Gone

Today, I read a post on someone else's blog about how much it would hurt her to lose her father. To not have him there to share those precious moments with her: her wedding, the birth of her children, to see them grow up, that sort of thing. And I found myself no knowing what to say to that.

My dad is gone. My mom is gone. My grandmother is gone. Even my biological father is gone. I only have my grandma from my mom’s side and my grandfather from my dad’s side, and I must say I am terrified of losing them, especially him. I know it is much more probable that he will pass before I do and that it is only natural (after all, he is 90 years old), but it still keeps me awake at night some nights. I dread that moment because I know that my life will change forever yet again. I will never be the same after he dies. I will become a different person, as I have everytime I have lost someone I love.

It is strange when a person experiences so many losses so young. It changes you at a very early stage. It makes you tougher, and at the same time it makes you realize how vulnerable life is, how fragile, how terribly brief. I do believe that feeling the pain of losing someone you love is different for everyone, because everyone is different. A mother's grief over losing her child is not the same feeling as that of a daughter grieving for her father, but when you have experienced that heartache first-hand, you can relate that feeling to someone else's, even though everyone experiences loss in a different way.

For example, guilt. I've always felt guilty. I wonder if I will feel it again because I was not there during the last years of his life, because I did not take care of him, because I did not make him hire a live-in nurse. Because I did not make him hire a driver. Because I did not give him grandchildren. Because I kept living my life in New York even though there is nothing keeping me here but the wishful thinking of my own freedom. And I think, how selfish of me, to want to live my own life. To prefer to stay away from all those things that hurt me. Away from my drug-addicted brother. Away from the constant reminders of the life that I should be having according to everyone else's opinion and standards. At least here in NY there are so many other single people that I do not stand up in a crowd if I go to the movies alone. Being divorced here is not as bad as it would be in Mexico.

On my most recent trip to Mexico City I realized that I do not belong there anymore. Men seem to be too innocent for me, too obvious. I know what they are going to say five minutes before they say it. And I find it truly scary, because I do not want to be the lonely octogenarian whose corpse is found because of the stench of her rotting body, days (or even weeks) after her death. All of a sudden, it dawned on me: if I ever go back to Mexico, I will have to be alone and be okay with that. And, for me, to be alone has always been both a deadly fear and a strange goal to stride towards. An unnatainable achievement. Almost an impossibility.

I wonder how I will be like when I am truly and utterly and completely alone. Without anyone to love or anyone to love me. Without my mother, and my fathers, and my grandmother, and my grandfather. Will I become harsher? I believe I can be pretty harsh just about now, but I might be deluding myself. Will I become cruel? More cynical? Or will I become a risk-taker, jumping off of planes to see if my profecies fulfill themselves?

I don't know, but I like being as stupidly sensitive as I am right now. I like learning from my pain, feeling it so deeply that if physically hurts. Listening to my body's sounds, to my own heart beating ever so-lightly that it seems that it's going to stop, but it doesn't. Feeling the blood in my veins pumping through my legs and arms, my hands, my fingertips. My forehead. I am alive. And I wonder, how much longer?