The woman who listens to me

Pedro Alcalá

First edition of this collection: December 2017

© Pedro Alcalá, 2010

© for this edition: Fundación Mario Losantos del Campo, 2017

Translation: Luis Jimenez Mier

Printed in Spain – Impreso en España

Diseño de cubierta:

Fundación Mario Losantos del Campo (FMLC)

www.fundacionmlc.org

Fotocomposición:

FMLC

To Diego, my champion; Jorge, my pride, and

Teresa, my strength.

To Sara, donor of time,

with all the pain in my heart.

INDEX

Prologue

Introduction

Dad’s tree

A few brushstrokes of Diego

My trip

Omens and premonitions

Return to an unsuspected place

At the hospital

Farewell

That unusual strength of character

At home

The last good-bye

Support

The absence

Whatever the body feels like doing

The great questions

Faux encounters

Signals

In the path of the hunters

Father Matías

Oh God, the sky is sprinkled with stars!

The woman who listens to me

The Foundation

The news in El País

Acknowledgements

Books that have given us some clues

Prologue

This book is fruit of my commitment to leave a testimony of my journey through to the Mario Losantos del Campo Foundation and its grief therapy program. This is but a book of notes ripped out of my memory, rough notes that have been barely corrected; much like sticking one’s fingers down on your soul’s throat.

The paragraph above was written in the liner notes of the two home-made, printed and bound books which I gift-wrapped and delivered to Sara Losantos, the Foundation’s vicepresident and therapist, as a follow-up to my grief therapy sessions.

I had no other intention but to make good on my commitment, and to do so as a show of gratitude for Sara’s support, while harboring the secret hope that it would serve to help other participants of the Foundation’s grief therapy program. This hope was based on my own past and present needs in understanding how those that have preceded us were able to overcome the loss of a dear one. At no point did I consider sharing this book beyond the scope of my most intimate relatives and friends.

I delivered the other nine copies I had printed and apologized for the hard time reading would suppose, and even thought about sincerely excusing the intended recipients from the obligation of reading it, fully convinced that doing so would only mean an immersion in my pain, confusión and sadness, and little more.

It was later, after being encouraged by those who had read the manuscript and following the Foundation’s proposal to have it published, that I decided to go ahead with it. I made the decision despite my inability to be objective with the book’s possibilities and because of the shame I feel whenever I have to publicly display my inner world and to openly expose the emotions lived during the most delicate and painful trance in my life.

What has motivated me to overcome these reservations is, on one hand, the insistence of those who assure me that its reading could be of help to those grieving as well as their closest companions. On the other hand, the possibility of having it published is offered to show my gratitude to the Foundation, while channeling the need –which their selfless help has awoken in me—to help others.

What the reader is holding in his hands is the original draft, written through clenched teeth, practically non-stop from its introduction to the end, just as it gushed out, with barely a few corrections afterwards, and elaborated from the notes I made during my last month in therapy, once the decision was made to turn them into a book for the Foundation, while still immersed in my grieving process.

I have endeavored to maintain the poems from my youthful days which I incorporated to the original, even being conscious of its ingenuity, since in those moments of greatest confusion and despe- ration I sought refuge in their lecture, and found shelter, consolation and a vital thrust to forge ahead. In those thoughts from my youth I found the strength that I had then and which I so much needed now.

From the intensity of love and the absolute respect which I feel for the memory of my son Diego, I hope and wish that the contents of this book be of solace to those who are going through the difficult trance of losing a loved one, just like writing it has been for me.

Beyond this thick and sinister fog

that wraps around my tarred soul

there opens a fragile and clean path,

made of noble and silent glass,

of opportune and luminous Spring.

I enter;

take my first uncertain steps;

stop confused and look out carefully.

constricted by an intermittent and constant

sharp pain,

bent over and anxious of quiet places,

I search.

And there, at the end, in a serene clearing,

I distinguish a well-defined space,

limited and precise.

And sitting in the middle,

as patient as a perennial value

of placid consistency,

gaze on the woman who listens to me,

who, with an energetic calm and

detached solvency,

helps me sort out my hell

Introduction

What a puny searcher

for a serene soul I feel,

how confused my vocation

of a free man,

how clumsy my instinct of happiness.

I feel like a plant

that has no salve

but is constant.

(1985)

You see, Sara, what a mess you’ve gotten me into. You don’t know well what you did when you put me up to the idea of leaving a creative testimony of my journey through the Foundation. And because of my poor aptitude for other artistic facets I have no choice but to resort to my old and abandoned penchant for writing, in spite of the effort that this re-encounter entails.

The fact is that the simple idea of writing this book of notes is overwhelming. Moreover, I’m gripped by the doubt that to what extent it isn’t pretentious to think that you might have any interest in re-hashing my grieving experiences. But once again I can’t consider you as merely a party: From this initiative, because it was precisely born from a comment that you dropped while we were talking about my friend Jorge Bucay:

--Write your own book to give him a reply…

Surely you remember. And though I caught the irony, that possibility kept kicking around in my head; discarded many times for being pretentious and daring, to be taken up later. Until one day, not completely convinced, I mentioned it to Teresa, who encouraged me to do it, knowing well the writing blockage I had suffered since Diego’s passing.

So here I am, embarked on this adventure (frankly, of my own free will) and without being too sure as to how all this will end.

Now, in full coherence with my adversion to reading introductions and prologues, I want to abbreviate and tell you that with these notes, disordered like loose brush strokes, I don’t pretend anything other than to put down the feelings, doubts, discoveries as well as what I consider stumbling blocks, all lived through my grieving process to this day, with the hope that somehow they will serve as provisional remedy to my innermost while I try to piece myself together.

As such, this is my testimony, more or less artistic, of my experiences at the Fundación Mario Losantos del Campo, to whom Teresa, Jorge and I will always be grateful.

Dad’s tree

Driving down from Alcobendas on the Goloso road, there is a lonely pine tree standing at attention close to the right shoulder, right off the access lane to the Colmenar road.

Two months ago I couldn’t have been able to describe it well. I had a rather idealized and vague image of it, an imprecise idea of its beauty. A beauty trapped in the quick and guilty glances launched from the road while I drove by.

Back then, if I had had the need to do so, I would have referred to it as a tree possessing a unique silhouette, adorned by a perennially thick green top and bearing horizontal branches that extended parallel to the horizon in an improbable fashion.

Being as I was, subconsciously seduced by that intuited perfection, by its impassive constancy, by its inextinguishible presence, I was never inquisitive enough to pull over and take my time to contemplate its beauty. That beautiful fleeting impression was enough.

I always perceived its tall and proud bearing, distinguished and standing out in the landscape. Lonely with a full soul, reveling in its own peace. Vital like life. Fertile and healthy like healthy trees.

I don’t recall having openly declared the secret fascination I felt for that tree. At least I don’t remember doing so. And that is why today, when I see it on our way to the cemetery, my memory of that instant assaults me powerfully. That was the day that Diego, for the first time, designated it as Dad’s Tree.

--Look, Dad’s tree…

And from that day on:

--Look Dad, your tree…

--That’s Dad’s tree, isn’t it?

--Jorge, look at Dad’s tree.

Even today, when I finally stop by the side of the road to take some pictures, I truly give in before the tormented grace of its unique, old and imperfect silhouette. I’m overwhelmed by the wounded and mistreated svelte trunk.

Thus, overwhelmed, and standing under its tortured horizontal branches, awed by the real twisted amplitude of its thick top and by the genuine green of  its green leaves, I find it hard to describe what it is about its rare beauty that still seduces me.

I am trapped and absorted by the deep wound around its base, where the heartless few, with the undoubtable intention of burning it down, after having laid some burning splinters that because of inefficiency, boredom or luck were twarted.

I walk closer, examine the wide, barkless wound. Through it an afflicted and confused soul peers out. Upon seeing this, my own soul,  wanting to hug it out of solidarity, lurches forward and in an electrically tugs at my very center, tearing the fibers that sustain my calm, delivering me to to the whim of my eternal doubts, to the sad and melancholic wrath. Taking me to the point of almost breaking out in tears…

But my hard head, in its implacable urge to understand everything, tears me away from the tears hoped-for balsam to ask me if that tree had not always been like that, and ever since I first saw it.

A few brushstrokes of Diego

She’s got a smile it seems to me

Reminds me of childhood memories

Where everything

Was as fresh as the bright blue sky

Now and then when I see her face

She takes me away to that special place.

And if I’d stare too long

I’d probably break down and cry…[1]

Guns N’ Roses

During the farewell mass held at Diego’s school, his tutor read the following open letter:

Dear Diego,

You were the first on the class roster, the first one I met when you got to fifth grade, the first one I sat in your row, the first one.

It took a little more than the first semester to get to know you, to know how you were, how you worked, how you behaved. I feel that’s more than enough to be able to say that you were well-mannered, kind, popular in class, intelligent, a little rascal at times; I believe you enjoyed everything, especially the class ups and downs like the rest. You were good kid and I feel were also very happy, loved by all.

You were respectful, with that opportune touch whenever it was necessary: You made others like you.

Because of all these things, you loss has been so hard! The emptiness you have left, your empty desk, your absence, but at the same time your missing presence! You are so much with us, in good times and bad, every little detail reminds us of you, you are still there, your smile, your look, and your gestures.

We can feel your absence and feel your presence more than ever, when we talk about you as one more in the class, when we are silent and remember.

Your desk, your seat, your place, is still among us and will always be.

Sometimes, I’d like to think that you haven’t left, that you’re fine, that you’ve taken one step beyond and that God has wanted to have you next to Him.

You were so glad to say good-bye that Friday! You were happy. That’s how I want to remember you. An example of how to live life, to enjoy and value each and every moment.

You will always be in my heart.

Your teacher-tutor, Mª Antonia.

Diego and his things

He slept permanently bundled up, wrapped in a bedsheet up to his head, only leaving out his mischievous and smiling face so he could breathe, whether in winter or in summer.

Since we went to EuroDisney, from where he brought back a stuffed animal he named Pegaso, Diego would always go to bed with him in his arms. Diego claimed Pegaso was much more than a toy: He was his friend and confidant. They talked.

When Diego turned ten, he thought he was too old to be sleeping with stuffed animals and for a while only allowed himself to kiss him good-night and then put him up in the cabinets over his bed. Of course, without closing the doors altogether so Pegaso wouldn’t be afraid and could breathe.

One day, after some reflection and having armed himself with reason, he wondered outloud to his mother that it was nobody’s business if he continued sleeping with his friend Pegaso, even if he was ten years old, or older. Thus he went back to sharing his bed and nightly big-boy dreams with Pegaso.

And I, seeing how that boy started vindicating his maturity while at the same time hanging on to Pegaso, and the fact that he inevitably was putting his childhood behind, decided to photograph them together in bed, naively pretending to freeze time.

Diego always slept with the lights off and was almost never afraid.

He liked to be spoiled, enjoyed caressing and being caressed. Our tickling sessions had no end, best done very slowly and with the tip of the bedsheet, and would last until Teresa would angrily order each of us to bed.

He loved playing possum at night, and how when before tucking him in and wishing him good-night, I would ask with an air of suspense:

--You know something?

He would remain very quiet, lying still and holding his breath while trying to hide his intrigue. Almost as if the question had caught him off-guard, until I would finally lean over and softly kiss him while whispering:

--That I love you very much.

Then he’d let out a soft sigh, ready to fall asleep, satisfied and bursting with pride at having his treasure-trove refilled with love.

I didn’t tell Diego as many bedtime stories as I told Jorge, with whom I was able to make up tales from just a name, an object, a place or situation. Maybe it was because Diego wasn’t fond of night-time tales or story-telling, and didn’t need them to fall asleep. He had enough with a hug and a kiss.

When Diego woke up, he would get out of bed right away, look at you with one eye closed and the other half open, and would scratch himself here and there. But above all, he’d ask what day it was –without really caring much for the answer—but would quickly follow it up with a:

--How long before…my birthday, skiing trip, vacation, summer camp, Christmas?

And as soon as he got the answer he’d take a poorly-aimed pee, then brush his teeth while humming and dancing.

His aunt Conchi, nicknamed “Tata”, would come over everyday during the school year to help him get ready and walk him to the school gate. She called him “Piojín” (little louse), and he, although feeling much too old for such things, would let her, and even allow her to call him similar names as long as he could have her around to manipulate at will.

So much so, that even when she was at her sternest best, most of the time he would end up pulling her leg. He would stay in bed longer so that she could put his socks on; would breath on her face before brushing his teeth, and even grosser things which he’d punctuate with his guffaws. She would then get mad and scold him, but eventually end up exhausted of his pranks and finally give in to the contagious laughter.

Diego felt that kind of seamless fondness for her, the kind that is forged day-to-day through generous and selfless giving.

He was a brilliant student who enjoyed each and every subject he studied.

For him, learning English was special and he would show his off with me, patiently correcting my pronunciation or grammar mistakes whenever I’d speak to him or go over his lessons.

The teacher had assigned him two English native speakers to correspond with. Later on we would find out that it was a distinction awarded only to the most committed students.

Most of the time it was me who reviewed his lessons. He would complain saying that it wasn’t needed, that he already knew the subject. And it was usually the case.

