Tribute to Gabriela / En Homenaje a Gabriela

We come here to say goodbye or Au revoir to Gabriela.

Gabriela was a daughter, sister, wife, aunt and a friend.

She was born in Villaguay, in the Province of Entre Rios, in Argentina on the 27^th of October of 1961.

Being the daughter of a military officer meant many and often changes of residence during her early years, with new friends, new schools and new towns she called home, including the Holy Land just walking distance to the city of Jerusalem.

She was the middle daughter of 4 siblings, something she struggled with for many years, primarily during her early and teen years.

During her late teens she embarked in the university to become an architect, a very demanding endeavor that took many hours of her sleep, and that would not pay dividends as she decided that it was not for her.

In April of 1989, a few months after Emma and I traveled to Argentina to finalize our legal residency in the USA, she decided to try her luck in America.

Her beginnings were the beginnings of many people who come to try their luck in this great country, with lots of enthusiasm, and some disappointments, trying to learn the language, trying to adapt herself as best she could. She lived with us for a few months, and thanks to her persistence and determination she pushed ahead.

She was determined to make it in the big apple, and made it she did. She lived at the Jeanne D’Arc Residence for many years. In the early '90s she lived in the Bronx with 2 roommates.  She later went back to Manhattan to the Residence on 24^th St.

Happiness was knocking on the door, and in September of 2003 she married Juan Williams

In mid-2006 she graduated at the N.Y.U. with a degree as a social worker.

She had finally made it in New York.

They were living in Manhattan just as they both aspired to.

She had the world at her feet.

But life has it’s not so happy moments. She had started a few years before with bone marrow issues that evolved into Leukemia.

In march of 2011 Juan passed away from a long illness.

She struggled with her health for some time, she had periods where she was better, and then there were others in which she was not so good.

In the past few weeks her health deteriorated rather quickly, until God stepped in to say enough, my daughter, you fought the good fight, but now it’s time to come home with me.

And in the morning of Thursday July 30^th God took her home, so that the suffering would end, she will there join her beloved Juan, and all her ancestors that went before her.

Although there is pain and sorrow for those of us who stay on our own paths what gives us great comfort is to know that she is with her God and her savior enjoying paradise.

We are grateful for her life, although we may consider it brief, we were fortunate enough that she  shared her path with us. She enriched our lives and gave us the best of herself, that is something that we will cherish and take with us for the rest of our lives.

Gabriela, The Lord bless you and keep you;  the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;  the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

Estamos todos reunidos hoy aca para decir adios a Gabriela.

Gabriela era una hija, hermana, esposa, tia y amiga.

Nacio en Villaguay, en la provincia de Entre Rios, en Argentina el 27 de Octubre de 1961.

Siendo hija de un oficial military significo muchos y seguidos cambios de residencia durante su infancia y adolescencia, con nuevos amigos, nuevas escuelas y nuevas ciudades a las cuales llamo su casa, incluyendo Tierra Santa a una corta distancia de la ciudad de Jerusalem.

Era la hija del medio de cuatro hermanos, algo con lo que tuvo que luchar, primordialmente durante sus primeros años y su adolescencia.

Al terminar el secundario se embarco en la Universidad para estudiar Arquitectura, una decision que le demandó muchas horas de sueño, y que no pagó frutos, dado que decidió que no era para ella.

En Abril de 1989, unos pocos meses despues que Emma y yo viajasemos a la Argentina para finalizar nuestra situación legal en EEUU, se decidió a probar suerte en el país del norte.

Sus comienzos fueron los mismos de otra gente que viene a probar su suerte en este gran país, con mucho entusiasmo, algunas desilusiones, tratando de aprender el idioma, intentando adaptarse lo mejor que pudiese. Vivió con nosotros por unos meses, y gracias a su persistencia y determinación tiro para adelante.

Estaba decidida a conquistar a Nueva York, y la conquistó. Vivió en la Residencia Jeanne D’Arc por un tiempo. Al principio de los ‘90s vivió con dos compañeras en el Bronx. Luego volvió a Manhattan a la Residencia de la calle 24.

La felicidad estaba golpeando a la puerta, y en Setiembre del 2003 se casó con Juan Williams.

En el medio del 2006 se graduó en la Universidad de Nueva York (NYU - New York University) de trabajadora social/psicologa.

Habia finalmente conquistado a Nueva York.

Estaban viviendo en Manhattan como los dos deseaban.

Tenia el mundo a sus pies.

Pero la vida tiene sus momentos no tan felices. Unos años antes había comenzado con problemas de médula que terminarían convirtiendose en leucemia.

En Marzo del 2011 falleció Juan despues de una larga enfermedad.

Gabriela luchó y padeció con su salud durante un tiempo, en el cual disfrutaba de buenos períodos, como también otros que no lo eran.

En estas últimas semanas su salud se deterioró con bastante rapidez, hasta que Dios dijo basta, mi hija, has luchado una buena batalla, pero ahora ha llegado el momento de que vengas a casa conmigo.

