The "Chava" I Met

“Grief is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of those who are not in (yes) grief…”

~Jean Iris Murdoch

(Irish/British Writer)

PHILADELPHIA, PA, USA.- Elizabeth S. Guaracao was a natural Woman-Entrepreneur few got to know well —intensively private as she was.

Except some of us, including our two daughters, a couple of sisters in Faith, and yours truly, for an unconventional length of time.

In my case, through a? 36-year long Marriage and Family Life together, which began in 1986– and death ended abruptly on April the 10th, 2023, about a year and almost 3 months ago.

“Death is what happens to others,” a friend of mine told me as a way of cheering me up, after the devastation of the sudden loss and the scrambling of feelings that follows.

More noticeable to my home driveway were the absences:

The unexpected scattering of people, the so called friends and loved ones, and their physical unavailability that follows.?

When we are young, full of vitality and entangled in dreams of all sorts about the future, we grow oblivious to the fact that we are finite.?

Death is remote and we, irrationally —mostly in our teens, and even in our 20s and 30s— feel somewhat untouchable.

Sometimes, deaf and blind by the vitality of our youth, we might feel at times we are immortal.?

Think of the many risks we take when we live in that precarious bubble.

When we mature, we tend to believe death happens “only to others” —never to us— even when we, beginning in our 50s, attend more often, as we inevitably age, dozens of funerals in a year.

Friends and family, or friends of friends and family friends, start dropping out of existence— af it they were pieces of domino.

Along with Elizabeth’s, we have experienced, for example, 3 more funerals in the previous year, including an older brother, and, one more, a brother-in-law, and, additionally, a young co-worker at AL DíA.

Funerals, exactly like the pompous Weddings, have become the two fundamental social gatherings of our modern times.

We attend in mass the farewell for the dead, going away into Eternity, and we, even more enthusiastically, attend the superficial rituals that is intended to extend the family and to generate new life.

In the Guaracao-Salcedo Family from Philadelphia, PA, USA, we went through these roll-of-coasters of emotions over the past decade: One Wedding, Three Funerals, Painful Death of our beloved Pet named "Polo", in addition to Graduations in prestigious U.S. Universities, Etc.

But I digress. What is worth remembering here today is the final good-bye to the final remains of the extraordinary Woman with whom I raised two (2) beautiful and naturally-endowed intelligent and good looking creatures I am proud to call our two dear daughters, Gabriela Andrea and Anna Felicia.

Even in the name choices, Elizabeth and I agreed to disagree, as good spouses do.

Every day, in a journey of patience and absence of egotism that is 'the insurance' that makes family life possible.

At the end, we cordially found the way to pick double-name compositions of our individual aspirations about the final names of the two children, a total of two we raised shoulder to shoulder until they became full adults.

All of sudden, the world was “turned upside down” — all of a sudden— on the dawn of April 10th, 2023.

The fateful date when I was forced in a otherwise luxurious Hospital High-raise corner to finally accept the unacceptable.

At 4:00 AM, after a final 24-hour vigil, the last one in a grueling week of Emergency Room and Intensive Care Unit 12-hour visits, the face of death showed up, dressed in the gowns of the Medical Doctor in charge of the night shift.?

“Grief is an (immeasurable) darkness,” Mrs Murdoch, quoted above, says.

But above all is a solitary confinement of your personal feelings, even alienated from the friends, family and medical professionals that, busy as they are, fail to fully grasp the unspeakable spouse’s loss grief.

These medical professional's job is rather simple: To go through the “forms box checking” to finish, as quickly as possible, yet another nightly shift.

That grief is “impenetrable to the imagination of those who are not in (yes) Grief,” Mrs. Murdoch reminds us.

Well, after a year of both mourning, reflecting and healing, you still feel inclined to still protest in silence:

“Why?”

The answer bounces back from wall to wall…

Vividly, clearly, painfully, and, at the end, healing.

After a year of living back and piece together, over roughly 390 days, “the movie shot over 36 years of family life”, I can say, as it is with any other life-transforming experience, that perhaps it was “for a purpose”.

It is for us, the living, as our best U.S. President said, to give flesh and meaning to those interred in what is holy ground, until it is our turn to follow.?

Yes, holy and also hollow.

As the native Americans, who never commanded the European notion of Private Property over the Land, always believe it was.?

“--Don’t you be sorry.”?

Or, “No worries,” were some of the expressions I hear from friends.?

Those who departed –they told me– never leave.

“...Wait and you will see that they stick around...”

This has been the advice of the few real and close friends that still linger around after the flowers withered away.

Or it has been the counsel from the profound voice each of us have inside of us that, in my case, whispers a year later every single day, clearly at dawn, when not late at night.

Thank you for listening.

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(*) This was a set of words written weeks in advance of a “Celebration of Life”, and Birthday Memorial of Elizabeth S. Guaracao, last Sunday June the 23rd, 2024, when she was supposed to turn 69.