At other times, it was he who tiredlessly asked me to repeat sentences from my English notebook, until suddenly and fed up, would throw it back at me, then turn around, shaking his butt in my face and saying:

--I’m bored.

And I knew that no matter how much I would beg, there was no way to get him to come back.

Whenever I would pick him up at school on Fridays, he always greeted me with a smile, so glad was he to see his father waiting outside.

And he never felt ashamed to give me a kiss.

Diego would invariably feign having bad grades. After breaking the “bad news” he’d look out the corner of his eyes to see my reaction, only to break out in his rascal-like laugh and confess that he had obtained a high mark.

Then he would be his playful self and bask in my smile, smug to enjoy the approval being showered by a proud and satisfied father.

When we got home on Fridays, it was as if he was reconquering his kingdom. And the reason was that on Fridays there were no other kings around. His brother wasn’t there, the computer was free, and mom and dad were relaxing or simply doing their things.

He’d look for his favorite tunes in YouTube or in his brother’s iTunes library: Sweet child o’mine from Guns N’ Roses; Smoke on the water by Deep Purple; Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to heaven, etc. That’s how heavy he was… And he’d also sing along. He would loudly sing those songs over and over, in tune and with the best pronunciation.

Despite the deep sadness it transmits, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Otherside, paradoxically left the three of us with a vivid remembrance of his passion for music and joyfulness.

On his last Christmas’ Eve, and spurred on by his enthusiasm, we sang the Boy Scout song El árbol en la montaña (The tree in the mountain) seven times in a row–or more! And it meant no great effort either, because his enthusiasm and amused look on his face was simply contagious.

When least expected, he was likely to dress up in a costume or even orchestrate a choreography.

Diego thoroughly enjoyed and fully committed himself to every activity he participated in: swimming, judo, basketball, etc.

His last summer was spent at Jorge’s basketball-team camp and every afternoon would wait for me to play. Diego, who was the child of a million friends, didn’t want to play with anyone else but me.

We’d walk together over to the bicycle speed track, I’d dribble the ball and he’d walk next to me, talking all the time. Sometimes I’d lose concentration and the thread of his speech. He would realize it, but wouldn’t mind: He’d just simply talk on and on. It was summer…and the afternoons with his father were there to be taken advantage of, and enjoyed.

Diego wasn’t thrilled if I let another child join our game. I didn’t understand that attitude; he had no problems whatsoever in making friends anywhere and anyplace, and was quick to do so. But I thought that his refusal to share the game was somewhat selfish and little sociable, and on more than one ocassion I didn’t let him have his way.

Today, and from this new perspective, you don’t know how glad I am for having been so permissive in that regard.

One day, while we were playing basketball and trying free throws, he stopped the game and very seriously tried to explain that I didn’t need to make such faces when shooting the ball.

--Look… -he said with a cool and relaxed look while he made his shot.

Swooosh!

--You see? You don’t need to make those faces.

He had me imitate him over and over to show that with the more relaxed posture I would make more baskets. And it was true.

That day I dwelled on how many times in my life my actions had been similarly weighed down by overdoing and making too much effort. This book, in spite efforts to hold myself back, could be one more proof of my tendency for excess and exhaustive work.

Soccer: of course soccer. That was his passion and playing it was his dream. Diego loved it; he started in the Juventud Sanse team, where he was not only immensely happy but also made lots of friends.

One day we proposed having him try out for one of the Atlético de Madrid’s farm teams for children his age. He went out for it full of high hopes and along with a few of his friends. Diego was inexplicably chosen for no apparent reason –he did have a certain style, but that was as far as it went—and the only one picked from his group.

At first we doubted whether to go on with the change. Poor Diego, with so many friends left behind… But being brave, he had no doubts. He felt distinguished and was brimming full of high hopes.

Although he was a follower of the Barcelona, he couldn’t help showing off, even feigning lack of importance, when he announced that he would play in the “Atleti”.

The lack of players, plus Teresa’s timely intervention was instrumental in having a couple of his friends from the Juventud Sanse team join his new team at the last minute. This made him feel totally happy: He was in the farm team of a major club and would be playing with his buddies.

The season began and the official games. With that came long periods as a substitute, of much disappointment and sadness. Diego felt sluggish, disconcerted and pressured. He, who had been a starter in his former team without having been a standout, was now finding himself as a regular substitute game after game.

That took him to a gloomy funk, unusual in him. He lost freshness and daring in his playing; he stopped running and even eluded touching the ball for fear of making a mistake.

His coach and us began demanding more competitiveness nerve. We tried not to pressure him, although despite our best intentions, that’s what we were really doing.

--Son, you’re in a farm team to above all, enjoy things. But belonging to a team means making a commitment to your fellow players, and if you have to run, you will. That’s what sports are all about. The first thing is to enjoy yourself, you know; today you’ve played better, but you’ve lacked the spunk that characterizes you. I’m sure you’ll do better next time, champ.

We wanted to motivate him and uncork the competitive spirit in him. However, that only made things worse, as his performance was flagging and the substitute minutes keep adding up.

A few parents picked up on his sadness and tried to cheer him up, which did nothing more than to make him conscious of how evidently bad his playing was.

One day, when the game was over, he came out of the dressing room in tears.

The following Saturday, while I was walking with him to the field on his way to a new game, I stopped him, put my hands around his shoulders and told him:

--You are here because your fantasy has selected you, because of you’re able to hold your head high and kick a precise and electrified pass to the right spot and also due to your clear potential.  If that inspires you give it a shot. Feign, dribble, kick up the ball from behind and pass it over your head…mind what the coach is telling you, and of course don’t forget to hushussle.

That’s what soccer is about, but let the spirit carry you away and don’t forget that you have that magic. Relax and have fun, enjoy it. That’s the only thing we really want and hope for you.

Diego listened very attentively and with a fired-up look in his eyes.

--OK, son?

He nodded, I gave him a couple of kisses and he ran to meet up with his team.

Nobody could say that Diego played a memorable game that day, he just didn’t. He jumped to the field as a starter, wearing his green shoes and full of courage kicked off from midfield. He never stopped running, offering to make passes, trying to make impossible plays that didn’t work well, fighting to control balls he would end up losing. But relaxed, happy, involved…

And although only he, Teresa and I were the only ones to notice, there was our champ, transforming affliction into pure and simple magic. Diego never faced another game out of fear or sadness. And he began to improve.

One day he told his mother that he liked Cristina and that she liked him:

--She has the prettiest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. Do ya think I should tell her I like her?

And of corse, the following day he told her…

I met Cristina at Diego’s school the day of his farewell mass, and it’s true that she had the bluest and saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.

Following the end of any activity periods, like vacations, weekends, etc., always turned into a problem:

“And now, where are we going?”, “And now what do we do?”, “Who are we supposed to meet?”, “That’s a drag, I don’t want to see anyone!”

We’re going to Galapagar, we’d say when he was little, and he’d go to sleep. But that was no longer the case. And he’d complain, and complain, until a plan would materialize.

Hard-headed, hard-headed, hard-headed. Although, once his first-line of defenses were broken through, he really was a more than reasonable kid.

Cry-baby, cry-baby, cry-baby. Just ask Jorge. And Peque, the dog at the Lamacido ranch.

And whinny, very whinny.

One day he got mad at Teresa and me, and locked himself up in his room. He was there for a long time without giving any signals of life, and only came out to hang a self-portrait that he had just made on his bedroom door. That’s how he saw himself. At least that day when he got angry.

He adored and admired his brother Jorge, who admired and loved him back. And even though they fought like brothers do, they loved each other as much as good brothers love and adore each other.

He hated fish, but would lick his chops before a good dish of rabbit with garlic, some barbecue ribs from Ribs, or a plate of mom’s home-made roasted ribs.

And he was crazy about red meat. So much so that ever since he was very young we would have to be on the lookout to make sure he wouldn’t ask the waiter for a rare -- almost bloody—steak.

The day of his first communion he was glowing, and not only because of the many kisses he was given, and the diversion enjoyed and gifts received, but because he believed and was thoroughly convinced of what he was doing. Diego never missed a day of Sunday school nor did he complain about having to go. For a second course, we ordered a large ox steak.

He said that when he grew up he wanted to be an animal scientist, but first preferred to go by himself to the store for bread, or to the park, grade school, high school, outside to hang out with his friends, to kiss a girl, to fry an egg, to have a cell phone, to follow the path of an Amazon exploration… He wanted to grow up, but little by little.

The last few weeks he was impatient, counting down the days every morning: He was really looking forward to the Atleti’s soccer camp; and to the weekend that left him at the doorsteps of another life.

Now Diego is an angel.

My trip

Life is what happens

While you’re busy making other plans.

John Lennon

There were twenty minutes left before the taxi would arrive to pick me up and take me to the airport. Conchi had come up, as usual, to accompany Diego to school. I caught him and gave him a hug as he was hurrying off towards the door, and as I would always do, asked him:

--Hug me like a son who loves his father.

And he gave me a strong and tight hug, one that told me he loved me. I gave him a couple of kisses which he gleefully received. Then he immediately pulled back, changing registers, and headed for the door while making a gesture and a comment more suitable to a bad boy; as if to offset so much tenderness. Conchi gave me an accomplice-like look to excuse him, while laughing at his older boy pose.

For a brief moment I debated whether I had enough time to go with him, but then remembered that taxis sometimes arrive earlier, and thought that I didn’t want to add any more tension to the nervousness that trips always cause me, and quickly discarded the idea. I felt a tinge of regret because I knew how much he would’ve liked for both his Tata and father to walk with him to school. However, I somehow overcame my feelings, trying to be logical about the situation, and picked up my things, ready to embark on a round- trip to Puerto Rico that was to return me to a place where I would have never imagined going.

Omens and premonitions

Man has always believed there was

was such a thing as fate,

but such a thing as free will also.

It is exactly this balance

of apparent contradictions

that has been the whole buoyancy

of the healthy man.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

The only real reason why I didn’t feel like making that business trip was because I’d miss out on Diego’s game against Las Rozas; the idea of knowing San Juan de Puerto Rico was frankly appealing.

A few weeks prior to my departure I felt a strong urge to leave all my affairs at home in order. So I spent some days gathering all the bank and insurance documents in a file, prepared an Excel sheet with a detailed summary (bank account numbers, balances, addresses, contacts, telephone numbers, etc.) and made sure Teresa knew where to find it. It was as though, in some vague, subtle way like the silent flapping of white moths over a snowy field, I had the foreboding that something bad was about to happen.

The trip to Puerto Rico lasted four days. I left Madrid’s Barajas airport on a Wednesday, to fly out from San Juan on Saturday afternoon there, night-time in Madrid.

I worked all day Thursday to tidy things up, so that on Friday, satisfied and relaxed, I dedicated the whole day to going for a walk around old San Juan, where I enjoyed climbing up and down its steep streets lined uith old but well-preserved colonial period homes, past the ancient fortresses and the bits and pieces of Spanish history that were highlighted in the tour books.

And as I usually do whenever I find myself alone in a new place, I weigh whether it’s worth bringing my family along. I would need to know more about the island to make that decision. Then I thought that perhaps a trip combined with other islands in the Caribbean would be a good solution.

Along the walk, I excitedly took pictures of some enormous iguanas that were climbing up the fortress walls. They were so close that if weren’t for my fear I could even touch them. If the kids could see this! I thought. Click, click, click, seven times click.

I returned to the hotel, worn out from so much walking, and tried to take a nap, then listened for a couple of hours to an English channel on TV. Ha! I told myself, if those back in Spain could have only seen me dealing in English. And with an American! I then made a mental note that on my return I’d have to check out going on vacation to London, where I went three years earlier for a two-week English study course. I also weighed the pros and cons of taking my family along, and at that time I had no doubts that I would. Diego was crazy about going along to be our interpreter.

For a short while I thought about them and missed them, then had dinner, walked around the darkened hotel garden, and let myself be sprayed by the ocean waves that were breaking against the seawall. I went to bed shortly afterwards.

The next day I woke up at dawn and called Teresa, spurred by the urgent need to find out how Diego had played. She told me his team had won and that he had played well, but that she was in some friends’ car and would tell me later. Since I had already warned her that overseas calls from hotel phones are tremendously expensive, I didn’t give another thought to her telegraphic answer.

I prepared the bags, had breakfast and went out for a long walk around the hotel neighborhood, a modern residential area full of hotels, restaurants and retired Americans.

During that walk, and up to the time that I took a taxi to go back to the airport, on at least four ocassions I was intensively touched everytime I saw a father carrying his son on his shoulders, or holding hands, or speaking and even scolding him as they crossed the street. And which each surge of emotion I would feel a sort of irrepressible sadness, a pressing need to be with my family and to hug them, especially to Diego.

At the airport I browsed around for an hour while I indecisively searched for a book in English to read on the plane. I finally chose Dean Koontz’ Odd hours, an unheard-of author for me. Then I called Teresa to find out if she wanted any perfume and to tell her that I hadn’t found anything worth taking to the kids. She replied that there was no need to buy anything. She was short and to the point, but was so natural that I could suspect nothing was wrong. On board I dove into the book and feel asleep during the flight.

