LENA MARAZ BEGAN TO SAY GOODBYE to the world in 2007, more out of weariness than any illness or due to old age. She had been searching for her son, Enrique, for almost thirty-five years. Lucia would never forgive herself for not realizing how depressed her mother was. She thought that if she had stepped in much sooner, she might have been able to help her. She only became aware of this toward the end, because Lena did her best to hide the fact and Lucia, caught up in her own affairs, did not spot the symptoms. In the final months, when Lena could no longer pretend that life interested her, she consumed only a little clear soup and mashed vegetables. Reduced to mere skin and bone, she lay in bed utterly worn out, indifferent to everything apart from Lucia and her granddaughter, Daniela. She was preparing to starve to death, to depart in the most natural way, according to her faith and beliefs. She asked God not to be long in taking her, and to please allow her to preserve her dignity to the end. While her vital organs began slowly to shut down, her mind had never been so clear or more open, sensitive, and alert. She accepted the progressive weakening of her body with grace and good humor until there came a point when she lost control of some of the functions that to her were absolutely private. It was then that she wept for the first time. Daniela was the one who succeeded in convincing her that the diapers and more intimate care she received from Lucia, herself, and a male nurse who came once a week were not a punishment for sins of the past but an opportunity to reach heaven. “You can’t go to heaven with that arrogance of yours still intact, Grandma. You have to practice a little humility,” she would say in a tone of friendly reproach. This seemed reasonable to Lena, who resigned herself to not trying to fight her condition. However, soon there was no way to get her to swallow more than a few spoonfuls of yogurt and some sips of chamomile tea. When the nurse mentioned the possibility of feeding her through a tube, both daughter and granddaughter refused to submit her to such an outrage. They had to respect Lena’s irrevocable decision.
From her bed Lena could appreciate the patch of sky visible through her window. She was grateful for her bed baths, and occasionally she asked them to read her poems or play the romantic songs she had danced to in her youth. Imprisoned as she was in her deteriorating body, she was free of the abysmal sorrow she felt for her son. As the days went by, what at first had been no more than a feeling, a fleeting shadow, a kiss brushing her forehead, began to take on increasingly clear outlines. Enrique was at her side, waiting with her.
Nothing could prevent her encroaching death, but Lucia, horrified at seeing her mother wasting away, became her jailer. She even deprived her of the cigarettes that were her only pleasure, thinking they cut her appetite and so were killing her. Daniela, who had the gift of understanding other people’s needs and the kindness to try to meet them, sensed that this abstinence was her grandmother’s worst torment. She had finished high school that year, was planning to go to study in Miami in September, and meanwhile was taking intensive English courses. She dropped in to see Lena every afternoon, so that Lucia would be free to do a few hours’ work. At the age of seventeen, Daniela was tall and beautiful, with the features of her Slavic ancestors. She played solitaire or got into bed with her grandmother and did her English homework while Lena dozed, snoring throatily as the end approached. Lucia had no idea that Daniela gave her grandmother the forbidden cigarettes, which she smuggled in her bra. It was only several years later that Daniela confessed these sins of compassion to her mother.
The slow onset of death eased Lena’s stubborn rancor toward the husband who had betrayed her, and she was able to talk to her daughter and granddaughter about him in the faint whisper she had left.
“Enrique has forgiven him, now it’s your turn, Lucia.”
“I don’t feel resentful toward him, Mama, I hardly knew him.”
“Exactly, daughter. It’s his absence that you have to forgive.”
“In reality I never needed him, Mama. Enrique was the one who wanted a father. He was very hurt; he felt abandoned.”
“That was when he was a boy. Now he understands his father didn’t behave like that because he was evil, but because he was in love with that woman. He didn’t realize how much damage he did to all of us, including her and her son. Enrique understands that.”
“What kind of man would my brother be now, at fifty-seven?”
“He is still twenty-two, Lucia. And he is still a passionate idealist. Don’t look at me like that, daughter. My life is slipping away, not my mind.”
“You talk as though Enrique were here.”
“He is.”
“Oh, Mama . . .”
“I know they killed him, Lucia. Enrique won’t tell me how. He wants to convince me it was rapid, that he did not suffer too much because when he was arrested he was already wounded and losing a lot of blood, and so he was spared torture. You could say he died fighting.”
“Does he talk to you?”
“Yes, he talks to me. He’s with me.”
“Can you see him?”
“I can feel him. Sense him. He helps me when I’m choking. He arranges my pillows, mops my brow, refreshes my mouth with ice chips.”
“That’s me, Mama.”
“Yes, it’s you and Daniela, but it’s also Enrique.”
“You say he’s still a young man?”
“No one grows old after they have died, daughter.”