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[thoughtonthoughts]

Mexico and my grief

Mexico was a reawakening to life. A relearning on how to reconnect to my surroundings, to the people that cross paths with mine and the subliminal messages that reached me in the most curious ways.

Grieving "invites" your inner world to slow down, but the problem is that the outside world doesn't. This mismatch provokes a feeling of being extremely lost and no longer know how to connect. You want to live but immediately you want to stop and force everyone to stop and join you in your grief.

This was the energy present in this trip.

Mexico carries something hidden...something mystical, a suspenseful energy... Like when someone or something is hiding and lurking, but you can't tell where or who.

One day, we headed to San Juan Chamula in a colectivo. Chamula is a small town, inhabited mainly by indigeneous people named Tzotziles. The Tzotziles carry out their business in the open public market where they sell animals, clothes and houseitems. The women wear long skirts made of black sheep fur. Dead cow's heads hang from the houses door heads.

Once we arrived, we headed to the Templo San Juan Bautista. You have to pay the entrance and follow their rules. You can't take pictures inside nor to the people as the Tzotziles believe that it takes their soul.

Once we crossed the church's semi open door, we were showered with an impressive spectacle. An huge dark room lit by hundreds of candles. The pine needles scattered all over the floor serving as a pillow for Tzotziles families to sit on the floor while doing their prayers and rituals.

The whole church had Catholic statues placed all around with candles burning right in front of each one. Several families arrive either alone or accompanied by a xaman for the limpias. Some bring a chicken alive or an egg and alcohol as a gift. The xaman initiates the ritual and at some point he breaks the chicken's neck. They say that they pass the evil from the people to the chicken and then they kill it and bury it near their houses.

After we left the church, we headed to the local cemetery. As we walked up the street, we passed in front of a house and we heard Mariachis playing and singing in the big backyard. At first, it seemed that it was a Sunday family gathering with a long table, food and whole family sitting and standing around. Short after, we realized it was a funeral and the Mariachis were playing around the grave. We then spotted 2 drunk men crying, singing while holding beers and grieving in front of the grave. Suddenly, the youngest man spotted us and made a sign inviting us to come in. We hesitated, but he continued to call us and waving the beers at us. Uncomfortably we entered, greeted and walked by the whole family that was staring at us and we approached the grave. The young guy was very intoxicated and crying a lot. He offered us beers, opening them with his teeth. Then he proceeded to say that it was his dad in the grave and he died from something related to the lungs.

It hit me close to home, as I had just lost my Dad 3 months prior, to lung cancer.

He said that his father loved Mariachis and for that reason he hired them to play in the funeral. He continued to stumble while talking and crying at the same time. The whole family and some of the Mariachis continued to stare at us. Politely, we managed to leave him with his grief.

Was undoubtedly one of the most surreal, sprinkled with a bit of serendipity and syncronicity, experiences i have ever had in my life.

[thoughtonthoughts]

Costa Rica and my grief

In the last months I feel that I am going too fast.

When I travel, I love to absorve what I experience, the people I meet, the conversations I have, even if those interactions are brief. I've been feeling like this since I travelled to Costa Rica, in November 2021, and the whole trip got mixed up with the my dad's disease.

The trip was a mix of emotions, a numbing emotional limbo, as I was functioning in automatic pilot.

Costa Rica appears in a moment when I needed a mental break from my dad's whole situation, although I knew perfectly well that I would never manage to entirely disconnect from what was happening. But I really needed to escape from that heavy, but at the same time revealing, month of September.

In Costa Rica I had enlightening and sad moments but over all I was completely emotionally numb. 4 months later, comparing to the trip I did to Mexico, I came to the following conclusion:

Costa Rica = emotionally numb / Mexico = come back to life

Interesting interactions and curious reflections emerged while in Costa Rica. One morning, in Alajuela, a small city near San Jose, while we were having breakfast in the soda that was right in front of our hostel, a homeless lady passed by. She stopped, looked inside the soda and said in a loud voice: Good morning! I hope everyone is doing well! You know, we all might be different but in the end it doesn't matter the color of the eyes, or the skin, because we are all equal. I live in the street, I pee in the street, because people just don't care.

In Monteverde, where the majority of the adventure activities take place and adrenaline is the main ingredient, that's where I've noticed that I was emotionally numb.

While doing the Superman zipline (where you go down the cable headfirst super fast just the way Superman does) above an immense and beautiful rainforest and surrounded by a dense fog - I was feeling in peace.. numb but in peace.

While doing the Tarzan Swing, the most exciting experience I've ever done in my life, where you jump into the emptiness of the rainforest (as they were saying) - I did not feel anything: no goosebumps, no butterflies in the belly, no racing heart. I did not even hesitate when the guys said it was time to jump - I just did it and it was incredible.

All this numbness I am talking about was all related to the fact that I knew that my dad would be gone in 3 months (as the doctor had informed my brother and he called me to tell me). My mind and thoughts were completely scattered all over the place and I just couldn't collect all the pieces and put them back together. I was just thinking that the most important was to come back to my country and tell him how much I loved him.

