sjsprWriting

Dear abuelita,

It’s been awhile now.

I’m sorry I’m so bad with time; I can’t remember how many years it’s been but I know you left on a Monday in December.

I’m sorry I haven’t visited you, but mama never really asks me if I want to and I don’t know how to bring it up. I’m not sure what I’d do if I did visit you. I’ve never had someone dear to me die before.

I think I’d act like they do in the movies. Stand near your grave and talk to it; air out any grievances, concerns, quiet mumbles of ‘I miss you’ and ‘I’m sorry’. But it would just be imitation, I think, because I know you’re not here anymore and a grave is just a hole with bones.

If there is an afterlife, and you’re there watching us, I want to tell you I’m sorry I didn’t cry at first. I felt like I was supposed to, because that’s what you do when the people you love are gone, but I was numb all the way through while mama pulsed beside me with sobs from a wound so raw I think it still bleeds. I know should have held her hand then, but I was so scared she’d shatter at the slightest touch. Now I can’t believe I didn’t see the pieces of her on the ground, I should have reached out and helped.

I’m sorry, that there were no tears from me until days after we buried you. I was starting to feel your loss when it cut into me and a gash bloomed across my chest and I doubled over with the pain of you are never coming back.

I am never going to see you again; the woman who I would curl up with at night because kids never like sleeping alone, the woman who would tell me bed-time stories in the dark like whispered secrets, the woman who would hand me candies in church, the woman who’d take me to Viejo San Juan just to walk around—I saw you in a casket with your face frozen in such a way that I never wanted to look for long.

I’m sorry I didn’t cry at first. And I want you to know that I don’t care if no one is really listening, I’ll still stand near your grave and whisper: “I miss you.”

Love,

Cla