Odd hours is a story about the strange events, dreams, adventures and visions of an enigmatic young man with extra-sensory abilities, told in a catching and intriguing way. I was on page 85 when I landed in Madrid.

Return to an unsuspected place

During these black days

what do the gods do, what does God do,

the many or few gods do

with their infinite hands…?

(1983)

We landed in Barajas on Sunday around eleven in the morning. Still sleepy, I exchange a few brief and awkward comments with the clients I had negotiated with in Puerto Rico, and who happened to have caught the same flight back to Madrid, unbeknownst to all of us. I thought that perhaps later, once outside the plane, I would have a better and more adequate chance to chat with them.

No sooner had I left the plane, and while still walking on the gangway, I connected my cell phone and called Teresa. I remembered that she had offered to pick me up – a little unusual-- but didn’t give it another thought because it was Sunday and mid-morning.

A friend answers my call and nervously says that Teresa hasn’t gone to the airport, but I don’t worry:

--Relax, there’s nothing’s wrong, OK? There’s nothing wrong. Just relax…

--I’m relaxed, just tell me what’s going on.

I speak in a paused and contained tone while at the same time consciously feel the premonition of a coming blow, that something bad is about to strike me.

--Diego’s in the hospital. Your brother and sister are waiting for you at the airport lounge and they’ll tell you more. Nothing’s wrong, just relax and come over to the hospital.

I feel her anguished voice is camouflaged with faked calm. And although I quicken my pace, some sort of automated protecting force is activated deep within me and controls my emotions, keeping me calm. I don’t want to pressure her.

--OK, I’ll see you there.

Waiting for the train shuttle to carry me from the satellite to the main terminal, I run into the clients again, and after exchanging some basic comments apologize for having exited the plane in such a hurry. It’s that I got news that my son has suffered an accident and I don’t know…

Silence.

My brother and sister are standing next to the baggage claim carrousel; the Spanish Civil Guard has let them enter the area, which adds to my worse forebodings, making me aware of the seriousness of the accident.

They quickly tell me about the collapse of the bench area, the blow to the head, that he’s hospitalized, still unconscious, he’ll be operated on… Once more, seeing how put upon and nervous they are, some alien and involuntary self-control takes over me which generates an uncommon calmness. I decide to wait and not to ask any more questions.

Today I don’t remember any of the emotions that I may have felt at that time. It’s as if there’s a void in my memory, and can only remember a mixture of shock and levelheadedness, of jet lag and tiredness.

I watch the clients picking up their bags and leave. Nobody says anything.

At the hospital

Don’t be in a hurry woman,

because this man will grow hands

on each side of his head to create,

to disarrange the world

and unbalance it by pulling from its center.

And to deposit there, in your place,

where I love you,

where you might feel bound by each creature,

each particle, each element.

(1981)

At the hospital door a friend sees me and makes a repressed gesture with his hand, and when I draw close to ask him, walks away and starts to cry. I am fully aware that the situation is definitely serious. I neither interpret nor speculate; but walk on without losing my composure. I want to meet Teresa. We embrace each other and she starts crying; they’re operating, she says. Everything will be alright, I try to calm her down. She asks me to forgive her for not having told me anything before. I assure her from the bottom of my heart that she had done the best thing. I tell her that on the contrary, more than upset me, she couldn’t imagine how much I value and appreciate the effort and the courage of having to have gone through it all without me.

We are immediately summoned by the surgeon who tells us how the operation has come out. Standing in the corridor, surrounded by the hustle and bussle of the operating room area, he says everything has gone well and now we just have to wait.

What side effects will there be? I ask. He’s constantly chewing gum, and the background noise the dirty linen carts that are next to the Operating Room doesn’t help much. However, he answers that for the time being, saving Diego’s life is what’s most important. He is not ill-mannered: He shows himself insensitive, cold and indifferent.

I cry on Teresa’s shoulders while everyone tries to cheer us up. In a daze, I speak with this and that friend. I still don’t know what happened at the stadium bench, nor do I make any queries. I hug Jorge; I see he’s worried but his apparent calmness soothes me. Teresa says he’s behaving like a man.

All the world is there to support us: parents, in-laws, relatives, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, soccer friends, and civic authorities… all having an anesthetic and narcotic effect on us. There are so many people who show their love, that it would be simply impossible not to be loved. Today I ask myself what would have happened to us had we not had their support.

All this takes place like so many loose remnants, like pieces of footage in a chaotic television report, spinning around our badly-wounded Diego.

Now is the time for us to receive and be protected by all the       loving kindness that is offered us.

And I embrace the world with each hug.

I pray and beg everyone who comes near to never forget to       hug their children. Not even one hug.

Now you have to be the strong one, they constantly tell me, because if you break down… And I am already strong. As if the other serene me, decided and solvent, had taken the reins for me and carried me away from the pain and desperation and allowed me to reason, to hold myself together and to take care of mine.

If at any time I give in and find I’m faltering and about to cry, there is always someone vigilant nearby to place a hand on my shoulders and remind me of my duty to be strong, tearing me away from the catharsis of being able to scream and rage.

We ask Diego to fight: hard-headed as you are, a real macho, my champion, you’ll be triumphant.

But the implacable reality starts to seep in with the first medical report.

The rachidian bulb, you say? --Jorge asks, without stopping his pacing around the room, as if he were a jailed and hungry lion—He’s in bad shape then, isn’t he?—he shares outloud his contained reflections, without awaiting for an answer that he already knows.

--If you want to say it that way… --responds the nervous doctor with evident signs of going through a bad time, while slowly trying to close our doors to hope.

We’re no longer people who understand, but are but mere and painful supplicants; begging and forcing him to let us have a small crack of hope, even the smallest one, no matter how false and improbable.

--We’ll have to wait for the scan results—he concludes. He’s well-mannered, correct, sincere and sensitive.

We ask Diego to relax, we tell him that this is not his fight, that he’s in good hands, and we ask him to have trust. All of us are here by your side; you keep being like that, only like that, quiet, relaxed and enjoying your calm… lots of calm, relaxing. I say these words while caressing him, just like I’ve always done up to that day and every morning when I would wake him up, giving him those five minutes of bundled-up joy.

The serene ‘me’ who from my inner-most self has taken control lets me know and assures me that Diego’s listening from his immobile silence.

That tough reality delivered in small doses, like in a precise cadence of bad news orchestrated by the medical team so that we can assimilate the inacceptable little by little, ends up permeating our understanding and begins preparing us for the inevitable.

The first time they inform us of the irreversibility of the situation, I’m alone with my brother-in-law. Perhaps because of that my serene self that was holding the reins frees me so I can feel and I rage in desperation; I cry and I flail, I let myself go. My brother-in-law, in pure desperation cries out how, how one can say to a father that his son…

Teresa arrives, impassively listens to the sentence, breaks down and faints. My serene self, pushing aside the sunken and distraught Pedro, again takes charge of the situation, calls for medical assistance while trasmitting calm and requesting psychological help, and trying to explain to Jorge as best as I can what he already knows.

Through the only glimmer of hope that is left to us, so small and far away, we can see a future of unconsciousness, paralysis and stilled life. And neither we nor Diego want that.

My serene self tells me that it’s now time for us to receive and be protected by all the loving kindness that is offered us. And I embrace the world with each hug, praying and begging everyone who comes near to never forget to hug their children. Not even one hug.

Jorge rides alone on his rage, armed with courage and logic, and leaves the Intensive Care Unit to look for Natalia, Diego’s nurse, and the external ally of his other internal and reasonable self, who has taken up his reins.

Teresa, however, is firm and doesn’t allow herself to be governed: She looks at the pain head-on, completely torn-up. She’s desperate, in denial. She cries because she has to cry. But even then, as broken up as she is, goes on to decide what should and shouldn’t be done now, what kind of life she wants and doesn’t want for Diego. From the fullest lucidity of a protecting mother, she’s steps ahead of everyone and takes all decisions for us.

The pain doesn’t have any poetry: It is dry, cold, hard, and dark and only hurts. The bitterness is physical, it sticks to the troat and literally embitters. It embitters the senses, the emotions, and the soul. You literally feel that it embitters life itself.

Farewell

I want to rock you, my child,

like the wind rocks the leaves;

slowly and softly so you can sleep.

I want you to sleep, my child,

like the Sun sleeps behind the night;

calmly and quietly

so you can rest.

I want you to rest, my child,

like the dew rests on the flowers;

deeply and beautifully

so I can wake you up later.

So that when I wake up,

I can feel like the father of a man

and walk with your breath

towards that star pregnant

with my dreams.

(1981)

Jorge, trapped between wrath and resignation, without stopping his back and forth pacing in the ICU lobby, tells us that Diego has always been a happy and complex-free child.

-On the other hand, I was a little chubby, wore glasses and braces… which somehow shamed me though I’ve never wanted to recognize it nor made a big deal out of it. But, him? That rascal never had to deal with that. Diego has lived the happiest ten years ever. How many others, having lived a hundred years, can say that?

And it’s that Diego has gone directly from the euphoria of winning a game in which everyone says he played well (even making a great feint between two players that was followed by a precise pass to the right spot…). He went directly from from there, from that feint, to the unconscious world that has left him on the doorstep of another life.

And there all of us are entrenched, because that is what we believe.

Diego has been moved to another room so that Teresa and I –as well as anyone else who wants to say their good-byes--can spend one last night with him.

His grandmothers come and go with a forced uprightness, putting on a brave face, wearing their hearts on their sleeves and carrying convulsed faces. His grandfathers, however, come out radiant and full of euphoria due to Diego’s seemingly improved condition.

--I’ll sleep well tonight! --says one of his granfathers when he walks by us—I know I’ll be able to take my grandson home!

Teresa, Jorge and I, worried about their reaction, consult with the hospital psychologist and with the medical team, who tell us that they’re going through a stage of denial. We’re advised to make them see little by little that Diego’s situation is irreversible and that it’ll only be a matter of time. However, that we should also leave them with the slightest ray of hope so as to lessen the impact.

We discuss how to best do that, and the doctor asks us to listen to what Jorge is proposing, as it seems most sensible. We agree, and when we try to explain it to them with the utmost tact, the grandparents assure us that of course they’ve known that all along, but they were only acting that way to cheer us up.

What is incredible is that we would have the necessary good cheer and cool head to take care of the others, as if we had already accepted it and from then on our role was to give strength and consolation to the rest. I have ingrained that role so well that every time I glance out the waiting room door, fully aware that all eyes are upon me to hear of the latest news, I do so with a calm and collected look so as not to alarm anyone.

My brother-in-law asks: How can what you say be true? When you come out it looks like everything is going well and that nothing is wrong…

I have to remind him of the near-hysteria that was created in the room once when I lost my composure and looked out in despair and crying. And he remembers, understands and nods…

And now I also remember how at that very same time, someone took me aside to remind me once again that I needed to be strong, because if I caved in… And how I (or my other self) subconsciously decide to definitely hold on to the reins and not fall apart any more.

Fully aware that this is going to be our last day with Diego, we accompany anyone who wants to see him and say good-by, and walk with them to his room. We even console those who need it most. We want his room to be a haven of serenity and calmness, where the only thing Diego can feel is loving-kindness, tranquility, trust…

Before him we can only talk about positive things, smile while we read to him the many dedications left by his teammates and schoolmates, caress him and whisper to his ear over and over: relax, be still, and keep calm… because… You know something? We love you very much.

Jorge prefers to go in alone, I suppose to play music and chat with him. And leaves when we come in.

Teresa wants Father Matías to come and give him the extreme unction. I, who at no time had thought about it (I guess out of coherence and respect for Diego, as a sort of subconscious need of showing myself honest and sincere in his farewell) nor even raised one single prayer to God, decide to go along to please her.

A profoundly-moved Father Matías carries out the ritual with loving care, almost unable to utter a word. Teresa silently weeps. I keep calm.

Diego has more than happily lived these last ten years. How many others, having lived a hundred, can have such a feeling of happiness?

Teresa and I spent the whole night in his room, constantly waking up to caress, kiss and remind him of how much we loved him. None of us cries. We speak to him between smiles, quietly caress him with a true and deep feeling of serenity. We haven’t talked nor thought about it, but are both totally sure that transmitting this peace and quiet is our best gift to him.

The next day while having breakfast we are told that Diego is getting worse. Only three of us: Conchi –his second mother by all rights—Teresa and I enter his room…

It may sem contradictory and confusing (perhaps that’s why I’ve stopped saying it), but for me this is a liberating moment, the moment of the most sincere, intense and pure love I’ve ever experienced: Beyond our fears, renouncing to live out our rage and desperation, we put off pain and wrath to surround him in caresses, words, tenderness and affection with all the serenity and calm that our dazed soul will permit us.

And thus, bundled up in this beautiful and bountiful harvest of energy, Diego quietly leaves this world to brighten our hearts forever.

That unusual strength of character

Don’t walk away so, my loved one

now that nightfall darkens.

Don’t walk away so

because I want to see you.

(1979)

I’m the first one to walk out to the waiting room and announce that Diego has left us. All those there draw near to embrace and console me. They cry. I don’t.

