Life Contracts
By Elixandra Alvarez
October 2017.
I like to think I am not a mourner. Except for my baby.
September 28th 2017.
You kind of know when you’re expecting something to happen, and then it happens, and you don’t
know how to react? That’s what my grandmother’s death felt like. As soon as I called Mami and
she tried to mask her sadness with calmness, something that she almost knows how to do well, I heard
my dad’s voice in the back “...la presion…” and knew. And I stalled because I knew it was going
to be a long day.
I got home and my dad was already gone. I sat next to my mom on the empty couch.
“She died didn’t she.”
“How’d you know?”
I shrugged. I was waiting for it. I wasn’t oblivious.
The thought of her sweet smile and her loving caring nature. One of my favorite people on this Earth
was gone. I smiled and cried for five minutes. . I would no longer taste her savory sancocho nor would
I hear her cuentos that would make us all laugh. No longer would I hear the timbre of her voice and the
peace in her soul, even while struggling with her heart. You would’ve looked at her and never guessed
she had weak arteries, that they were so clogged up that it was killing her and that her body was too
weak to even go through with the operation, you would’ve never guessed that the medicated patches
on her chest, medications, home remedies, and foreign drugs helped her stay alive for a while. She
made it to her 50th wedding anniversary with Papá, which is all she wanted. I had the privilege to
spend a day with her and my grandpa on his birthday last June and something told me it was the last
time I would.
September 29th, 2017.
It still wasn’t bothering me.
“I feel guilty...why am I not sad? I only cried once. What’s wrong with me?”
I really did not feel sadness. I didn’t feel like it was my place, I never did anything wrong. I loved her,
I care for her, and she to me so there was nothing but happy memories of my grandmother. She was a devout woman, and was in heaven and was watching over us.
But why wasn’t I sad?
I wasn’t sad last October when my great grandmother died. She didn’t survive her last heart attack. I talked about
all the things that made my Nana, Nana. That’s all I thought about for a month. I didn’t cry.
Death was just a reality for me.
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