything changed.
Death wouldn't show up in my life again until many years later. Despite the fact that in a family as large as mine it is inevitable that there should be as many exits as entrances, none of the deaths touched me personally. Until my sister died.
It had been an uneventful morning, I was on the internet looking for a birthday present for my mom, her birthday had been the day before and I hadn't forgotten, I just hadn't found anything that I wanted to gift her. Then the phone rang and my life was never the same again.
I remember everything, the screams, the confusion, the impotence, yet I remember nothing. Instantaneously my emotions shut down. I made the phone calls I needed to make, I packed my suitcases and packed up my car and headed south, I headed home. I drove from Cincinnati to Fort Lauderdale non-stop. I remember absolutely nothing of the trip, I came back to myself when I saw the Cypress Creek Road sign and I made my exit off of 95.
I got home and I took my mother in my arms. She was a frail thing that aged a lifetime in one day and whose world had been shaken upside down. I walked into my house and felt the despair hit me like a wall, she wasn't coming down the stairs to greet me, we wouldn't share one more cigarette at the door, my sister was gone.
People kept coming to me telling me my mom wasn't ok, wondering if I was ok, saying words of comfort, I am sure; I heard nothing, I felt nothing. I walked around the house looking for a sign of what had happened and why, yet those walls held no answers for me, she had left and taken all the answers with her.
Arrangements were made and plans for her funeral readied and the moment came to say my last goodbye. I followed her wishes as she explained them to me many months before her actual death. She wanted to be cremated, no viewing and no typical funeral get-togethers. I walked into the funeral home with a handful of my relatives and fell apart. This was the same funeral home where I had come to say my last goodbyes to my aunt, all of the overwhelming feelings that had been kept at bay flooded my heart again as I walked into that viewing room to say goodbye to my sister.
I know that there were people with my mom, I don't know who and I haven't thanked them yet, but at that moment I truly understood that she was really gone.
She laid there in the favorite blouse that I had picked out and delivered to the funeral home. She lay with her hands crossed at her navel and seemingly asleep, except I knew she wasn't asleep. I walked close to her and reached out for her hand, her pretty delicate hands, and I tried to take them into mine but I couldn't move them, she was already in death's arms and she could not hold my hand through this. I looked at her and wanted to pull her back to me, to bring her back into our world and into our complicities, into our heated conversations about everything and anything and into the songs that we had sang at the top of our lungs. I begged her at that moment not to leave me, I confessed that I didn't think that I could do this, that I was not strong enough to get myself and mom through this and that she had to come back, please, one more talk, one more hug, one more I love you, not this goodbye.
But it couldn't be. I can never know what her last thoughts had been, if she'd remember our good moments, our laughs. I will never know if she knew how much I love her, how much she means to me and how empty my life is without her. I will never be able to tell her how much I looked up to her and that more than a sister, I lost my best friend. I walked away that day a different woman.
The life that I had built before losing her was no longer enough, suddenly the frailty of life had been demonstrated and I could no longer go back to my old life so I moved on. Much has happened in my life since and not a day goes by that I don't wonder what it would be like if you were still here. I can almost see you in your comfy chair reading to your nieces and nephew. I can see you taking pride in your nephew's drawings, gratified that at least one of them is artistic like you. I can see you spoiling the girls rotten and calling and talking to Victoria about her plans and chatting to Gabriela about her day at school. You and I would be tearing up this election and making plans for thanksgiving and Christmas and you would ask me if I was happy, like you always did, and I would tell you Yes and I would steal a hug and a kiss and we would giggle and laugh like if we were girls.
I have had other losses. My aunts, friends and even my father passed away, yet nothing had the effect on me that losing my sister did. She was supposed to have been there when mom was not, she was supposed to have been there and not have left me, again, now I don't know what will be. I do know Yalita that death cannot take away the memories and the happiness we once shared. It cannot block the love we felt and the fact that despite the illness and distance and age differences, love knows no boundaries, no loss.
So with you in my heart and hope in my eyes, I take one more step towards life and hope that you are watching from wherever you are.
This is for all of you that know only too well what it is to have lost someone you love.
All of my Love,
Claudia
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