Y en la mañana del Jueves 30 de Julio Dios se la llevó a casa, para que ya no haya mas sufrimiento. Ahi se re-encontrará con su adorado Juan, y todos los ancestros que se han ido antes que ella.

A pesar de que hay dolor y pena para los que quedamos en nuestros propios caminos, nos queda la satisfacción de saber que ella está con su Dios y su Salvador disfrutando del paraíso celestial.

Estamos agradecidos por su vida, aunque  podamos considererla breve, tenemos la fortuna de que ella compartió su camino con nosotros.

Gabriela enriqueció nuestras vidas y nos dio lo mejor de si misma, eso es algo que vamos a valorar y llevar con nosotros por el resto de nuestras vidas.

Gabriela, El Señor te bendiga y te guarde; El Señor haga resplandecer Su rostro sobre ti, Y tenga de ti misericordia; El Señor alce sobre ti Su rostro, Y te dé paz.

The latest presidential hopefuls for the GOP

In the last few days we have seen three republicans throw their hat into the 2016 presidential race.

These three presidential hopefuls join a long list that is running for the republican candidacy.

Let’s look at the three: we have Mike Huckabee, a Baptist pastor that was governor of Arkansas, the same state from which Bill Clinton comes from, Carly Fiora, former CEO of HP, and Ben Carson, a bright neurosurgeon.

So far their qualifications seem impressive. Unfortunately we have to start looking at some of the things they have saying. As a defender of the first amendment of the Bill of Rights in which we have free speech they are entitle to their opinion. And just like I’m doing here their words also can give us some insight, some idea how qualified they are to be president. They seem to think that using hateful speech toward the president and/or Hillary Clinton and/or Bill Clinton will make them more electable.

Let us be more specific.

Mike Huckabee, has said about Obama that everything he does is against what Christians stand for, and he's against the Jews in Israel, but Muslims 'know they have his undying, unfailing support. It seems that Huckabee has left out the fact that Obama has attacked with drones Muslims in Pakistan, Yemen, and bombed Isis over and over. I guess Isis and all the other Muslims Obama has killed are

not the real thing.

He also said in a radio interview that “There’s nothing more honorable than serving one’s country and there’s no greater heroes to our country than our military,” he responded, “but I might suggest to parents, I’d wait a couple of years until we get a new commander-in-chief that will once again believe ‘one nation under God’ and believe that people of faith should be a vital part of the process of not only governing this country, but defending this country.”

Carly Fiorina, he record, which she has overlooked to tell her fellow republicans is nothing to brag about. She took over Compaq, against the advice of the whole industry, while other companies were getting out of computer hardware all together. For this she was fired as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Of course she did not go open handed, at that level nobody does. She walked away with 21 million for almost running the company to the ground. She has blamed the California drought on environmentalists. From day one she has been attacking Hillary Clinton, we can say that she seems obsessed with her. She even included a Hillary Clinton’s ad when she said she was running for president.

Ben Carson, has said a few things that I’m including here:

1. “There comes a time when people with values simply have to stand up. Think about Nazi Germany. Most of those people did not believe in what Hitler was doing. But did they speak up? Did they stand up for what they believe in? They did not, and you saw what happened.”

2. “I mean, [America is] very much like Nazi Germany. And I know you’re not supposed to say ‘Nazi Germany,’ but I don’t care about political correctness. You know, you had a government using its tools to intimidate the population. We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe.”

3. “ObamaCare is the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. In a way, it is slavery, because it is making all of us subservient to the government.”

4. “Because 9/11 is an isolated incident. Things that are isolated issues as opposed to things that fundamentally change the United Sates of America and shift power from the people to the government. That is a huge shift. You have to take a long-term look at something that fundamentally changes the power structure of America.”

5. “I think what’s happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care provider. And if we can’t get it right, with the relatively small number of veterans, how in the world are you going to do it with the entire population?”

6. “My thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a well-established, fundamental pillar of society, and no group — be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality — it doesn’t matter what they are — they don’t get to change the definition.”

7. “Certainly there’s the potential because you have to recognize that we have a rapidly increasing national debt, a very unstable financial foundation, and you have all these things going on like the ISIS crisis that could very rapidly change things that are going on in our nation. And unless we begin to deal with these things in a comprehensive way and in a logical way there is no telling what could happen in just a couple of years.”

8. “I think most people when they finish that course, they’d be ready to go sign up for ISIS.”

9. “Anyone caught involved in voter fraud should be immediately deported and have his citizenship revoked.”

10. “So if there were a container of contaminated urine, and somehow it managed to find its way to someplace a lot of damage could be done. Someone comes up to a lab worker. He knows he’s got the urine. ‘How would you like to have a million dollars?’ … Such things have been known to happen.”

When we read and hear what this three candidates say one has to wonder if they are feeding meat to the wolves in the party, or if they are serious. These things completely take them out as middle of the road contenders, their speech is hateful, it says nothing about what they would do to make the country better, they seem to have blood running down their fangs.