I’ve just promised Diego that I would be strong and overcome this blow no matter how hard it’s been; that I’d dedicate all my efforts out of gratitude to him for the ten happy years we shared. That I owed it to him for being the way he was, for that lesson while quietly shooting baskets and for the other one in soccer about how to overcome obstacles in such an unusual and magical way.

That if he never let up, I wouldn’t either. That if I’ve always asked them for courage and to overcome hardship without excuses, now it was the time to be coherent: You may have reasons, but not excuses. Excuses are the food of the mediocre, I used to tell them when they tried to justify themselves, just like we justify ourselves every time we fail.

Fifteen seconds for a commitment and my other self, serene and resolute, steps aside so that I can take charge of my own life.

The rest of the people there, who are foreign to our plight and anxiously await theirs, look on moved and frightened. I realize that and return to the ICU to ask Teresa and Conchi not to come out yet. I look for a nurse and ask to help us find us another room where we can discreetly receive the shows of sympathy and keep those others in the waiting room from having to witness such a harsh experience.

I ask for the medical team and thank them, I know they would have done more if they could. They can’t even answer and look the other way, crying. I don’t.

Once outside, I look for Teresa and Jorge, we silently melt into a long embrace. They cry. I don’t.

Jorge, full of strength and meditated decision, in a show of his capacity to love and renounce, proposes giving his electric guitar to Diego as an offer. He wants to place it next to him inside the coffin. I tell him that it would be a fine gesture, but perhaps a useless one. I suggest that perhaps it’d be better for him to keep it and dedicate his songs to Diego. Jorge nods, his eyes light up, looks to his inner self and raises his head in a decided gesture and then walks away to meet with his friends.

It’s a beautiful morning, bright and warm, in February.

At home

If death weren’t the prelude to another life,

our current lives would be a cruel joke.

Mahatma Gandhi

We went back home and ambled around in shock, each one going his own way. I walk into Diego’s bedroom to look around and keep looking. I know he’s not there, and that he’ll never return again. I don’t know what I hope to find, but keep looking...

After a while I leave and Teresa walks in, as if she were somewhere else. We brush past each other but don’t even look. From the hallway I hear a thud and she comes out with a surprised look, saying that Diego’s English dictionary has fallen off the shelf. I try to calm her saying that I had been handling the books. But the truth is that I haven’t touched anything. She, in her far-away state of mind, believes me and forgets about it.

The last good-bye

And I, who was the man

of impeccable high hopes…

So much for the God that I created

in my likeness!

(1984)

We wanted Diego to donate his organs, and found certain hope and consolation in the idea that he could live inside other lives; that his sorry demise would at least serve to alleviate other sorrows. Diego was brought up knowing how to share and would have agreed.

But since the cause of his death was accidental he must go through the medical examiner, so we’re told there are legal obstacles that prevent the donation. That frustrates and disconcerts us, and adds pain, but, perhaps conscious of the limitations imposed by our fragile state of mind we resign ourselves and desist from complaining. As if something inside us tell us that the transcendental now lies elsewhere.

As such, Diego won’t go to the funeral home until tomorrow, which is where we’ll meet to receive the condolences. I, who has cried in the peace and quiet of my home, now can’t do so, not seeing how Teresa empties herself of pain and desperation with each encounter. As if each hug were a stab of tender, loving care that makes her bleed from the pain. I try to protect her by asking those who console her to contain themselves. There are so many of them and so affected that I fear for her. I’m thankful for the shows of affection but don’t want to leave her alone. It worries me to see how she lets herself be carried away by the pain and the anguish, and how she faints.

Jorge finds refuge in his friends.

Some friends and relatives, attentive to our plight, say it’s enough for one day and take us home. Teresa is calmer now and doesn’t cry. I do, for the second time, as soon as I find the first moment of peace at home. But I’m gripped by a bitter feeling of not having cried enough.

The next day, Diego’s body lies in the funeral home; someone has seen to it that we are given the largest room, which is completely full of friends, co-workers, relatives, authorities, soccer players, former and current teachers of Diego and Jorge’s, fellow alumni and clients. Even the one from Puerto Rico, who turns out to be my brother’s friend.

Despite the numerous shows of love that slowly numb the pain, I feel the need to cry. Like Teresa, I could let desperation carry me away and melt into the arms of those whose loving embraces hold me. I try to empty myself, but it is impossible; something from my subconscious pushes me to shelter my parents and friends from the anguish and impotence of seeing me suffer. And I remain firm in that unusual strength of character to which I’ve clung from the beginning; however, I harbor the fear and sorrow of feeling that I’m not crying enough.

I remember someone telling me:

--Get if off your chest and cry, it’s good.

--I wish I could –I answer—but I’m fine.

And I don’t know if I am.

Teresa wants Diego to wear his Atleti soccer uniform and his green boots. Soccer was his passion and although it wasn’t his ideal team, the Atleti was where he practiced and enjoyed the sport. The people from the soccer club are doing an outstanding job of supporting us, and even though I’m not very fond of soccer, and much less of fanatics, shields, flags and uniforms, an emotional impulse comes over me and without questioning anything, I deem it appropiate and go along.

The parents of one of Diego’s friends give me a sticker with the Barça shield so that I can surreptitiously place it on one of Diego’s socks: He wants it to be his secret and me the accomplice. I think it’s a nice gesture from a friend and accept. I find it funny, and when I go around saying what I’ve just done, everyone looks surprised, and I stop mentioning it.

I realize that I haven’t completely digested the situation, nor assimilated the real transcendence of what has happened. It is as if we were living with a false reality, as if it were a nightmare to which I’ll quickly awake from.

The funeral is soon upon us along with a torrent of cries and pain. Father Matías, moved, with a falting voice and stopping often to contain his tears, asks us to talk with God; he wants us to talk to Him if only but to say: I don’t undertand you, I don’t understand you and I’m angry at you. And I believe that Father Matías feels that way too. I haven’t addressed God at any time, and I’m not going to do it now. And from the refuge of the first row, can only cry.

Behind us we feel that the chappel is crowded with souls brimming with solidarity and who want to manifest their support and help. We are immensely grateful and want to thank them, but our closest circle of people, doing the best to protect us, again remind us that enough is enough, and we decide not to meet with the others.

When we leave, Teresa breaks down in desperation and we call Pilar, the Atleti’s psychologist, who has been by our side since things took a turn for the worse. Pilar had just left, but returns and speaks with Teresa. I watch it all, somehow aside and desperate, not knowing what to do. I’m afraid, I feel helpless, the situation is beyond me, I have no criteria, and I wouldn’t know what I could possibly do to console them.

Jorge is surrounded by a group of friends, and I give out a sigh of relief for him.

A friend approaches me with a smile and tears in her eyes and pointing to the night sky high above, asks me what I see.

That is exactly the same thing that Pilar has just asked Teresa, and Teresa, with a smile on her lips, answered that she sees a smile.

I clearly see that smile that hangs over the Madrid skies. A smile that shines on and spreads over the groups of people gathered, sprinkling and spraying them with hope and consolation, as if it were a shower of timely relief. Glancing up at the heavens, Teresa cries with an illuminated look on her face. Jorge’s friends point to the night sky while they embrace him.

Meantime, Jaime takes a picture of the moon with his cell phone.

Support

To say ‘friend’, it seems to me that to say ‘friend’,

is to say tenderness. God and my song well know

who it is I name so much.

Joan Manuel Serrat

Jorge goes to sleep at his cousins’ place while some of our best friends accompany us home; we’re exhausted, but need their company and this moment of peace and tranquility. Moved but serene, we listen as they read the dozens of telegrams sent from soccer teams, organisms and individuals. We even laugh when we recall some of the anecdotes from the funeral home and the abnnegation and obedience shown by everyone in their best efforts to help while being submitted to the whims of our state of shock.

Little by little, Teresa and I become surprinsingly aware of how we are leaving behind this first difficult moment, that we have navigated through the turbulent waters of pain and desperation, and that we have done so in the arms of patience and thanks to the selflessness of our parents, brothers, relatives and friends, who forgetting their own pain, have been unconditionally at our side to accompany and console us, to sort out the red tape and procedures.

We become aware that now we begin to walk a hard and dry path, arid with sadness and desolation --not knowing whether difficult or impossible—but comforted in knowing that they are there, always by our side and all along sharing it with us. And that encourages us, gives us strength and fills us with determination to move ahead so as not to disappoint them.

How many times since then haven’t we asked ourselves how anyone suffering such an ordeal could stand and overcome it without the support that we’ve been given? And many other times I answer that perhaps that internal strength comes from that other serene and resolving self that takes the reins, and such strength can, if allowed, be never-ending.

What matters now is loving-kindness, someone told me at the hospital when we found out what the outcome would be. And perhaps that is why the heart-felt kisses and hugs have come to be with us in such a comfortable and definitive way.

Before Diego’s loss I didn’t know very well what to say to a friend who had experienced the loss of a dear one. And now I still don’t think I know. If I were to single out what has helped us, I would say that among the many valuable shows of support we’ve received, it was that of an older man who walked up to us to give us his condolences. He gently held our heads between his hands and fixed his eyes on ours, silently smiling. That gesture, that look, were full of affection, of comprehension and solidarity. Later on we learned that he had lost his sons some years earlier.

The absence

Languid,

languid,

languid…

my hand sways

between your shadow,

between the ample sphere

of the comings and goings you draw.

Come near,

come near,

come near…

my hand sways

between your shadow,

between your comings and goings

it sometimes embraces you.

Stop,

Stop,

Stop…

(1980)

The first day Jorge returns home, after pausedly stopping in the middle of Diego’s bedroom and playing with his curly bangs, he goes to his own room, picks up the electric guitar and without plugging it in, plays Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to heaven.

Teresa wants to keep Diego’s ashes at home. We go get them, bring them and when we place them on top of his bedroom shelves she is overcome with anger and cries in desperation as she holds the urn. Jorge and I suggest that perhaps they would be better in a niche since that is no longer Diego, but the permament remembrance of his absence, and that we’d rather keep the happy memories that his pictures bring us than the dismal memory of his ashes.

Teresa gives in and we take them to a cemetery niche. Under the shade of a plane tree, at column 22, which also happens to be the day he was born. On the plaque we have the following words engraved: “You know something...? We love you very much”.

It’s impossible for us, no matter how much we’ve reasoned it out, to accept that we’re never going to see Diego again. It’s a devastating thought.

Likewise, as much as we’ve rationally rejected it as illogical, there is a constant feeling of guilt that washes over us time and again: If I hadn’t made him change teams… If I had been there…If we hadn’t taken him to play that day…

Why do we laugh? Why do we go out? Do we have any right to feel good? It’s like the incessant drilling of the obsessive woodpecker who every time you cut his beak he grows it back to continue picking on our state of mind.

We know that everything we did was done with the best intentions and for his good, we don’t stop telling ourselves that. But even then, the guilt drilling is there, persistent, making us be very alert so we can keep it in check and even reject it.

Ever since I learned that Diego would die, the somber image of his empty room, unchanged from the day he left, haunts me as if it were a monument to his absence. I don’t want that, I think that would be looking back and could even be unhealthy, much like clinging on to a past that no longer exists.

That is why while still at the hospital I ask Pilar what we should do with his bedroom. She recommends we do whatever want, that there’s no hurry. I later ask the funeral home psychologist, who rapidly advises me to do what we really feel like, but not to rush into it. But that perhaps we should remove his most personal objects, like his toiletry kit, dirty clothes, etc. as soon as possible.

I check with Jorge to get his opinion and he agrees with me in that we have to change the “look” of Diego’s bedroom. In fact, he has already taken the books out of the backpack that Diego had prepared for school that following Monday and replaced it with his. Teresa has her doubts.

For me, changing over the room has almost become an obsession, and insist on it. Teresa finally goes along and we began to make some small changes over a weekend.

Every shirt, every book, every story book that we read while packing them away turn into knife-wounds of his absence.

We give away a number of boxes with books, toys and clothes. Teresa, Jorge and I are saddened, but somehow comforted by having been able to face it, as if such painful gesture were a declaration to the world that we mean to carry on with our lives.

The bedroom, except for some subtle changes, still looks the same. I think there’ll be time for more changes, there’s no hurry. And we don’t speak about it anymore.

We find certain solace in walking around his room, in reveling in its smell, in touching it, looking at his bed and straightening out his bed covers, standing still in the middle of the room as if on stand-by, like waiting for a connection. We add a few small things that are meaningful to us: A key chain, stuffed animal, fresh flowers, gummy candy bags…We know he’s not there, but even so, we’re convinced that wherever he is these small gestures will somehow find their way to him.

A few days after his death Teresa asks me to fix her hair dryer. I open it up; it’s an easy repair to do and I start to work. Suddenly, I’m paralyzed and find myself whinning like a boy with the open hair dryer on my lap. I’m crying, unconsolably and angrily. Jorge sees me crying and approaches me to know what is happening. I ask him if he remembers how, when he was little Diego would admiringly ask his mother: “How come can dad fix everything?”

He watches me weep, beaten down by helplessness and makes a grin, gets up and puts his hands on my shoulder and as he walks away says:

--Dad, you have only repaired what was repairable, and Diego wasn’t.