I few days later in Playa Cocles, Puerto Viejo, while laying down in the sand and thinking about my father, there was a "soundtrack" to my thoughts: people playing volleyball, a group of drunk friends chilling at the beach (bring your A game), people talking, music playing, waves crashing....and I suddenly thought that life is really meant to lived...the little things are LIFE and they are meant to be lived in that very moment, in that present.

This background noise is LIFE and it wasn't bothering me at all while I was thinking that I would lose my dad. It was a reminder of what is important. It was a calling to the life that is happening right in front of you.

Suddenly childhood memories started to appear in the most simple actions: me and my friend bought a big bottle of water and when we were transferring the water to a smaller bottle, a memory came into my mind of my dad taking us to the mountain to fill the jugs with water. " Let's go for the water?" he would ask and we knew where we were going.

Dad got me connected to the nature around us.

[thoughtonthoughts]

Grief

Yes, death of a parent is that glove slap. 

It’s that awakening moment to life and what it really means to live. It better helps to understand what is the cycle of life about, where we came from and where are we going, connecting us to our real self and to others. It stirs everything that would need be to be stirred, at some point in our lives. That's why I don't want to let this drag and sweep it under the “mental rug”.

Very often we get angry at other family members (mother, brother) but that stems from the fact that we just want to be heard. Rarely someone understands. No one understands because they did not experienced it, or they experienced it but do not want to talk about it or even when they experienced it they are just experiencing it in a different way. 

After losing my father, relating and engaging with people around me,  with the little things in life that next to this loss they just don't seem to deserve any attention or energy. 

How do we engage and relate to people around us after this? We have to find a way to belong to places where we belonged before. 

As I read somewhere: It’s not that misery loves company. It’s just that pain craves understanding.

I am experiencing many random thoughts during the day but, I know that they are guiding me through the path I must follow. Yesterday, I woke up feeling nostalgic but thinking about a person that I haven't seen in a couple of years. I went throughout the day with that nostalgic feeling. I spent my morning reading stuff about the brain under the effect of LSD compared to the brain of children and jazz musicians. In the afternoon, I revisited Nick Cave’s music and a letter he wrote to a fan on how to deal with grief. I rediscovered his website, The Red Hand Files, and his cathartic songs. 

I ended my Sunday with an immense “saudade” (there is no other word that can possibly describe the feeling) of my father and crying a lot. But I woke up the next day with space for other things and feelings.

Sadness has a voice. The hurt you feel that’s been stuck between your chest and throat. The broken heart. But sadness as well as the other emotions are visitors that bring a message. 

“Sadness allows us to let go of things. Can sadness be, as well as a goodbye, or serve as a sigh of remembered love, a reparative breath that precedes an adjournment, a pause of gratitude before you inhabit the next you. Like a gesture of reverence to the passage of life. An act of appreciation of the past and of the loved one.” Nick Cave

[thoughtonthoughts]

Sound must be connected to dreams, sensations, feelings and certainly not to reason. Music, as a way out of this world, must be only emotions and this is the case for any true art form. To fill it with human, with reflection, is absolutely vulgar. Art begins when the noise of men ceases.

Vindsval (Blut aus Nord)

[thoughtonthoughts]

Tough Love

Following my father's lung cancer diagnosis, returning to my parents house became a full mirror experience. By spending more time with him, I see what I don't like about myself. I became aware of these traits long time ago, but the process of change is long and hard.

I can't possibly blame my father forever for all these traits I have, because we always have the choice to change. My father's path is his own, as well as mine and my mother's. I am here for him within my own boundaries, but this is a tricky one - it’s way harder to draw the boundaries for myself than it is to draw them for others.

The other night, in the midst of a nurturing get together with my childhood friends, I reached the conclusion that I have first to accept myself. This way I will accept my boundaries and accept my father's behavior. 

In the end of that night, I got an email from the Gentle Reminders - Jova Ferreyra (the founder of The Artidote) which I have subscribed long time ago. It couldn't be more fitting for that night and for the energy floating in the air:

What if this is exactly where you need to be right now?

What if this experience is the experience that exposes you to who you really are?

Isn't this a hell of an experience? Forced to deal with your mixed feelings towards a parent? Where are the boundaries? When and where exactly do I draw them?

How can I make sense of the mixed memories I have with my father? When he used to take us to the river in the summer, long drives through the middle of the forest and mountains nearby my city... the constant jokes, the drives to the little fountain nearby the main road. The times that I used to get up at 4 am because I knew he and my brother would be religiously sitting in front of the TV waiting for the F1 to start. The Nescafé tv commercial from 1988 with Julian Littman singing "I can see clearly now" that he always loved so much....

How can I make sense of these memories and many others with the constant toxic behavior that he would carry with him until today? How do I manage, at the same time, frustration, sadness, irritation, disappointment, nostalgy, love... It's just too much to make sense of. My mind really wants to stick with only one, but it’s so much more complex...it's impossible. 

How could your father fit into only one feeling?

Amongst his confused, aggressive or lucid mental states during the few days that my father was at home after returning from the hospital, we had the bittersweet opportunity to talk about many things. His "last words" that morning, before he had to be rushed to the hospital again, were: “I love you, I really love you”.

After all, I love you too, Dad.