Miguel and his "burrita blanca"

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Grandma is feeling better today and we shower to make sure we are good and ready for church today.  As we walk up to the church the bells ring and grandmother stops, the church bells tell her that today we will be saying good bye to someone else.  This week has been filled with death and the little Mexican village has had one or two deaths everyday this week.  Women don’t wash clothes on Sundays or do house work because it is the Lord’s Day but death waits and cares for no one.  Arriving in church with a body in the front makes me sad and I want to cry.  I am somehow reminded how I was unable to attend my great-grandfather’s funeral a few years ago when he passed. 

When the decision was made that we would be heading to the United States we really had no clue that we would be leaving everything and everyone we loved behind, perhaps never to see them again.  When my father moved to the U.S. a few years before us it was my great grandfather who became the only man in my life.  I loved him so much and he would play with me and call me his “burrita blanca” or his white donkey.  Trust me it’s was a term of endearment that I cherished.  He would sit on his stool in the kitchen and make me get on top of his cement table to sing and dance for him.  He would clap for me and cheer me on.  He was always my biggest cheerleader.  Then he would insist on taking my grandmothers “reboso” or shawl and using it to play bullfighter with me.  I was the “matador” and he was the bull he would chase me all around the house until I would start to cry, he would take me in his arms and wipe my tears away telling me that the best matadors don’t cry and I was one of the best.  His love and support meant so much to me that when I found out he had died my world shattered and I thought I would never be able to recover.  I was a selfish teenager who didn’t care to understand why we couldn’t travel to burry him.  I was sure that we would be allowed to return if the U.S. knew it was an emergency.  It took a lot out of my mother to explain to me why we couldn’t go burry him.  Today in this church with the smells and the rituals I am infuriated that I could not share this moment with my own great-grandfather.  Why couldn’t I be given the opportunity to say good bye to him, to kiss his forehead and tell him I loved him.  How come no one told me that the last time I saw my grandfather when I was 7 would be the last time I would ever see him.  Why didn’t I hug him longer, tell him I loved him more and why couldn’t I do that to my own family now.  So much is taken from us when we make decisions like the one that was made for me 23 years ago and today this man went to meet his maker and I was there to witness it.  If I am the one who is still alive, why do I feel deader than the man in the coffin?