Butterfly Effect
or the feeling after the funeral
Thursday July 3rd
I haven’t slept it’s six forty five and I’m pretty sure the TSA agent just fell in love with me. It’s the necklace he says. Life doesn’t feel quite real, in general, but especially in Delta. In Miami, Delta is a ghost town and she is everywhere.
I find a little Sergio’s window for breakfast in a healthier looking airport cafe bodega where there are no customers only employees. The woman preparing my cortadito calls me corazon, mi amor, and chica, just like Yeya. Coworkers greet each other with kisses on the cheek and lots of flirting. I want them to kiss me good morning as well but they don’t and it’s fine I cry anyways, later. She tells me she spent four years on the other side and she’ll never go back. There’s no going back. Four years ago doesn’t exist anymore and neither does Sunday morning. The other side she’s referring to is gate D. Before that, Cuba.
The extended family said goodbye at the cemetery which was mostly okay except for saying goodbye to Yeyo but I swallowed it back and got in the limousine. He said he had to go home to take out the dog but it doesn’t make sense to just go home after. It’s different for us. Our family consists of seven not including significant others so getting home just means gathering around the kitchen island. Alone time doesn’t happen until late. Lynette ordered arroz con pollo the way Yeya made it, watery, the way Annette, the oldest, likes it.
My hands shook while I poured the salad dressing into the bowl and Sara took over. Gabi changed into her pjs and Fleetwood Mac played in the background at the perfect volume which was not loud at all. In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost
And what you had
Ooh, what you lost
When the doorbell rang for some reason I went running as if I knew. He said the traffic was too bad to go home and let the dog out, that the dog would be fine. Of course the dog will be fine and the traffic was too much I told him. Come in sit down let me get you a beer.
My dad read aloud what he had prepared in his notes and then came the letters she had written for each of us that no one knew about. There’s writing and then there’s writing and this family knows how to write.
Standing at the gate an older gentleman compliments my necklace and says his wife loves butterflies and how he wishes she was here to see mine. I thank him and tell him it’s my grandmothers. In the bathroom in Atlanta the girl behind me taps me on the shoulder to tell me I’m so pretty.
Sadness doesn’t look good on everyone, but for some reason it does on me. Madre used to tell Alex about Sara in broken English: cookie so funny, Alexa so sad. Anyone who has ever fallen in love with me did so when I was sad. Meredith Grey always made sad feel normal and fine and I loved what I saw of Seattle. I’d love to go back when no one is dying.
I know it’s her speaking through all these interactions, getting me through these three flights, getting me home. I know it’s her saying hola mi flaquita preciosa.
I was wrong ten days ago when I said the next time I was going to hug him was after his mother died. I was wrong to think I could plan how I would say goodbye and I was wrong to worry.
The Friday night before I left Seattle we heard what sounded like a domestic argument followed by a gunshot. I could hear Marcello’s heart beating from across the room as we avoided the windows and gathered ourselves. Before he could say what we both know it was I said wow what a firework and our son repeated it nervously. As if he knew it wasn’t a firework. He is three and this is the first time I’ve flown alone in six years.
I was in and out of Miami before anything could go wrong. I only really make sense as a person in Miami. This is becoming more and more clear.
It’s Thursday and nine of us are on flights, some headed back home others away.
It’s better this way. Everyone needs to recover. I hope Sara ends up going to the keys. Kristen and Cris and Andrew will be there. She was there everyday. She said goodbye every day for twelve days.
Life tints a little, permanently, after death. Temporarily, reality becomes surreal, almost extra special, to compensate for the extra pain. After a death the really good moments are perfect and the time in between the perfect and the horrible changes color.
It was a Monday when they put me on the phone with her so she could hear my voice one more time. I was walking Mateo to our room to take a nap and then suddenly I was hiding from him on the bathroom floor breaking out into hives. Mami why is your face like that? On Thursday the hospice nurse had her children gather around her and I sat in a restaurant in Seattle. They said she wouldn’t make it through the night.
She was asleep, on morphine, when I arrived Saturday evening. She heard me and she tried to move. I wrapped my rosary around her hands, warm and real. I kissed her forehead and read her poems. I whispered secrets and promised we would be okay. The next day I went back with Sara and spent the day watching her breathing become more labored, watching my father and his brother and sister reach levels of exhaustion and desperation while still managing to laugh when something was funny. It was a good last day.
At the funeral Katy told me that there is no reason to worry when you have faith.
For the amount that I spend worrying one would think I’m an atheist. I hope I know better now. I hope the download loads. I try to have so much faith and sometimes it feels like I do but I couldn’t handle it when the priest went rogue at the wake about AI. I didn’t believe in him when he tried to shame us. I can’t with the constant guilt and fear that comes with my Catholic faith and yet I am a product of it. She didn’t go to mass and neither do I.
She was a poet. If you’ve been following my substack you may have noticed I’ve been writing about her all year. As if she’s been preparing me. Still nothing can prepare someone to grab a cold stiff hand or to watch a coffin lower into the ground. Nothing could prepare us for the reality of losing the best part of a family so big that her absence broke something in everyone, and we all watched it.
I’m trying to view this grief as a gift which is not hard but even then it doesn’t help with the knot in my throat or the loss of appetite or the insomnia. I’m taking three planes to get back to my son and maybe I won’t cry as much in the desert.
My mom told me on Monday night as I watched 1883 in her bed and ordered an Alex #2 and tuna tar tar from Akashi that this was the first time I was with her alone since becoming a mom. It felt nice to be just a girl again. It felt weird to not feel any guilt.
She gave me the gift I wasn’t willing to give myself, a time machine.
She was waiting for me.
She lives on through you 🩷