The shopping center aisles have become emotional landmine fields: Chocolate candy bars, paté, cookies, red meats, fish… The streets, parks, and public areas have turned into hiding traps where memories assault us as if to underscore his absence. Memories that harp away at all the things that Diego will no longer enjoy.

Just looking at groups of teenage boys and girls makes me break down and start crying.

The family, in general, avoids talking about Diego, fully-convinced that doing so will only provoque or add more pain for us. We, on the other hand, can’t wait for the chance to remember him, to evoke him and permanently relive his memory. It disconcerts us that during family gatherings there is a feeling that nothing has happened.

At each reunion, after a brief fond greeting, there follows a frenetic series of conversations with no silences between, a chained set of subjects destined to cover the hole that evidences his absence. We decide to speak out and discuss it openly with them, and they breathe a sigh of relief. Now, the silences are still there, although those are now fewer and farther between.

On my birthday Teresa and Jorge give me a framed picture of Diego which they knew I adored. It belongs to a series of photographs I took for his first-communion announcements. This one was one I made after the photo session and while he was casually walking with a firm step, his jacket hanging on his shoulder, a roguish air about him and an amused look about him, with a hand in his pocket, smiling like a rascal….

I take it to the office as a symbol and memory of his way of facing life. I set it down next to the telephone. The emotions it provokes are confusing. It hurts and distracts me to look at it while I speak on the phone, yet I can’t help looking at it. When I work on my computer, I can’t help stealing glances at it. I want to have it near, but it makes me suffer. The days go by in this suffering way. I understand I can’t keep having such deep and strong emotions and feelings without being able to do something about them.

The picture is now on my night-table by our bed. Diego’s smile and his firm step are suspended in the air, frozen some hundredths of a second before firmly putting down his foot, and fill me each night and every morning with optimism.

The pain and sadness are exhausting, devastating. If I at least had the state of mind and energy when I had to confront such pain…but it is precisely there, in the willpower and the capacity to fight where the wound is deepest, where the void is widest.

According to my friend Jorge Bucay: “At least the pain takes up space. Pain fills the spaces. Pain prevents holes in the soul. What would happen if there was no pain to fill up those holes?”

The calendar has turned into an efficient and relentless diary of pain which only serves to open up our entrails every time it reminds us of certain dates.

From the very first day, what we hear most is: “It’s a matter of time”. And that phrase makes us impatient. At the beginning the feelings are so intense that every second lasts a whole second. Is it a matter of time? You ask yourself: How much time? And the desperation returns. But, all in all, time passes, and if you look for it, the truth is that it does heal. Everytime you encounter, face and get over a key date, there’s a bitter-sweet feeling of victory, of moving forward.

In spite it all, we have to live life and live it well.

Back at work, we find love, comraderie, tact and understanding. The first weeks, shell-shocked as we are, we can’t do anything else other than to speak on the phone with friends and once in a while go out to walk on the streets and get some fresh air. It’s exhausting. Four simple chores weigh more than forty of the urgent ones I had before. My level of concentration is very low, and having to deal with a chart full of figures simply wears me out.

Nobody pressures me. At most, they gradually start involving me in more daily tasks to keep me distracted. The first time I seriously try to grapple with a challenging matter, a sharp pain invades my chest. The doctor tells me it is anxiety. I don’t want him to put me on medical leave and decide to take things easier. Slowly but surely we seem to be forging ahead and the work schedule gets back to a more normal routine; it’s as if we’re putting off our pain for those moments when we can devote more time to it.

We’re stuck into a kind of chronic daze which requires us to expend an enormous effort just to make the smallest daily decisions. Perhaps egged on by the commitment to carry on with life and not make any concessions to fatality, I have the need to close each and every of the matters that were pending prior to Diego’s accident: I want to take up studying English, which has me blocked for some time now; to finish reading A world without end; to go back to practicing sports; to practice yoga; to be able to walk past Diego’s school without suffering…

And for every attempt, the failed ones too, I begin finding the right moment to accomplish them, feeling like I’m growing with each, that somehow I’m rescuing part of what was snatched away by the untimely event. I still have to finish reading Odd hours, left on page 85, and which I don’t really feel like finishing.

It’s becoming more and more evident that the greater our resistence to accepting the irreversibility of the loss, the longer we’ll prolong our suffering. On the other hand, we’re certain that we don’t owe Diego any more suffering, and that he wouldn’t even want or expect it.

It is vitally important for the three of us to support each other, to see ourselves grow. It is comforting to see how Jorge faces his grief with normality, focused on his high school studies, his activities and friends, without giving in to discouragement. He rejects any kind of help, but that is his mature and courageous way of coping.

At first his attitude leaves us some doubts, but with the passing of time we’re finally convinced that things are going well. Teresa, despite her frequent descents into the well of desperation, also keeps her capacity of struggle and determination, also based on that same conviction that the three of us share: That in spite of it all, life must be lived, and lived well.

Whatever the body feels like doing

Quietly shade,

quietly light,

Quietly I await

the hand that gives shade and light.

(1981)

For quite some time we keep getting a deluge of sincere shows of support and love. At work they tell me to take whatever time is needed to sort things out. Through the Atleti, friends and especially Pilar and Cecilia, we receive psychological and psychiatric advice. They assure us that it will be very hard to overcome the loss, but also see us as being healthy and strong enough to deal with it.

We’re well-protected and participate in a minute-of-silence ceremony at the Calderón Stadium, a homage from Diego’s team. Two very emotional and gripping but comforting masses are celebrated, which give us an intense feeling of loving-kindness and support. Jorge Bucay’s El camino de las lágrimas (“The road of tears”) and many other books, lead us to acupuncture, to a siatshu, a yoga master, to see the premiere of Watchmen, to go out for dinner, for a walk, to a barbecue and to eat paellas; we receive countless phone calls every day… And though not all are of our liking, we gratefully and dazedly accept all proposals. It’s our way of understanding how to go on with our lives: Letting people show their love. The result is like a sort of armour, like tranquilizing care that relieves the pain and fills the time and absence.

But the stubborn pain seems to claim its space, and with every day of continuous activity and little calm, a lash of desperation and rage follows, like a bubbling over of accumulated anguish.

I organize a type of special planner where I can reserve some moments to pay attention to the pain.

Throughout the first days of my return to work, that feeling of not even having an instance to look inside myself deepens; there is barely enough time to feel, to remember in silence, to cry his absence. We rethink our attitude in light of our grieving, slow down the pace and duration of our outings and are pay more attention to what our bodies are asking of us, as it is the body which in the end really knows what we need, and also what is right.

I realize that after every day of concentrated effort at work or of being distracted with my fiends there follows a moment of intense anguish, as if I were plugged up and about to explode. I feel that I need some moments on a daily basis to let myself go and simply feel. And though it may sound cold, I set up a sort of planner to set aside time to deal with the pain. And that seems to work.

From that point on we begin to coexist with the pain, as if that new, more serene attitude of allocating more time to devote to it (but without renouncing anything that smacks of life) were the healthiest and most natural path to take. Thanks to that, the guilt feeling that vigilantly lurks and assaults me every time we go too far starts to   disappear, slowly but surely.

It’s as if this mute witness that we carry inside were to trip an alarm to warn us that we’re not doing the right thing and instead  rewards us with a feeling of peaceful calm whenever we strike the right balance of work, distraction and affliction.

Jorge continues to find encouragement from his friends and to let off steam with his guitar.

We’re aware that those who want to help us don’t know what to do. In addition to the pain suffered by the loss, they add that of the helplessness of seeing us suffer. We don’t know if they understand our need to pull back and look for more time and space for ourselves, which is why it’s so important that we recognize and appreciate their help and how they can continue to do so: Standing by our side and listening to us.

The great questions

Lord, whoever you are,

I’m speaking to you serenely

and quietly.

And I must say…

Lord:

nothing. But speak to you

and speak to you…

(1981)

Teresa, Jorge, as well as I, each one by himself and independently, have decided that we must look ahead and move forward. Convinced that Diego wouldn’t expect less from us, that life is beautiful and full of interesting things and that is why it hurts us so much that he is not here to enjoy it. That our best offering can’t be other than to live life to the fullest for him, to live it despite our low spirits and the sadness of his absence that we all feel: We must live for ourselves and for him.

We feel that his loss hurts us much more than ours, and that we wouldn’t think twice about entering into a pact if it would guarantee that Diego will live happily somewhere far-away and inaccessible to us, in exchange for everlasting pain for us. It’s not the pain itself that matters to us; we even see ourselves as being capable of standing it. If we could only know that he’s well! And we dwell on what a priceless treasure Faith is for those who have it. And we miss not having it.

We don’t find an answer to the great questions: Why? Why him? Isn’t it unfair? What for? Didn’t he deserve to live longer? Could it have been avoided? Destiny? What destiny? Did God want this? What God could want that?

From the beginning I have avoided asking myself and looking for answers to all these questions. It’s not the time. What answers will I now find that I didn’t have before? We’re born, live and die. All of us. Life is an amalgam of deceivingly ordered events that we naively try to have under control to feel safer; for the most part, and more often than not, those events are made up of only arbitrary happenstance and we can do little or nothing to prevent or change them. This stoic thought doesn’t help me avoid pain, nor relieve my desperation and sadness, nor does it make me less enthused about life, but does help me save energy that I invest in living it.

There also comes the inevitable moment in which I must weigh whether or not it is convenient to embark in fits of rage, to actively commit myself to the search for those responsible for the presumed negligence that brought about the accident and Diego’s death.

The timely advice of the lawyer who handled our lawsuit comes to my help; one of my coworkers has offered to help us. He suggests that we let others take care of this matter, because rage has a wearing-down effect and will end up eating one’s insides. He mentions that if someone has to pay, it will happen; if not, then it couldn’t be helped. And as far as Diego is concerned, nothing will change that.

I, who have always been a visceral and scrappy person, a defender of my just causes to the last and reasonable consequences, recognize that this time I’m not up for the struggle, and though there is a stinging and combative impulse in me that calls for the fight, there’s also a counterbalancing element of common sense that demands that I devote all my energy to Teresa, Jorge and myself.

Nevertheless, before the pressing need to know the reasons for the accident, I collaborate in the analysis of the fatal players’ bench structure which my coworker has kindly offered to undertake. And I come to the conclusion that although it was hard to foresee what happened (because it wouldn’t tip over if a heavier adult were to hang from it), they could have foreseen that the structure would also be used by children, who have a natural need to climb and swing to grow and develop, as as such would hang and balance to-and-fro (one at a time, or by pairs, or even three at a time) without thinking about the danger involved. They should have also thought that a lot of city kids live surrounded by park and playground equipment that is usually safe. However, if these possibilities are not taken into account in the design phase, such equipment can become deadly traps. Vigilance and education are not preventive enough measures against children’s natural instincts.

That’s how I understand it and how I deal with it. So I tell the lawyer and those friends who have offered their help in this matter that I only want to make sure that the suit reaches the highest judicial level to ensure that the necessary measures are taken to prevent such a regretful situation from ever happening again.

Wanting to be objective, I´d like to be able to know that anyone --knowing that a child could be hurt or killed—wouldn’t stop doing whatever he or she could to keep such a situation from happening.

And even though something deep down, like a guilt feeling, insinuates that perhaps I’m doing so to cowardly free myself from the relentless claws of hate and wrath, I let others handle those matters.

We can’t find the answers to the great questions.

What answer will I find now that I didn’t have before?

The only answer is: That’s life.

Wherever we look for information to help us deal with the grieving process, we’re told that the loss of a child is the most painful trance and the hardest ever to overcome, and that as such it’s normal to expect worse consequences for those who suffer such a loss. Jorge Bucay, in El camino de las lágrimas (The road of tears) speaks about couples breaking up, disoriented brothers that look for shelter in bad habits and bad companies, school failures, depressions, somatic manifestations of pain and anguish, risk of accidents and death, etc. And all that scares and upsets me enormously.

I not only don’t want to, but refuse to concede one more disgrace to fatality –at least not fortuitously. It will have to be ripped away from me. I’m willing to do everything in my power so that none of those forecasts will ever be fulfilled. Life, even without Diego, is still worth living, and I don’t want to, and will not, be a sad person.

From now on I embark on a boundless an anxious search to find out what to do. I read books about death, life after death, about heaven, the soul, grieving, faith, religion… I see videos, I navigate the web…

Learning about near-death experiences gives us hope and encouragement. Some are as surprising as inexplicable without there being another consciousness level, but all end up there: In the limit that separates Science and Faith. And that is simply not enough for all our pain and desperation. The majority of testimonials leave us with the certainty that the moment of death is a serene and peaceful transit.

On the other hand, I suspect that my pain and desperation are not as deep as Teresa’s, in as much as I haven’t raged and cried as much. Jorge Bucay says that the pain of a loss is like that of a bolt of lightning striking you inside, that it can literally break your heart. And I haven’t felt that. I’ve seen Teresa twist and coil with pain, to cry as if her heart was being rendered, unable to breathe or talk. And I haven’t felt that. It’s not that I feel guilty for it. I’m convinced that I loved Diego as much as anyone can love, that I paid as much attention to him as a father should, that I always protected him as far as I could. I firmly believe that I was the imperfect father that he wanted to have.

