Moving On

Air Vents
Monterrey, Mx - Airport

Several months ago while I was studiously researching my family tree, my mother blurted out to me not to waste my time finding anything of value in our past. She said jokingly you should just find a job. It wasn't like I hadn't been trying. Jobs are quite scarce these days especially for those beyond entry level experience. Regardless, I joked with my mom and said to her that it was not a bad idea. 

Two weeks before my mom passed away, I was asked to interview in Monterrey, NL, Mx. I flew down and back to Dallas in a day.  It went quite well.  It felt good to be engaged in international commerce again.  I had forgotten how much I enjoyed the thrill of transacting business in another language. 

A week passed and I received a call that they wanted me in Cleveland the following Monday for a battery of final interviews.  Before the week was out, Mom took a turn for the worse and on Friday afternoon, July15th, my wise cracking mother passed away. I was ready to change my plans, but my father called me up and told me that the family wanted me to go to my final interview.

This was the most difficult thing I had to ever emotionally pull off. I had to set aside my grief and focus on getting the job. After the battery of exhausting interviews, I pulled myself together again this time to focus on my journey back to Florida to make final arrangements for Mom's funeral.

Nothing seemed easy on the way back from Cleveland. My flight from Cleveland to Chicago was delayed; I missed my connecting flight.  With no other flights out on Continental, I had to switch airlines to Dallas.  Of course my bags were not waiting for me when I got to Dallas after midnight. All my plans for travel the same morning now had to be delayed. The stress seemed insurmountable. There was nothing I could do but just accept the situation.

Despite our best intentions, there are times when giving it your best is simply the best you can do.  We can struggle against the current or resist the tide, but nature is much stronger. There are simply somethings you can't control. All you can control is how you respond to the situation. The lesson is for us to learn is quite simply patience.

Moses spent forty years wandering aimlessly in the desert before he saw the promised land. I need to learn and just comprehend that things do not always work out the way I plan or envision, but that doesn't mean that they wont work out or get resolved. It's a matter of patience and time.

Sitting at the "Bucks

Coffee and Me

Sitting at the 'Bucks

Sitting at the 'Bucks,

few lonely souls, 
lattes and cappuccinos.

Busy work, thoughts, and dreams,

iPhones, business plans, and schemes

Heart is sore and can't ignore,

happy people approach its door.

All feelings come and go,

at the 'Bucks I know.

Just passing time,

looking for rhyme,
perhaps a verse,

or simply converse.

Al Hernandez

Recovery

Sunset

The words aren't flowing right now and my creativity lies dormant.  Recovery from grief is a process.  There's no magic wand to wave.  I know that there's room for light and that eventually it will ebb through.  I keep hoping and remind myself not to succumb to adversity.  I can't quit there are too many people depending on me.

I am grateful for many things but I am ready to move away from the discomfort.  My mind knows that it can't possibly compute all of the possible outcome scenarios.  Moving on is something we must all do.  Lately it seems that all I do is hurry and wait.  It's all a game of patience.  I can't change the world, I can only change myself.  Patience is the key to recovery.

Thanks

Global Followers

Many of you have been staying in touch with me especially these past few difficult weeks.  I truly would like to thank you.  I would like to thank many of my high school classmates from the northeast part of the US.  Especially those in CT and NY as well as those transplants that now reside in FL.


They say that grieving is a process.  I must admit that part of my process was to verbalize how I felt especially during these final weeks.  For some of you, it might have made you feel uncomfortable and uneasy.  For others, it might have touched a still tender wound.  The fact is that we must accept death as readily as we celebrate birth.  Both are part of the life process.  We must learn to appreciate what each offers:  joy and grief.


My mother had the good fortune of living a full life surrounded by friends both old and new and by family.  She and her best friend, my uncle's wife, Leo, had shared friendship for nearly seventy-three years and lived within proximity of each other for nearly half a century.


Like my mother, I value friendship.  I believe in staying in touch with you.  I share my experiences both of joy and suffering because we all experience both.  It's never all joy and it certainly is never all suffering.  As a friend, I worry for those that drift into despair and feel there are no solutions.  That there is no hope.


During the past few weeks, my family has found many angels along the way.  We found them as we looked for services and care for my mother. We found people who didn't view my mother as just another old patient and my father as just a tired old man.  One lady actually found space for my mother in a nursing home that had a backlog of 50 patients.  That nursing home was only five minutes away from Dad's house and easy drive for an 88 year old man.

U.S. Friends

We could feel the love of hospice care and the tenderness of the massages and lotions my mother received.  At the time my father needed spiritual care, he found a new friend in a Spanish speaking Chaplain named Fernando.


Even at the funeral, we made friends with a portly funeral director named Doug and an old assistant named Arthur.  They were all angels and blessings along the way.  What I thought would be impossible to do suddenly became possible and worry free.  In the face of grief and hardship joy can be found through the angels we meet.

Grief

Texas Longhorn

Just when I thought I had left the worse grief behind me, in the most in opportune time both my grief and anger disgorged from my mouth at an unwitting victim, my niece. It wasn't her fault but my wounds were fresh like a lanced bull in bull ring. I wanted to lunge at everyone, any cape would do.  My head was lowered and like the bull I was prepared to fight anything and anyone in my vicinity. This bull was wounded by the pain of loss. My horns were ready to tear into flesh.

