Coco

Translated from the poem I wrote for my grandpa’s funeral: Find me I left, I’m here I loved, I’ll love> Find me,  I stayed, I’m there  To remember, to liveI grew up surrounded by the devoted, delicate caring of our dead. The ones that leave us behind never really leave us, even when we were barely alive to remember them at all (even when we weren’t there at all). I feel as if I know my family more than I ever lived with them and I never realized what a blessing that was. What a beautiful thing to grow up in a culture that accepts the end of life, that embraces our mortality, that honors the legacy we leave behind. This is my second watch after my grandpa passed away last year, my second Dia de Los Muertos without him. This year I cried more than the last and I have a feeling that that is the way it will continue to be. From T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding IV “We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them.”The more time spent far from the environment that cherishes and fosters my memories of those that aren’t here, the more guilt I carry with me. The further away I am, the less I can find the words to talk about how much love I carry in my heart for them.  From Fleabag: “I don’t know what to do with it —With what? With all the love I have for her.” Remembering, remembering seems all we can ever do. But if I have learned anything from grief in this last year, it’s that we can actively engage with our suffering. We can choose to accept the tears, and the guilt, and the hopelessness. We can dance with the fact that we will never outlive our haunting. We can hug everyone we love harder. We can linger in the places that were once shared. We can do what they would’ve done, we can give what we miss receiving. And so, at the end of the day, the pain doesn’t necessarily make us stronger nor does it go away, but it does change us and at least in my case, it can make us tender and grateful for the fullness of all our live has been and can be.