But I feel remorse and worried thinking that I’m not grieving like I should. And that if I don’t it will drag me down a dark, dead-end path where neither determination nor desire to fight will save me, because they will have been dissipated and vanished in a confused fog of listlessness and lack of desire to live. I fear that black tunnel. I’m afraid of depression. And everything points to pain as the only way out.

If I have to make that journey, I will.

At times, I look for pain as a safety valve so I won’t blow up. I look at his pictures, go over the video they made at school, once and again, I listen to his music: sad and evoking, I study the Science text-book Diego would have studied this year… I cry, I despair, and sometimes even feel better.

We’ve been told that we should alternate moments of emotional downturn with others of distraction that will allow us to compensate the ups with the downs. Not to wallow in the pain. I’ve found out myself that if you let it carry you away, it will drag you down to a cold and dark pit where it’s easy to stay and hard to get out of. Little by little and with time, I’m learning how to strike a balance.

In other aspects, as usual, it’ll be a while before I realize my lack of moderation. I don’t do so until the day Jorge catches me holding a book of adventures in my hands, and relievedly says that he’s glad to see me reading something normal. I then realize that this rational road of a desperate search will not take me too far. And I concede a cease-fire so I can let myself feel and allow that other internal me, serene and resolute, to once more take up the reins of my life. And I also learn that to do so I need silence. And that such silence can only come from having to quiet down the noise inside my racing mind.

Cecilia also suggests we should start reading other things, because it’s not about us becoming experts in grieving. Thus I abandon that desperate search and with it the disorientation and confusion that it entails. I find peace and quiet to let me think clearly.

Through the pain

that your absence has left

I can see the road

that I’ll have to travel without you

so I can find you.

(2009)

Faux encounters

And at last,

a perfect harmony

of yesses and contradictions.

(1981)

I’m really surprised of the few --though intense— mis-encounters we’ve had during the grieving period. For all three of us it’s been important –I would say fundamental—to be able to count on the support and the balance that we give each other to have been able to make it so far without breaking down.

Jorge has a hard time seeing us afflicted, although he respects our pain. Teresa does too, knowing that they’re few and far between, and also respects my moments of pain. Being more of a busybody I too give my opinion, but I also respect.

This hasn’t prevented sparks from flying on more than one occasion, those sparks that breaks up harmony, humiliates and destroys good intentions, and set off explosive and uncontrolled bursts of rage; of harsh words, of senseless ire…

What is strange is that we finally end up soothing each other and drawing ever closer, and once the left-over guilt feelings are mitigated we finish feeling liberated from the tremendous pressure building up inside. It’s as if a valve had been opened to let the anger escape, making us feel better.

My yoga teacher tells me that if don’t release the wrath, anger and ire --in essence, all the negative feelings that boil up inside us-- those will eventually affect our bodies and end up making us ill. And I believe that it is our own bodies that wisely look for and provoke these brutal mis-encounters, much like a sort of escape valve. Nevertheless, we have to use less primitive and disagreeable manners when releasing such dangerous feelings.

I confess to having yelled in desperation and beaten up the living-room cushions at home, all alone, and also taken advantage of the intimacy of the car to scream like a madman. And it has done me good.

Signals

Solitude and silence

of not being with you,

although the wind and

the sound of the goldfinch

who comes every morning

to share his song

with the pine branches

And I have high hopes

that you’re with me,

that you’re with me.

And I have high hopes

that you’re with me,

that you’re with me.

P. Barral – Hilario Camacho

I’ve already mentioned how the English dictionary flew inexplicably off the shelves in Diego’s room during our first visit following his death. And that being in a daze at the time, we didn’t give it a second thought. That was much later, when we started adding up other little abnormal things, that we began to interpret them as signals from Diego or his attempts at contacting us.

The fact is that neither Teresa nor I had touched anything in his bedroom and that dictionary, and it had to be the English one which was sticking out but a quarter of an inch from the edge, that fell off by itself and hit the desk.

I’m quite skeptical about this matters, and without ruling anything out, tried to evaluate the possibility of its tipping over, but found no satisfactory explanation. I leafed through it, opened it at random hoping to find a highlighted word that would send me a message, but nothing. So much for that wishful thinking lurking in our hearts, thirsting for hope.

A few days later, once again milling around Diego’s room, I’m attracted to a slight rotation in the feathered dream-catcher that hangs from the ceiling. I leave the room to make sure it’s not me who’s causing the movement, but when I return see that it continues with its slight and constant rotation, aloof from my comings and goings. I feel somewhat confused: between hopeful and incredulous. I force myself to think it through.

I inspect the window, brushing my hand against it for any air currents that could be drafting through the cracks, I close the bedroom door. But nothing. The dream-catcher goes on with its shamelessly constant girations. I don’t understand a thing, except that… I’m about to ask Diego if it’s a signal. I tell him I’m here, willing, prepared and receptive. That I fear nothing.

Then suddenly, as if it were an urgent feint, the power of reason tears me away from my abstraction and makes me aware of the radiator’s convective heat. I cover it with a cloth and the catcher stops spinning. I sadly smile from the door while I watch the light feathery hoop, hanging still from the ceiling after being stopped by a rational power.

A few months later, Jorge needed to change his cell phone battery and remembered that perhaps he could use the one from the cell phone that Diego found in December when we were getting out of the car in an outdoor shopping center parking lot. At that time Diego had ran up very excitedly because he had found the phone next to the car. “It’s mine, isn’t it?” No, I said that we needed to wait until someone called then we’d return it. He kept insisting, so to put him off, because we were going to be late getting to the movie theater, I told him that if nobody called by the time we came out, we would see.

My intention was to call, but once we were inside the theater hall, and with the hurry, instead of putting the phone on mute I turned it off. When I tried to turn it back on I couldn’t because I didn’t have the PIN code. Diego rejoiced in my clumsiness. The cell phone ended up in a drawer, waiting for him to be old enough to buy him a card for it.

The following week, and while eating at the grandparents, Diego recalled the story of the cell phone. My niece was surprised, and mentioned that she had lost hers two weeks earlier in another shopping center. We told her to keep the phone that Diego had found, and he grudgingly went along. However, my niece turned down the offer since she had already bought a new one. Diego was glad. And we forgot all about it.

I was in my bedroom, laying on my bed and reading, when Jorge started to change the batteries on his cell phone.

--Mom!! –I heard him urgently calling after a while--. Look, come over, it’s Haypo (my cousin’s dog). Look, Mom! Haypo’s in the cell phone Diego found! AND SO IS DIEGO!!

And I hear them talk about it, full of surprise, as they watch a video that my cousin had recorded back on the 24th of December. In it you can see Diego carrying on, making faces and speaking with a falsetto voice due to the effects of the helium balloons that were given out at the Christmas’ Eve party. Suddenly they get eerily quiet, surprised and moved by the unexpected event, then try to tell me, but I don’t get up to watch it.

My cousin lost her phone in a shopping center, someone found it only to lose it at yet another shopping center, without even erasing its contents? Diego found it, I turned it off, Jorged changed providers and terminal so that the batteries would be compatible, and when he does so finds a smiling Diego in the video my cousin had filmed? All by chance?

My mother, without even watching the video, asks me if Diego is smiling in it.

--Of course he is –she says--, I’ve been lighting a candle every day so that he’ll send us a signal that he’s fine. And there you have it.

Many times I’ve walked the eight kilometers to the cemetery, and another eight on the way back, looking and hoping to find new signals. The last and definitive signal that will bring us the certainty that he’s where we all hope he is.

The result are days of anxiety and hopelessness.

I don’t go to the cemetery that often, I only do so on those days that pain ties me up with the memories and I need some time to be alone so that I can sort them out.

One of those days, while crying, I despair and rage on all alone, next to the plane tree that gives shade to Diego’s niche, and the sound of wings beating nearby and a thud on the ground bring me out of my moment of abstraction.

It’s a hatchling that has fallen from the nest. I see how it flaps his wings and makes an effort to rise and take flight, all to no avail. The uneasiness that the sorry sight produces is joined by that of pity; I feel sorry, pick it up and check to make sure it’s not wounded, I whisper in a soothing voice: Don’t worry, I’m going to help you.

Then I look between the branches for the nest, and make a couple of attempts to launch him home. Every time I do so, he spreads his wings in search of some balance. I finally do it and try to boost his flight with the protective cushion of the palms of my hands. In a few tenths of a second he hits a branch and plunges to the ground, hitting it with a thud. He twists and turns, a broken bird. I delicately hold him in my hands. He chirps in an agonizing way.

Moved by all that, I’m no longer crying. I softly hug him with the fingers of my hand, cock the ones in the other hand as if about to fire off a marble and proceed to strike a lethal blow against his small head. Overcome by sadness and guilt, I gently place him down among some bushes, wipe my tears, say so long to Diego and leave without knowing if there’s anything to be learned from all that.

Later I dwell on the fact that no matter what you do, disgraces are sometimes inevitable, and for all of us the end is always a definitive and inevitable event. It doesn’t console me at all, but do take a mental note of it.

The other day, Teresa finds a perfectly formed acorn, along with its hood and attached twig under Diego’s niche. It’s just like the ones Diego would look for whenever he went to the meadow: That’s how I like them, like that one, smooth and shiny, with its little hood. In the cemetery there isn’t a single holm oak. And although there are some in the nearby meadow, it’s still odd that such a perfectly-formed acorn would be there, precisely at the foot of his niche.

Upon our return from holidays in London, the three of us go through a rather hard stage of uneasiness and sadness. One of those weekend afternoons I feel very restless and nervous. I take refuge in my bedroom and try reading to relax, but I can’t. There’s an undefined something that is oppressing me and grabs at my insides. I get up, amble around Diego’s room looking for I-don’t-know-what, and finally pick up his fifth-grade Science textbook, in English, one we used to study together. I take it to my bed and painfully leaf through it while keeping my jaws tightly closed.

I find a page whose upper corner is carefully bent over, as if it were a mark. It’s on Unit 10 (“Population”). The only unit and the only two pages that say anything about London: There’s a sign-post showing various directions (Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Embankment Pier, South Bank and Waterloo) and a picture of a health food stand in a typical London market. We visited all those places and it seems like Diego is trying to tell us that he too was there.

Another day I realize that what attracts me most about Diego’s room is not so much his things and pictures, but its smell. The room smells like Diego! During the next few day I silently take the smell in, without saying a word to anyone. And it seems that the more I miss him, the more intense and precise is the aroma, and I feel comfortable with that illusion until one day, full of high hopes, I can’t keep it to myself any longer and tell Teresa.

She confesses that every afternoon she sprays Diego’s room and bed with his cologne.

On yet another occasion, while vacationing at the Brotos Hotel in Ordesa, as Teresa takes a last look prior to checking out, she finds a small dinosaur in one of the drawers, as if hidden. It’s just like the ones Diego used to like. She shows it to me with watery eyes and keeps it without saying a word. It’s now on the shelves in Diego’s room.

Encouraged by these events I have often walked the eight kilometers from my house to the cemetery and back, through the meadow.  All along hoping to find new signals. I look up at the sky, searching for forms in the clouds, reading the tracks in the sand, looking over the grass growing next to the niche, trying to keep an open heart and mind so as not to think or become a living antenna. I speak to him and beg for a signal. One last and definitive signal that may give me the certainty that he’s in that very place where all of us hope he is.

The result is days full of anxiety and hopelessness. There are no longer more signals, nor have the previous ones turned out to be conclusive.

All of which leads to me reflect and come to the realization that throughout known history, no signals of this kind have ever transcended the boundary between interpretation and certainty.

And being convinced liberates me from an improbable and desperate search, making me aware that, on the other hand, as vulnerable and needy for something to cling to as we are, we could run the risk of being prey and falling into the hands of heartless predators, fakes and con men who only take advantage of desperate people like us.

I’ve never ruled anything out, because I consider that man has much left to discover in this field, but I prefer to quietly wait for what is to come, rather than turn despairingly crazy. I am, then, left with whatever may naturally and spontaneously come to bring me hope. And nothing else.

One night I fell asleep longing for Diego’s tickling sessions, asking him to feel them again. When I woke up the light morning breeze was caressing my back.

I feel that if there are signals to be had from those who love us, these would have to be evident but subtle enough to bring hope; but also improbable and doubtful enough to keep you from going insane.

In the path of the hunters

In every winter’s heart lies

a quivering spring, and behind

the veil of each night

waits a smiling dawn.

Khalil Gibran

During the summer, and in our zeal not to make any concessions to fatality, we decided to go ahead with the plans we had made prior to his death: London and the Road to Santiago.

We traveled to London in spite of the pain involved in even thinking about it. It was Diego’s greatest dream: “Next year I don’t want to go to the beach, let’s go to London”. And he was going to be our interpreter.

So it was that I, as best I could, ended up being the interpreter. And also the tour guide, which gave me the chance to make plans,

organize the excursions and refresh the vocabulary. Jorge hung close to his cousin and didn’t let go until we got back to Madrid. Teresa dragged her state of mind through the underground, trying hard to put on a brave face. When we returned home, the three of us cried and raged on, each in his own way, for over a week. We hadn’t found any signals in London.

