Today I wanted to share a bit about my experience with death and some personal insights that I hope will lighten the load and perhaps bring much needed succor to people currently dealing with mourning and grief. The picture above was taken in 1978, long before I was born. It's the only one of mom that I currently have access to.
When I was 6 years old, my mom came back from work one afternoon, gathered all of my siblings and me in the living room and told us that she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was quite advanced and, although she was willing to undergo treatment, she was very honest with us and told us she might not make it. I watched my siblings weeping but I was too young to understand the implications myself, although years later, I realized the profound significance of her choice to include me in that meeting. In spite of my age, she didn't want to shield me from a truth that would certainly have a defining impact in my life. She treated me like an adult and I've since been indescribably thankful for that and many other of her decisions regarding me.
That was the beginning of three long years of grueling chemotherapy treatments, doctor visits and invasive surgical interventions. I could only stand by as she lost both breasts, her hair, her weight and even her usual upright posture. She grew so short that at 8 years old, I was already her height. She eventually abandoned hospitalization and stopped the chemotherapy to spend the last year with us at home. Her hair grew back, but it was already grayed out in some areas. Her face was thinner by the day and she usually looked tired, but her smile was wide and her eyes were still bright, clear and much wiser through the pain. By then, the cancer had gotten to her bones and, although unknown to me at the moment, she was in constant physical torment.
She died on March 1st, 1994, eighteen days after her 45th birthday and thirteen after my 9th. I have the memories of those days etched in fire in my mind, but one thing that has always stood out for me was the sheer amount of people who went to her funeral, held in a small parlor in Catia, western Caracas. There were so many of them that at some point, the narrow street where the parlor was located was blocked. Despite their immense sorrow, my sisters stood at the doorway, greeting people and consoling them. Even now, remembering this brings tears to my eyes.
My process with her absence began. It was excruciating to sort through her clothes, seeing the bed she used to sleep in, opening the books she gave me. At first, I didn't even want people to mention her, especially my classmates; I greeted their condolences with a silence that had nothing to do with humility. I felt their words were empty, weak attempts at pity, as they tried in vain to wrap their heads around something utterly beyond their comprehension. Only my family understood and yet, I was the youngest at home, unable to communicate my feelings or convey just how far apart I'd grown from them. This feeling of separateness worsened with the years, I guess a side of me was always eager to die too, so I could see mom again. I'm sure anyone who has lost someone precious can relate.
My teenage years were a sort of hell. I suffered constant mood swings, going from extreme anger to deep melancholy, immersed in the hormonal mayhem of puberty. I didn't like high school, to be honest, but at least there, I could find people who had been going through their own emotional rollercoasters, people I could connect with. However, my academic performance was so bad and my detachment from my siblings became so marked, that eventually they decided to get professional help. I resented it at first, until I met my therapist, a wonderful lady who gave me full leeway to talk for an entire hour each session about everything that was going on in my mind, and looked me in the eye the whole time. Knowing that one of my key issues was my lack of self-esteem and faith in my own skills, she sent me to a colleague of hers who ran some IQ and spatial awareness tests on me. The results were so heartening that I gathered my strength and finally pulled up.
Then I enrolled in Art School. My grades were still decisively on the poor side and this would be my last formal experience with academy, but I made great friends and discovered many fun activities that got me off the blackness. I also had my first conscious near-death experience when a friend went a little too far in a game and choked me until I lost sense. I was out for only 30 seconds in reality, but I found myself sitting in an empty, comfortably dark and silent theater, watching a film of my life, not only my past, but also my future, for about eight hours of dream-time. It was such a wonderful, peaceful feeling that I was a bit irritated when I finally came back online, thinking that they'd woken me from the best dream ever. My friend was beside himself in anguish, but I even thanked him for the trip.
My 20s were mostly calm and cheerful. I still had a tendency towards bursts of anger and bouts of melancholy, but they were much less pronounced. Getting my first jobs and earning my own money helped a lot, too. My mom's memory was always there, of course, but it was no longer a shock to my heart. I had elevated her, she was a kind of angel for me and even then, I felt her presence by my side, although I scarcely acknowledged it. Death was still a wall that set me apart from her. Idealization brought its own complexities and issues, but it helped me clear up the shadows of my past and see the Light again.
As the situation of my country worsened under the dictatorship that still haunts our lands, my personal situation improved year by year. I explored my emotions in depth, became more confident and assertive. The pain was there, but it was dulled down by a growing joy of just being alive, and gratefulness for my family, my friends and my many talents, which I began truly exploiting and developing. About this same time in 2015, 21 years after mom's passing, I reached a definitive milestone of my process and managed to let the pain and the idealization go. I could finally remember her as she was, not as my imagination had made her. I also found my Purpose as a Storyteller, which is the only reason I can even sit down and write these words now. And not a moment too soon, because a few months later, on September 22nd, my dad died from a intestinal obstruction likely exacerbated by a set of medical conditions we didn't know he had. It only took about 40 hours for him to pass away, and he never really lost consciousness, although he was scared at first. I spent the last night with him at the clinic, and I'd already felt he wasn't going to make it either. His last words to me, before he lost his voice, were "Thank you, son."
Hours after his death, I had to accompany my sister and my brother-in-law to his house, the same slum house we used to live in when I was kid. Some folks wanted to break in and rob it, so we had to move all of his things to a cousin's house nearby. Meanwhile, my other sister and my brother had to deal with the preparations for the funeral and the death certificate. That was really tough for all of us, but it went well and we took care of it before the day was done. His funeral the next day was also quite crowded and, despite the grief, my siblings and I were in peace. He died like he'd wanted and said goodbye to everyone he cared about, except one of my brothers who was in Canada at the moment and couldn't come. Christmas was always a special time for us and we thought we'd have it hard without him, but we enjoyed ourselves and remembered him with bliss.
The following year, I started on my spiritual journey and attended my first ceremonies with sacred plants. My self-awareness deepened along with my exploration of these experiences with death. I've seen my parents in ever-clearer dreams and visions; I've spoken to them in meditations and heard their messages from afar; I've seen their faces again and have even delved into their emotions and their memories as I navigate my own. I now know for a fact that they've never left me, that they're beside me, guiding me and protecting me always, and although I still cry when I remember them at times, I no longer feel the heartbreak of their absence, for they were never gone.
Death is merely an illusion, a thin veil that clouds a vastly broader awareness of the world around us. The people who leave this coil of existence are only gone in body, never in vibration or in energy. If anything, their presence becomes even stronger, and their sway upon this reality, even deeper. Like the birds that see all things from above, they constantly watch over us, ignoring boundaries, time and space. As long as our hearts shine true, their flame shall instill us with joy, inspire us to greatness and reveal the mysteries of the Here and Now to us. So it is for all of our Ancestors, whom we may connect with at any moment, and whom we shall meet again when the mists of this material plane recede.