My family lost its matriarch. I had kept busy trying to be strong at her funeral. Remarkably the sadness and tears that I had shared with you simply were stifled by the responsibility I felt I owed my sisters, my father, my wife, my children , relatives, and friends.  I was stoic and emotionally constipated.  It was all good I thought.  I believed that it was the right thing to do.

An unsuspecting niece received the venom that inexplicable grief had fermented within me instead of tears.  I wanted in the worst way to let my pain out.  I lost my mother.  Yes she was old but I was not ready to simply forget her or the rest of the relatives that meant so much. I  wanted to fight and argue her old fashioned ways.  I was indignant by the callousness of youth and jealous that I have less years ahead of me than they do.  I was enraged by the bitterness and inequity I felt.  I had been equally calloused in my youth too but now it was my turn to mourn.

This bull was prepared to lower his head and defend the honor of the matriarch and that of her family.  My nostrils widened and I could sense the rush of adrenalin go through me.   It didn't matter wrong or right the wound was oozing fresh and I was prepared to charge as if that would ameliorate or dull the wound.  In a flurry of minutes I charged and released my emotionally charged venom.   I ached;  my body was bruised and my heart had been lanced by the picador of death.

My rage was beyond even my own comprehension.  I had lashed out against those that I loved most.  We drove back to the hotel in dead silence of the night. I searched inside my own soul and knew that bull' rage needed to be quieted.  Off I drove to visit with mom. In the shadows of night. I stood in front of her mausoleum and begged for her forgiveness for holding back the tears and anger at her funeral.   While I wanted to celebrate her life and longevity I did her a disservice by not allowing the tears to flow. We spoke and I expressed my grief.  The silence of the night gave me an opportunity to once and for all announce underneath the stars that I loved her the most. She I recognized loved us all the same but each in her own way.

The bull in me is tame now and gentle again.  I doubt that will ever again attempt to contain raw emotion.  It has to come out or else it consumes you.

Josefina Hernandez Rios

3/21/21 - 7/15/2011

Josefina Hernandez Rios, Wife of Pablo Hernandez for sixty eight years, Mother (of Misael, Lydia, Zaidy, and Eliazer (Eli aka Al), Grandmother, and Great grandmother, Homemaker, Cook, Baker, Seamstress, Best Friend of Leonor Hernandez Roman for sixty nine years, and part time Shaman, and Matriarch of the Rios Clan, a woman of devout faith, passed away in her sleep Friday, afternoon.

She practiced what she preached and preached what she practiced. Thank you for leaving us your sense of humor and rendering your heart to your soulmate Pablo.  We rejoice and celebrate the life you lead and the example you set for us.  Your family and your extended family of friends will miss your recipes and your remedies.

Thank you for not giving up hope when Misael was killed.  Thank you for wanting another son and bringing me into the light of the world.  You taught me love and respect of all women and to treat them as I treat my own sisters.  You taught me to appreciate women not as objects but as equals.  You taught me to honor and be honorable.  You taught me the value of perseverance and the meaning of personal sacrifice.  You taught me to love people and to reach out to others.  You gave me the gift of story telling and you taught me how to cry at even my own stories.  You blessed me when I would ask for your blessing.  You accepted me as I was but made me feel brilliant and wealthy when I was neither.

You comforted me even as I comforted you throughout your life.  You never gave up during adversity and you assumed the head of the household more than once during Dad's sickness.   You were the first feminist I knew.

Forgive me for not being strong enough at the end, instead I focused on making things comfortable for you, Dad, and the rest of the family.  Mom, on Friday, your coffin will be surrounded by flowers.  I will make sure of it.  You will be surrounded by those you loved and those that loved you.  You will be laid to rest where you will always face the promise of the morning sun.

If there is a time for tears, Mom, this it.  I tried to hold them back.    I think if we gathered all the tears that will be shed, we could use them to season years of fantastic soups.  There's no sense in wasting good heart felt tears.

It's not good-bye. It's adios and until we meet again. "You were so right "como la madre solamente hay una." "Una mariposita, desde el cielo bajo, con sus alas abierta, y en el pico una flor..."

3/21/21 - 7/15/2011

Transplanting Orchids

Orchids in Bloom
Rendered with iPhone

This past Sunday I was a bit restless.  My mind was full of stuff and it just seemed that I couldn't rest.  I needed something to occupy my mind, a project.  In our bathroom we have about four orchid plants that I've managed to keep alive.  Although I have had good intentions of transplanting them to newer pots, I've not bothered.  Finally, on Sunday, I got my nerve up.


I purchased all of my materials from the local store and brought them home:  orchid potting mix, sphagnum moss and orchid food.  That afternoon I gathered all my plants and placed them on the patio table underneath the shade of the patio umbrella.  Carefully, I removed each orchid from its pot and I began to trim dead roots and separated them from the old mix.  It was delicate surgery that required all of my concentration.  Although I was nervous about the procedure, I was motivated by the promise of blooming orchids this winter.


My grandmother grew and collected orchids and she passed on that tradition to my aunt, Josefinita.  My fascination with orchids I suppose is a combination of genetics and tradition, nature and nurture.  There's something special however of the promise of the orchid bloom.  The blossom stays open longer than most flowers.  The wait seems worthwhile given that it takes so long to bloom.


If you cultivate your life mindfully and carefully at some point you will reap the benefit of beautiful blooms, perhaps in your darkest hour when you need them most. This morning I looked at my transplanted orchids and fantasized about the blooms that would surely come as a result of my nurturing.  You can't have blooms in your life without the effort of planting and cultivating.  I am eager for the blooms.