For the Road to Santiago, we had bought and broken in new boots, trained on an almost daily basis, purchased water canteens and caps; we had everything ready, when at the last minute we vetoed the trip. A final bout of common sense dictated by the already established principle of only doing those things that our bodies really asked for, caused us to rule it out.

The physical effort required would have been very demanding, and that kind of extra-effort entailed more than just strength and determination. We would also need to be in the mood for it, and we weren’t really up for that. So instead we decided on Ordesa, a plan that would give us more flexibility and the opportunity of adapting better, regardless of our state of mind.

It seems like we now have a better feel

for where the path is taking us.

We devote the first day in Ordesa to a beautiful, but hard, warm-up excursion. The second day we walk into the valley through the Hunters’ Path and the Pelay Strip: 15 Kilometers. It begins with a 675-meter rise in altitude in over less than a mile. Half and hour of constant climbing on a breath-takingly dark and sharply zig-zagging path. The first stretches take a physical toll: the backpacks start to weigh, legs hurt, clothes chafe…The perspective of what’s ahead is also daunting… Teresa and I take turns to lead and set the pace. That doesn’t help, we find that none of the paces are comfortable, and everything weighs us down.

Our view of the landscape has been limited to the stretch immediately ahead which lead us to the next turn. And equally reduced is a small room for a safe foothold, the space between two roots, and the rock outcropping that serves as a support point. Teresa transfers her canteen to my backpack. Sweat, aching legs and shoulders, thirst.

Not being able to see but a few feet ahead of us, we can’t readily distinguish where the road will take us. Ahead there is an enourmous stone wall that cuts us off. We know this is a classic, well-traveled path, otherwise we could reasonably doubt that it would take us anywhere. We stop to catch our breaths and drink some water. Then we continue the interminable climb. We are racked by doubts at various points and in particular question the estimated times shown in the guide book, even the information given to us by those who have hiked there before.

The stone wall is still there, dauntingly rising above us, unbreachable. We spot another couple ahead of us, and there’s yet another one coming up behind us. Although we want to be alone in this journey, the company of other trekkers cheer us on. We continue the climb while keeping the distances between the others. The zig-zagging path parallels the rock wall and the trees are now smaller and more scattered. There is more sunlight; it’s a clear mid-morning and that transmits optimism.

The guide book says that we only have a quarter of an hour to reach the top. Up above, we’re relieved to see the Calcilarruego lookout. One can see some magnificent views from there, and also breathe a proud sigh of satisfaction. Our legs, back and shoulders hurt. However, we still have a few kilometers to go, but now we know we’ve overcome the hardest part. Feeling satisfied, we take a break, sit down, and quietly eat a chocolate bar.

Looking back on what we’ve already covered, we dwell on how this journey parallels our grieving process. We strap the backpacks on our aching shoulders and carry on with the trek. Now it feels like we can better appreciate where the path is. There is an impressive precipice to the left, the mountain continues to rise on the right, beyond the valley we see Monte Perdido (“The Lost Mount”) and below that is the Cola de Caballo (“The Horse Tail”) waterfall.

The trip back to Ordesa is also sad and painful. But we’re reinforced as a couple and our state of minds re-generated.

While in London we looked for Diego; in Ordesa we looked for ourselves.

Father Matías

No one went yesterday

nor is going today,

and neither tomorrow

on this same road

that I’m traveling towards God.

For each man He keeps

a new ray of sunlight…

and a virgin road.

León Felipe

A few days after Diego´s death, I find myself undecided between the need of looking for spiritual support to bear the situation, or to deal with it in a rational manner. I read books, talk to people, with Sara (every session has a space dedicated to doing just that), I navigate the net. I attend mass fairly frequently, not only to go with Teresa, who wants to go, but also because there I find a moment of refuge and calm where I can think about Diego, in which I allow my emotions to surface, and I hold certain hope. But I don’t have Faith.

For some time I grapple with the dilemma of whether to take a step forward and speak to Father Matías and make a spiritual journey to search for Faith. Otherwise, I could be true to my agnosticism, and stoically bear the loss against all odds. I find the second option to be unbearably hard and sordid; while the first option is a priceless life-saver which I’m afraid I’ll grab in a hurry without first making sure that I can firmly hold on to it, and which will lose air and leave me stranded, lost and floating in the middle of an ocean of despair.

I get ready to talk with Father Matías on a number of occasions, but have not been able to make opportunity and intention coincide.

Upon returning from the Ordesa vacations, I definitely decide that I can’t face my grief by appealing to Faith, because I simply don’t have any and the sterile search only produces anguish. I feel I must face the situation according to the dictates of reason. I think that if I can accept it, anything that can come afterwards –if it does come- will be great gift. And if it doesn’t come, at least I’ll have been coherent and not built my grief on forced beliefs, based on temporary and feeble needs.

One Saturday afternoon, and feeling a diffuse and undefined pain (at this stage I’ve become used to feeling that way), and sheltered in the calm and safety that decision-making brings, I get in touch with Father Matías through an SMS and we agree to meet the following Tuesday. It’s that easy: an SMS. I ask myself what kind of conjure kept me from such a simple idea like that of sending a message to make an appointment.

That Tuesday afternoon I arrive to the parochial office ten minutes early. They’ll let him know and when he arrives we hug each other with true affection. And we talk. For an hour and 15 minutes we talk. I tell him how Teresa, Jorge and I are doing. As a result of the conversation he tells me how things went for him in another experience. We talk about Diego. And our comings and goings to the cemetery. He gives me some advice. We speak about the humane and a little about the divine. An hour and a quarter goes by and we still haven’t talked about either God or Faith.

--Look, Pedro—he cuts me off when he sees me squirming in the chair as I’m about to bring the matter up--, I can’t tell you what I base my faith on, nor why I’m absolutely certain that Diego’s in Heaven. It’s something I know, and even if I could I can’t tell you more. I could give you a thousand reasons why I have embraced the principles and values of Christianity, but all of them are debatable. But the transcendence of man and the existence of God are unexplainable, they are only felt. So don’t worry about that and don’t be in a hurry. Just go ahead and meet it head on; I encourage you to do so. Later, if you feel like you’re ready, slowly approach it. If Faith comes and you find it, it’ll be a magnificient treasure. If not, it couldn’t be helped. What’s important is to be honest and to try to be happy.

You may be surprised to hear this from a priest, but the only real important thing is what we do with ourselves and those around us. It’s the small daily gestures that matter. The rites are only expressions of Faith. So what if you profess your faith from a Christian, Buddhist, or Hinduist perspective, or from your very own? What matters is what you do to be happy and make those around you happy as well.

Seven to ten minutes’ worth of conversation to free me from such a heavy load. It’s Tuesday evening and I’m 48 hours away from telling Sara.

Oh God, the sky is sprinkled with stars!

And here I am,

in this home,

under this roof of dreams,

with no other views

than these paths of wilted

flowers of the past

I see through the window.

Everyday I dream of a

red and amber sky,

growing with light.

I dream of dawn and dusk:

All the sunrises.

From this home.

In these walls I believe them.

And God!

Every day the sun rises and sets

and I, in this house of dreams,

keep dreaming I’ll paint it.

(1981)

The woman who listens to me

Can there be greater generosity

than whoever gives away his time?

Teresa and I clearly agree to get as much healthy help as we can. From the very first weeks we tried acupuncture and shiatsu massages that helped us relax and calmed the anxiety. And although we take half a tranquilizing pill every night to help us sleep, we wouldn’t want to, if at all possible, go beyond that point.

Through some cousins of mine, who have a friend that participated in grief therapy, we’re told about the Fundación Mario Losantos del Campo, and are urged to go there to get advice and help.

Both Teresa and I make a private appointment with Sara so that she can evaluate us. Each interview consists of engaging in her therapy method: to listen and ask questions. She assures us that in spite of the pain and the confusion we feel, she feels we’re healthy and have enough emotional resources to pull us through, so she proposes group therapy for the two of us.

It’s during this very first session that I open up to Sara without any reservations, my determination to overcome this trance has knocked down all my possible barriers, shame and doubts; I’m engaged. I speak openly about my confusion, fears and feelings of vulnerability. And how I feel that my whole emotional structure has been damaged and is cracked. I’m moved and even cry. Sara listens.

Following the first appointment, Teresa and I have no doubts about continuing to attend the grief therapy sessions. On the other hand, Jorge flat out refuses to look for any kind of psychological help, arguing that his therapy are his friends and the guitar. At age 16 he has convinced us of his clear vision of things.

Teresa joins a group right away and I await for another one to start. Since my group is taking a while to be ready, Sara proposes some individual therapy sessions with her while I wait for the group to be formed. As anguished as I am, I accept. Individual therapy entails yielding an intimate and reserved space, the confidentiality is assured. She explains the procedure: I speak freely about anything that worries me and she listens and makes pointed questions. She warns me that she doesn’t give any advice, nor sets guidelines; the only exception being if she feels I’m very anguished or lost. The therapy is based on the principle that everyone has enough resources to help them move ahead.

During the first sessions I find myself overwhelmed with the thought of talking for a whole hour about my feelings, with hardly no interruptions and scarcely no chances of receiving advice. But I immediately feel comfortable and trusting enough to open up and express myself with the utmost sincerety. In that therapy I find a firm support from which to learn how to trust my own resources and work through my grief through them.

When I tell my friends what it consists of, they encourage me to continue. Without saying so openly, most of them don’t know what to make of a therapist who only listens and doesn’t give advice. As they see me becoming more enthused and convinced of the positive benefits of my sessions, they start referring to Sara as “the woman who listens to you”.

--Are you going today to see “the woman who listens to you”?

--Yes, today’s my turn to go see the woman who listens to me.

During the sessions I speak and get things off my chest. I tell my friends about the sessions. My friends take on the method as their own and free themselves from their doubts about what they can do: they listen.

Sometimes there’s room for humor. Like the day that, looking very serious, I tell Sara that I have to file a formal complaint. She gives me a worried and somewhat restless look, but doesn’t lose her cool and waits for me to continue, encouraging to do so in her own particular way, with tilted head, quietly waiting. And she ends up laughing outloud when I accuse her and her method of turning me into an unbearable being. Me, who always boasted of knowing how to listen, now have become this kind of person who needs to chat non-stop for at least an hour.

--Sara, you’ve made me into a bore.

Sara regains her composure and with a smile says agrees that everything has its counterparts or side effects.

The thing is that we also have to learn to let humor come into our lives again. At first, laughing or even smiling made us feel guilty. We laugh and smile because it’s inevitable when you’re surrounded by others; however, afterwards, when we’re by ourselves, that we feel bad. As if the laughter didn’t have anything to do with our feelings, as if in doing so we were betraying Diego’s memory.

Perhaps behind all that there’s a latent atavistic fear of social reproach. But little by little, and above all trying to be true to our instinct, we are becoming convinced that wanting to live –to truly live- entails having spaces to laugh and spaces to cry. And to know that all those who make up our closest circles, those that love us and take care of us, long to see us laugh again. It’s as if when one smiles again, half the smile is projected outwards to light up the world and the other half goes inside you, to give you oxygen.

Grieving is a succession of highs and lows

that results in an upwardly progression.

By talking I’ve been able to shoo away many ghosts, to put into words what was boiling inside my head, to organize my thoughts, to rule out irrelevant things, to put a face on its real dimension and importance. And Sara’s questions had a large and important role in that. I remember the day that I started the session by being very excited and telling her how the day before, when I went to run around the Dehesa park, I had been caught in a downpour.

I told her about how I felt, about the purifying and liberating effect of the cold water on my body, and how when I stopped running, exhausted, soaked and shivering, I felt renewed; that it was as if nature wanted me to grant me relief, strength and hope. Sara listened to me, paying attention to the end of my tale, said she was glad that the storm had had such an effect on me, and then asked:

--But as far as you’re concerned, and depends on you, what can you tell me about that?

With these few words, although doing away with all the poetic charge that the experience had brought out, she had given me the key to stop looking outwardly for that which solely and exclusively depends on me.

For me, the sessions have been the perfect space to pour my doubts, fears, fantasies and turmoils so that Sara, the therapist, with her questions, summaries and recaps could help me give them the proper magnitude and importance that they really have for me, so I could order them, fix them or rule them out.

I have learned that grieving is a succession of highs and lows that results in an upwardly progression. That slowly but surely you make inroads on the numbness, the desperation and the pain, and that a horizon of quiet and serene memories begins to open up. I’ve learned that time runs in our favor, but that it is slow and capricious, and needs our collaboration for it to be beneficial to us.

I have also learned that it’s important to be determined enough to keep going although that may look impossible at first. That life keeps being beautiful, and that’s why it hurts so much that Diego’s missing out on it. That the ten years he lived were absolutely full, intense and happy. And that we don’t know what the future would otherwise have held out for him.

I have understood that my way of feeling pain is through a wide and diffuse anguish, black, dotted with sharp and spaced twinges. Recurrently. With wide cease-fires in-between. That I’ve never felt as if a bolt of lightning had rendered my heart in two. That maybe some day I’ll have to feel it that way and I’ll be around to deal with it.

I have discovered that it’s best to talk things out, and the more, the better. And that if it’s possible, it’s good to do it with those who are or have gone through it. That the best balsam is loving-kindness.

