El Sombrero de Abuelo

She didn’t cry when he died. She wasn’t even there when it happened. As she made her way to the airport terminal, a strange sensation took hold of her composure and she’s been carrying it around ever since. Abuelo died in that moment in the arms of my cousin Juanito, who pierced the death filled air with a shriek so alarming and definitive, abuelita knew before rushing into the bedroom he was gone. When mom arrived at the house she grew up in Ciudad Hidalgo and saw abuelo laying in his wooden coffin, she did not weep. The tears refused to spring forth of their own accord as if some part of her being intuited there was no need for such a harrowing display of grief. She looked around at the somber dispositions of neighbors and relatives gathered around to pay their respects to Maurilio, my abuelo. Some she remembered from the days when Ciudad Hidalgo was just a tiny rural village surrounded by dark imposing mountains. Others were like the strangers she passed daily on the streets of Chicago, as distant to her as the tears that had yet to materialize. She briefly considered changing into mourning clothes upon glancing down at the wrinkled jeans and sweater she still wore after the eight hour trip. But then she noticed abuelita sitting quietly next to his coffin, oblivious to the flow of people entering and leaving the home abuelo built from the ground up. Mom took a place next to her and for 114 days, she did not leave her side. Abuelita would not have made it without her, even as we struggled to hold ourselves together back here without mom. I can’t imagine what it’s like to not lose it if, and when, one of my parents dies. Death has been on my mind as of late, a constant presence that cunningly gnaws away at my foolish attempts at composure. The earth has given way to life after a long winter that tested the resolve of even the most hardened of cynics. The trees, once bare and naked during their barren, albeit transitional, cycle are now dressed in their lush foliage. I met abuelo when I was 11 years old. If only I had known that would be our only encounter, I would have asked him about life before Ciudad Hidalgo and the money he buried on the farm he was raised. We all went to Ciudad Hidalgo the summer before Daniel fractured my spirit. Our extended break from school had just started, and I have no idea how mom came up with the money to fly 6 people to Mexico. She was barely making minimum wage and raising 5 kids on her own. Those years were hard, savage and unpredictable and many a night I wondered why we didn’t have money. But we went, and now, every time I close my eyes, I still see the guava tree in abuelita’s garden and the millions of stars twinkling down at me as I glanced up from the atrium where I stood on those cool summer nights when the crisp mountain air would come rolling down. I never saw abuelo again and even though he’s dead, I feel him all around me. His picture hangs on my refrigerator door. In it he’s wearing his signature sombrero, the one that complimented his full white beard and starched white collared shirts. A glass of mezcal rests on the table where he sat down to feast on simple meals prepared by abuelita who taught mom everything there is to know about cooking. He wore that straw colored sombrero everywhere, even to church, right up until the last two years of his life when he was too sick to get out of bed. All I have is that brief moment in time to hold onto and the heavy weight of knowing there is nothing I can do to keep my parents from meeting the same demise. I long to walk the dusty narrow streets of Ciudad Hidalgo, even though I don’t belong there, because I so desperately want to belong somewhere other than this place that offers me very little in the form of certainty. I thought I saw abuelo late one night last year when I lay in bed after a particularly long and trying day. I don’t think I believe in ghosts; I’m really not sure anymore. I’m not so easily swayed by our mind’s romantic attempts to hold on to the dead after they have passed. Dead is dead, and I know for a fact the living are even more precarious to hold onto so you might as well let go of those who have stopped breathing. Yet I can’t help but wonder if he was in my room and if on his deathbed he thought of me and how he would have liked to have seen me one last time as I so fervently wish every time I pick up the slowly fading picture hanging on my refrigerator door.