WHAT AN EMPTY WORLD

MY MOM IN 1960, WHEN SHE WAS ONLY 53


I was extremely worried; I tried to speak on the phone to my family without any success. I was really afraid of the worst but hopping for the best. I was unable to sleep during the whole nigh, and I even had nightmares about my mom passing away; the next plane going to Guayaquil did not take off until the following day at 7:00 PM, so I had to spend the whole day wondering what was really happening with my mom. Guillermo Villegas, one of my classmates and a member of the Firm’s staff in Cali took me to the Cali airport; he was very nice and comforting. The traffic to the airport was really heavy and at times I though I was going to miss the plane, but, I made it. The flight was really short, it took only about one hour and twenty minutes, but the day had been one of the longest days in my whole life. Finally I arrived in Guayaquil at about 9:00 PM, my brother Pepe was waiting for me at the airport, and I knew my worst fears had materialized even before we got close, I saw him from the distance that he was sobbing, weeping and uttering out loud as we embraced each other.

My mom had died the day before at 5:00 AM at my sister Flor’s home main gate, from a massive heart stroke as she was about to board my brother Pancho’s pick up truck in her way to Pallatanga. She was unable to make this last trip to see her husband, my dad, whom she loved so much for almost her entire life, and instead, she made the trip to Heaven, the place she had been preparing herself so much for, for a long time. She had passed away in the very way I would love to die myself, whenever my turn comes. One minute she was well and alive, and the next she was gone, no personal suffering and not a prolonged suffering of the family.

She died at the age of 62, forty one years ago, on July 24, 1969. The empty space she left in my life will never be filled, but I know that she’s still watching me and the rest of her family with the same love, with the same passion and with the same invariable care she had given us while we had her among us.

The world just didn’t seem to be the same without her, and it will never be, however, the longer the time she’s gone, the fresher I feel her image, her love and her wisdom, and the wiser and deeper her thoughts become. I truly believe she was a visionary and certainly she was de architect of my character, the omnipresent mentor and the wisest advisor anyone can have. She’s been gone physically from us for a long, long time, but she’s always present in all the relevant moments of my life, and in the life of all of her children and grandchildren and everyone she loved

In November 2002, when she was living in Kansas City, after graduating from Thunderbird, my daughter Mariuxi, now a mother of two very young and beautiful children, wrote a few lines describing her grandma, based on what she knew about her, through my conversations with my children throughout the years. Following are those lines which in my opinion are a perfect and true portrait of my mom:

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“My grandmother and I have never met. And yet, she has been a constant presence in my life. Like a beaming star that shines her guiding light, she is always with me.
Abuelita Luquita…she is like those timeless matriarchs you find in magical realism. She was an indomitable spirit that refused to bend to hardship. She was courageous and visionary, sage, mother, healer, provider and mentor. She was all these things and more to everyone around her. And even thirty three years after her death, Abuelita Luquita continues to be a vibrant influence on the lives of her loved ones.
Abuelita Luquita came from a well-to-do family of Spanish ancestry. She was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the strict tutelage of her maternal grandparents. She fell in love with a poor, uneducated farmer. Against the wishes of her family, she married my grandfather. Abuelita Luquita´s family never forgave her for marrying someone beneath her social position. They cut all ties with her and left her to fend for herself.
The village where my Abuelita was born, Pallatanga, is a small, impoverished town tucked away high in the Ecuadorian Sierra. Families live hand to mouth from the few crops they manage to cultivate. They exist in the same impoverished condition generation to generation. Conformity is a heavy blanket that smothers any dreams for self-improvement. Pallatangeños quietly resign themselves to their fate.
Despite the unrelenting hardships she endured, Abuelita Luquita fiercely believed there was a hope to escape the grips of conformity. My grandmother had a vision that transcended the limitations that poverty imposed on her. She understood that education and ambition was the key that would lead her children to a better life. Abuelita Luquita instilled in each of her seven children her vision. She inspired them to learn and excel academically. She fostered their ambition, tempering it with her strict code of ethics, compassion and solidarity. My grandmother gave her children the ability to dream for a better life, and then gave them the tools to achieve their dream.
And yet, although she encouraged her children to seek a future away from home, my grandmother devoted her life to the town of Pallatanga. She embraced the poor, fed their empty stomachs, nursed their bodies, and nourished their souls. Her sense of solidarity was unwavering even at the most difficult of times.
She is stranger and angel to me. I mourn her death though she passed away many years before I ever had a chance to hold her hand and feel her strength. Before she could say to me as she said to her children, “Go forth and achieve…” And yet, she has always been with me. She guides and inspires me to be ambitious, to work harder. The belief in self-improvement and love for education are her legacy. She passed it on to my father, who is the realization of all her dreams. And he, in turn, has passed it on to me.
As she looks down from heaven, I know she is smiling at me, proud of what I have achieved so far and beckoning me to achieve so much more”

The day we took my mom’s remains to the cemetery, I decided that more than just tear dropping and mourning for her departure, I was going to try hard to make my life a permanent homage to her memory, I also thought that in order to alleviate the terrible pain I felt for her departure, I was going to remember her in the best and in the happiest moments of her life. I may have failed sometimes to do that, after all I’m just another frail human being, but I keep that promise in my mind, and I will always do it. The memories I have from her are like an inexhaustible gold mine from which, without much digging, I always get some new treasures to learn and benefit from and to talk about.



MY FATHER IN 1968, ONE YEAR BEFORE MY MOM PASSED AWAY



Mom’s remains were exposed in her coffin in my sister Lilia’s apartment for the closest family’s last farewell. There, I saw my father crying with his head over my moms' coffin, and uttering words I never heard, but I assumed they were words he had wanted to say only to her, but did not have the courage to do it while she was still alive. He looked really aggreived, extremely sad.

At about noon time, we took mom's remains to the cemetery and placed them at the end of a big funerary room where a mass was to be celebrated in her memory. In this place, and before the mass was celebrated, I could see many people I had never seen before, or I did not remember seeing before, most of them were weeping like they had lost their own mother, most of them were very, very poor people, coming most likely for the first time to the big city, all the way from our village in Pallatanga, they came to pay their personal homage to the woman who was like their mentor, their protector, the person who cured their children many times over, who “fed their empty stomachs, nursed their bodies, and nourished their souls”. Thirty five years later, in 2004, when we attended a mass in my mother’s memory in Pallatanga, many of those same peasants were there, still lamenting her death and praying for her soul. They made me cry out of gratitude.
In my next posting: UNFORGETABLE LESSONS