I have learned that if you persevere, you gradually find precious moments of optimism, as when I realized that until those five fatal seconds of Diego’s accident, luck had always smiled upon us, and still does. That we don’t have but to look at our solid relationship as a couple, at Jorge, our family, work, coworkers and many friends to be fully convinced.

I have understood that right now it’s more important than ever to put my life in order, to feel that I live according to my principles and values in order to bring peace and calm to my life. That I’m not sick, but only a sentient being who has been hit very hard. That we have to rest; that pain and desperation increase when our defenses are down. That to go for walks in the country with friends charges up our batteries and helps to mitigate our pain.

That moderate sports at the right time helps us feel vital and younger. That yoga helps to quieten and soothe my mind and to sleep better (although there’s little of that because I’m still a beginner). That from a positive and active attitude we must pay attention to what our bodies are telling us. That it is good to let people help us, because we are also bringing relief to the ones who love us, although the time is nearing when we’ll have to invert that and begin to give.

I understand that each one has to grieve in his or her own way. And what for me are routines that drag me down and delay my grieving process –to kiss the stuffed animal everyday as many times as I used to kiss Diego, to walk in and out of his room to say good-bye, to visit the cemetery on a regular basis, etc.-- for Teresa however, it’s a source of strength. That at any rate these are beautiful and necessary gestures, and that it’s good for each person to make when they’re needed. That it’s possible to speak to him and to commend myself to him, thinking that somewhow, if I let him and if I don’t rush, he’ll guide me and give me wisdom.

The commitment that I made to Diego at his farewell, of doing everything in my power to move forward and come out of this, has been from the very beginning an indispensable help in keeping me from falling apart. There’s no way that I can let him down.

I’ve come to the conclusion that to be open to a spiritual path can be healthy and be of great help if it is done from an open and serene predisposition. And that this road is not an obsessive search through the meanders of reason. And that at any rate, if we believe in the story and we’re happy, but in the end discover that it’s not true.  So what?!  What child has sued his parents for the beautiful lie behind the stories of The Three Wise Men or Santa Claus?

Re-reading El camino de las lágrimas as suggested by Sara, I discover that I’m really living more than just one grieving period: One for Diego’s death; another at work (the dismantling of the department that I started with so much effort ten years ago); yet another for the good friends that have gone or fallen by the wayside, and finally for the lost energy of my youth.

To realize those things makes it easier for me to discriminate, assimilate, order them by their level of importance and deal with them. That the department has come to the end of its cycle and it’s time for me to take advantage of a new professional horizon that is opening up. That personal relations are never immutable and do change with time and that true friendship lasts in the long run. That at age 48 I’ve lived a full life and had more joys than sorrows. And that I’ll have to focus all my efforts on overcoming what I’ve been dealt, the worse-case scenario, the type you never hope to have.

I understand the importance of needing to share with Teresa how Diego’s accident –the one I didn’t see—really happened.[2]

When faced with such a blow, couples and families can break up if they don’t have a solid relationship of trust and support. That Teresa and Jorge are the fundamental reason and strength to keep going.

That with the accident and Alex’s death in identical circumnstances to that of Diego’s, all my anger and wrath come out, something which had not happened before. I discover that they’re truly demolishing, that I don’t want to go down that road. That the matter is definitely better in other, more efficient hands, and I step aside. That now what’s most important for us is for me to get over it.

We discover that we’re capable of finding moments where to speak about Diego and to remember him doesn’t hurt as much. That once again we begin to enjoy a permanent coexistence with his absence. That even though some months have passed, we’ll still have to arm ourselves with patience, that this is long-term, or perhaps –although to a lesser extent-- will last forever. That I’d accept pain forever if it were necessary to keep his memory fresh.

Perhaps the time has come to try to fly solo, knowing that I’ll always be able to count on that “Peri”, “Perico” or “Periquín” that lives and lurks quietly and small inside me, and who unfailingly comes out and large in tough times to send me a ray of optimism, to push me ahead or to hold my life’s reins until I snap out of it.

In my friend Jorge Bucay’s book El camino de las lágrimas, there is a quote from Harold. S. Kushner: “The God I believe in does not send us problems, He sends us the strength to overcome them”, and I don’t know if that other resolute and serene me, who from time to time takes up the reins has anything do with that, but it wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

The Foundation

The Mario Losantos del Campo Foundation, on behalf of its founder Mario Losantos del Campo, works to contribute to the integral development of the human being in matters of health and training. All its projects have the same hallmark.

The Foundation is involved in four areas of activity:

- Support to social and health-related professionals

- Psychological area specializing in grieving therapy

- Development projects

- Research

The psychological area specializing in grief therapy has been active for over five years and endeavors to create a space in which those people who have experienced the loss of a loved one can externalize their pain, come up with the words to drain it and try out other ways of being to learn how to live in a world where that loved one no longer abides.

The Foundation offers 20 free therapy sessions to the bereaved, and in return only asks them to undertake personal works that will attest to their involvement with the therapy, which will be neither expensive nor untasteful, to serve three main goals:

- To value and appreciate the cost involved by the grieving therapy that is borne by the Foundation.

- To leave behind a testimony for those who will follow in the therapy.

- To connect them with life.

Sara Losantos thus explains the essence of the therapy like the one I participated in:

I believe that all people, by the mere fact of being human, carry inside them the capacity of becoming the best version of themselves. We tend to update ourselves, and to grow to overcome adversities; we only need to  create the necessary conditions for that to happen. Nobody in their right mind would think about yanking out a plant to make it grow, because if you do it will die. Human beings are the same, they need their time, their own time. Just like plants, we need good earth, fertilizer and a lot of light. This is what therapy represents, a warm, trustful and respectful space. It is not an experiment; I base my approach on the explanations of Carl Rogers. The therapeutical space attempts to meet the needs of the person so that he or she can overcome obstacles.

I worked the therapy from who I am, in first person, not giving advice and trying to reflect what Pedro was feeling or thinking about. I pretended to be a blank canvass on which he could project himself, so that whatever he was projecting or painting would be his, and only his, very genuine. I told Pedro that if I were to give my opinion or advice, two things might happen: That I could be wrong and then he would become angry. Or, even worse, that I could be right, because then he would be condemned to follow my advice. I told him that when it was his symbolic turn to come up and receive the award for having overcome his grief, that I would applaud from below, but wouldn’t be there to accept it because the merit was all his.

This book was not born out of a need, at least not consciously, to express my pain, but undoubtedly doing so has helped me to face that hurt, to deeply review my fears, my anguish and my motivations, to fix the memories, to put in order my grieving process. That’s not the reason why I feel that I must necessarily write a book or do something extraordinary as a healthy way of dealing with all this. Teresa has also tried to vent her feelings by writing letters to Diego; Jorge, on the other hand, has found a channel to express his emotions through his guitar. I think that what’s really important is for each of us to discover our own ways to express ourselves. To express ourselves. To talk, to talk a lot, and for someone to listen.

The news in El País

What is now proved,

was once only imagined.

William Blake

On that cold afternoon at the end of October I       await across the street from the Foundation for Teresa to come out of her therapy session. I’ve just proposed to Sara not to use up the rest of my scheduled sessions and she has agreed, satisfied; I would even say flattered by it.

I made the decision to discontinue my sessions while I was on the way to one of the last ones. I took advantage of the journey to organize my feelings, ideas and restlessness so I could tell Sara. Suddenly I realized that practically everything that was boiling inside my head revolved around my worries about Teresa and Jorge, my work and my friends’ problems, but nothing or very little of it had to do with me and my emotions.

The pain had lessened, but was still there, but not so the daze. I urgently needed to feel normal. The restricted vision I had of my surroundings, which focused on nothing but my affliction, had once again become panoramic.

The truth is that we’ve only moved up the scheduled end date by a week, in only one session. But the fact of having taken the step forward makes me feel that I’m recovering control over my life and   firmly walking towards a new normality. I have asked her that despite not having finished the book yet (though it’s in a very advanced stage), and thus my deadline is shortened.

And it’s not that I think my grieving is over. If we understand grieving to mean something painful, it still hurts. Perhaps it’s now easier to deal with it, and the pain is farther apart, but it will always be there. For me, to end grieving means to resolutely face the daily events again and without letting myself be clobbered by them; it means going back to being involved in interesting projects and to have new-found hopes and illusions. I think that grieving is over when memories of the beautiful outweigh the painful. Or, in other words, when you think about living again. Living life with upper-case letters. And with lower-case ones.

Sara doesn’t know what my testimonial work will be about, and I don’t even know if it intrigues her or not, but I’m very excited and in a child-like way can’t wait to surprise her.

Leaning on the railing in front of the building where the Foundation is housed, I scan the El País newspaper under the light of a nearby street-lamp, and take turns looking over the headlines --which I don’t usually pay much attention to--, while watching the people milling around the roasted-chesnut stand a few feet away. This new normality also implies keeping an eye on my diet, and the tempting smell of chestnuts roasting keeps me from focusing on the paper. Nevertheless, one of the headlines catches my attention, and as if drawn by magnet, I read the whole article completely and without stopping.

When I finish reading , I look up full of emotion, and without knowing what to think, find myself trapped between two feelings, two impressions, two sketches of opposing ideas: One about transcendence and the other about how insignificant our existence is. I let my watery gaze move over the darkened street landscape, let it lose itself on the indifferent hussle and bussle of the passers-by, and searching without really searching, look up to the sky while I try to find my star.

When I finally look down, comforted, and get ready to melt my sight on the nuances, smells, and warmth of the people, Teresa and her painful smile show up. She gives me a tiny kiss, I ask her to read the article. She reads it to herself, raises her head towards the heavens and without uttering a word, turns to me and nods, giving me a new look, as transparent and watery as mine.

Lost in her new look, radiant with hope, without any objective reason behind it, I decide the newspaper article would close my book.

EL PAÍS, Thursday, 29 October 2009

A 13 billion-year-old celestial object has been detected

Astronomers hope it will offer clues about the first heavenly bodies

Alicia Rivera, Madrid – Two teams of astronomers have detected a burst of gamma rays, a high-energy explosion, that was produced 13 billion years ago and whose radiation has been traveling at the speed of light until it was finally picked up on Earth last 23 April. The phenomenom, given the name of GRB 090423, corresponds to a relatively young period of the universe: only 630 million years since the Big Bang. (…)

“We’re talking about an ancient star that no longer exists. The energy and light from its explosion have been traveling in space for a long time, when neither the Earth nor the Sun existed”, explains Alberto Castro-Tirado, of the Andalusian Astrophysics Institute. (…)

Acknowledgements

To all the women and men who listen to me. To all those who have been and are standing by our side. To all who, with their messages of support, homages and shows of affection have given us encouragement.

In the book, I’ve wanted to leave out the names or expressed references of specific friends, coworkers or relatives, so as to make no distinctions, with the justified exception of Conchi, Teresa and Jorge. All of them, each one in their own way of understaning things, have given and are giving us support.

To Diego’s friends, teachers and schoolmates, for having shared such beautiful memories with us.

To Sara, Father Matías, Pilar, Cecilia and Natalia, for their generosity.

To the Club Atlético de Madrid, for its sincere and constant support. To the Juventud Sanse soccer school and club and the San Sebastián de los Reyes city council, for the initiative and sponsorship of the Diego Alcalá Rivero soccer memorial. To those who participate, for being such warm and close people.

To Jorge’s friends, for their natural and wise support.

To our coworkers, for their understanding, support, respect, discretion and loving-kindness.

To the Fundación Mario Losantos del Campo, for selfishly taking care of wounds around the world and for promoting the publication of this book.

To Jordi Nadal, for having backed up the book, for his empathy and for transmitting me the necessary confidence to clear up my last doubts. To María Alasia, for adding the right pinch of salt.

To María Antonia, for her letter, to Jaime for the picture of the moon, and to Lucía and Esperanza, for being the models of the book cover.

Books that have given us some clues

Basic

Bucay, Jorge. El camino de las lágrimas. Grijalbo.

Katafiasz, Karen. Contra la tristeza. San Pablo.

Quindlen, Anna. Pequeña guía para ser feliz. RBA, Integral.

Mcwilliams, Meter. Cómo sobrevivir a la pérdida del amor. Médicis.

To think about

Tolle, Eckhart. El poder del ahora. Gaia.

Prather, Hugo. Palabras para cada amanecer. RBA.

Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. La muerte en un amanecer. Luciérnaga.

Kúbler-Ross, Elisabeth. La rueda de la vida. Zeta.

Rovira, Alex. Las palabras que curan. Plataforma.

Notas

[←1]

Fragment of the song “Sweet child o´mine” Diego copied and pinned on his bedroom cork-board

[←2]

I have left out the description of the accident on purpose, as I feel it’s irrelevant for the purposes of the book.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Introduction

Dad’s tree

A few brushstrokes of Diego

My trip

Omens and premonitions

Return to an unsuspected place

At the hospital

Farewell

That unusual strength of character

At home

The last good-bye

Support

The absence

Whatever the body feels like doing

The great questions

Faux encounters

Signals

In the path of the hunters

Father Matías

Oh God, the sky is sprinkled with stars!

The woman who listens to me

The Foundation

The news in El País

Acknowledgements

Books that have given us some clues