So you\u2019re the one who lives right next door, are you?
Ah, I figured you did\u2014 no wonder I hadn\u2019t seen you around in a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think of the last time I saw her. That time she struck me as deeply frightened. As if the fear I caught in her eyes were something like an illness, something that could rub off on you. I remember her hands. Bloodless and trembling. That steady, almost mechanical motion as she slipped the beads of her rosary through her fingers, like letting go of seeds that never came to sprout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can you believe it? My grandchildren died. They were riding with their mama and they crashed. Oh no, my God. My children already died, but it hurts because my grandchildren still had so much living left in them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I try to imagine what it must be like. Entering death. What it felt like to loosen oneself from life. I always think from the place of feeling. For a moment I feel humbled by that absence, and suddenly it seems to me that going on would be nothing more than an unending entering into death. Something like dying a hundred times before really dying. And that last death \u2014just that\u2014 would wipe all the others away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I take walks around here when I feel sad, and watching TV doesn\u2019t help me. My boy Manuel, how he loved having us watch TV with him. Those cartoons he liked so much\u2014I can\u2019t even look at them anymore. How something so innocent can turn on you all of a sudden, in memory, like a puddle of mud, you see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n