By Yudi Kravzov
My cousins suddenly called me to tell me that it had been 30 days since my aunt died and, as the tradition in my family says, a month after the burial we go to the cemetery for the first time, all together to visit the grave.
Between the rain and the traffic, we arrived around one in the afternoon, and we sadly realized that even though her body was still in the same place, my aunt was no longer there.
In these last times, between the pandemic, errands, and commitments, I had a feeling in my heart of sadness because I missed her. I should’ve visited her more. Being with her was like putting a pause in my existence, a parenthesis in the daily hustle and bustle. Perhaps it was her slowness that made her so imposing. My aunt managed to transport me to a timeless place. Sometimes I go so fast, and I fall asleep so tired that I feel like I’m not breathing.
Her absence turned her house into walls, her dresser was left untouched, and the cat was left without a mom. Our voices became whispers.
I stared at the photos she had by her nightstand. Her treasures, her letters, her memories. Boldly, I opened a drawer and a small sheet with her handwriting jumped into my hands: “Understanding without any distortion what we really are is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential because it gives us freedom,” Jiddu Krishnamurti. I took the note, folded it carefully and felt the right to keep it. Without anyone seeing me I kept it in my bra, right on my left breast. I tried to record the phrase of her teacher in my mind, and to have her closer to my heart, “The Principle of Virtue”, among many other things that I would have liked so much to talk with her about.
Seeing the whole family together made me think how much she would have liked to be here with Uncle Pancho and Uncle Leon; eating paella, salad, sapodilla ice cream, and date cake; listening to my mother talk, laughing out loud at my cousin’s jokes and nagging at my uncle.
I want to convince myself that the beings that leave take a part of us with them, and the beings that stay have a part of their loved ones with them, too. I now carry a new part inside—as if we were turning into pieces of many loved ones.
I sighed sadly when a flock of little birds distracted me. Then I wished with all my heart that my aunt would be with them flying at her whim through meadows and mountains, freed from her body that only hindered her.
I don’t know, perhaps the reason why we all live so tangled up with commitments and duties, without being able to breathe easily, has a lot to do with the feeling that each of us has an old man, full of wisdom, waiting for someone to come visit.
