The 18th of October 1999: In Memoriam

Abstract

The story of a Cuban-American family and some lessons for patient care. I have been fretting about this day, in fact this very hour of this day, for many months. What a relief it will be when midnight finally comes and goes, and I know that I have stared at my inner sadness straight on and have conquered today. A student of mine gave me a card that says, the presence of trouble some people buy crutches, others grow wings. This past year I have been trying to grow wings, to soar mighty and high above the cauldron of feelings threatening to spill over. Yet secretly I know that at any time, at any moment, not having grown mighty wings I might actually need crutches, or perhaps a wheelchair to sit on and let someone else carry the weight of my grief, the weight of my loss for my parents who died together last year, this very day, this very hour. I can close my eyes and still see it vividly. Early Sunday morning, 18 October 1998, held the promise of a warm, sunny day with the smells of autumn just beginning and the foliage at its peak. I took a long car ride with my friends to buy some things my mother needed and to put some distance from the sadness of having been with my parents two days earlier. Taking my mother on yet another doctor's visit had been so despairing. There was no hope left for her condition, just years waiting to be lived out in slow, chronic deterioration. After the doctor's visit, I had left her at home with her feet dangling up in the air, her body in spasms, and her face showing unspeakable grief. She had lost her life, she had lost her joy, she had lost her smile. The lines on her face, placed there by wrenching sadness and hopelessness, were as raw as my own heart felt upon seeing her like this. As I drove away that Friday after dropping my parents off at their apartment, I suddenly stopped and gave my father some lifesavers, which I had in my pocket. I asked him to give them to her; she always liked the cherry-flavored lifesavers. At that moment I felt it was all I had left to offer. This would be my last act of love and care for my parents. Two days later, that beautiful Sunday would not be a day full of promise and hope, as it seemed in the early morning hours; by the end of the day I would be talking to police detectives and medical examiners, making funeral arrangements for both of my parents. Leaving Home The day my only brother left Cuba is another day that stays vividly in my memory. The 20th of December 1960 was a day of partings and a sad day of good-byes. I thought my older brother, barely eleven years old, was the best, brightest, and most handsome. In my blinding childhood idealization all his faults could be forgiven. I even named my favorite doll after him. And that doll, which I still have today, traveled with me from Cuba. In the Cuban airport named after Jose Marti, half of the departure area is enclosed in glass. The eresa, as they call it--the fish bowl--serves to cruelly separate the people departing from those staying behind. Loved ones seem so near and yet are so far. I tried to squish my six-year-old body as close as I could to the thick glass wall as my brother stood opposite looking at me. I placed my hands against the glass trying magically to touch his hands, to feet him again. At one point someone opened the door and through the crack, with a couple of my fingers, I tried to touch him one last time. I wanted to suck him right over to my side of the wall and run all the way home to play our favorite games in our bedroom, to stay next to him forever, and never let him go. It would be more than a year and a half before my parents and I would come to New York and be reunited with him. The pain of this separation never fully healed. It is a memory that I am starting to realize has left ripples in all of our lives. Mine is a Cuban refugee's story, one that resembles in certain ways so many other immigrant stories. …