I have some republican friends who don’t seem to be hateful, are not against gay marriage, who are not in favor extreme believers, who seem to be middle of the road people. I’ve told in more than one occasion that they don’t fit, they don’t belong in the republican party, that the party has been hijacked by extremists, just like many of us believe that Islam has been hijacked by a few minority of extremists.

I also once heard that made me stop and think, the person said if only a small minority of extremists have hijacked Islam, where are all the others saying no to that. And we have to stop and think where are all those voices of opposition to those extremists, either they are in fear or they are riding on those extremists tails. I think that can be applied to those so called moderate republicans, or who believe that they are moderate. Where are you that the Patriot Act is about to renewed with all the sections in which we have given up unknowingly, or knowingly, our freedoms? Are you represented by the evangelicals who call same sex marriage bestiality? Are you a tea bagger who wants to cut everything including those programs that benefit us or our family members, such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment benefits? If there is silence, you are no different than the moderate Muslims, but please don’t call yourself a moderate republican, because you are not.

We have seen the lowest disrespect to this country and to its institutions by what a bunch of republicans have just done.

Republicans don’t seem to realize that they are setting precedents, one after the other, by insulting this president saying that he is a foreigner, yelling in a session of Congress while this president is addressing them that he lies, inviting a leader of a foreign nation to address Congress without consulting with the executive branch, something that never been done since the founding of the nation, and now sending a letter to the head of a foreign leader, with whom the Executive Branch is trying to sign an agreement to stop the creation of a nuclear weapon, not to respect the person who is signing this agreement.

It is also pathetic to see republican presidential hopefuls such as Bobby Jindal urging presidential hopefuls to sign on to GOP Iran letter. What these republican nutcases seem to have overlooked is the Logan Act that says:

“Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”

The branch of the federal government that sets foreign policy is the Executive Branch, not the Legislative nor the Judicial. There is nothing that says here anything about Senators being above the law.

Now some people will say what is the Logan Act?

The Logan Act, enacted January 30, 1799 is a United States federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments having a dispute with the U.S.

It was intended to prevent the undermining of the government's position. The Act was passed following George Logan's unauthorized negotiations with France in 1798, and was signed into law by President John Adams on January 30, 1799. The Act was last amended in 1994, and violation of the Logan Act is a felony.

So we can probably say that these senators are committing treason, as per the Logan Act.

We also know that most republicans not simply disagree but HATE, yes, let me repeat that, HATE this president. They hate the fact that he’s educated, in many instances more than them, that he is smart, that he won with more than 51% back to back elections, but most of all the fact that he is African American. Somebody recently was saying something that has merit: not all republicans are racist, but racists find their home in the GOP.

As far as this letter, it was “supposedly” written by Senator Cotton, a rookie in the senate, who has only been there since the beginning of the year. What about the other 46? Are they as inexperienced as he is, or are they just as irresponsible as Cotton? One thing is for sure, it seems that the young senator loves war, the Iraq and Afghanistan, as much as any other that this country can get itself involved in. The fact that trillions were spent in Iraq, over four thousand Americans died in a conflict of choice, over one hundred and fifty thousand Iraqis died, and that the Iranian government is running the Iraqi government, all  thanks to Bush and Cheney does not seem to have taught anything to the neocons. The only thing that counts to them is what right wing nuts that have never been in harm’s way such as Bill Crystal, Rush Limbaugh, Hannity tell them how to think, and that the Military Industrial Complex does not run out of wars, even if it means the bankruptcy of the USA.

I, for one, was always perplexed that people could vote for people like Cotton, but if travelling around the US has shown me something, it has shown me why people vote the way they do, why they chose people like Cotton, like McCain, like George W. Bush, like Louie Gohmert, like Farenthold, like Barton, like Ted Cruz,like  and others, is because these people tell the constituents that the Federal Government wants to take their rights away, their money away, and their voters believe them. Now, once their representatives become "The Government", that government that they had said was so terrible they end up sending their constituents, their friends, their family into war, they allow them to lose their houses, allow corporate America to ship their jobs overseas, they shut down the government, cut benefits of soldiers who come back from a conflict in which their elected officials sent them into, don’t allow them to get healthcare, to have their kids educated, all of it in the name of their constituents. In reality these elected officials only care about their careers, their future, their fame, the top 1%, corporate America, who pay for them to get re-elected so that they can kiss the rings of the, and care about their constituents as much as they care about the last penguin on Antartica.

My latest visit to Lynchburg, VA

As I spend a weekend in Lynchburg, Virginia at my friends Waldron & Georgia Scott’s house a few things come to mind, for starters, after Waldron’s fall this past April and his last stroke as well, and even though he has made a remarkable recovery, he is still somewhat limited in his mobility. Georgia is devoting her life to his wellbeing, in every possible aspect that she is able to, from changing him, bathing him, helping him get up from the bed and/or the sofa and get him onto the wheelchair, then rolling him from room to room. She was telling me that they had gone across the street to eat at a restaurant enjoying the warm weather, and as I helped take him for a ride down to same restaurant I could not but notice that at many times there are steep climbs and it is not easy getting back and forth to this place. My point here is that Waldron is extremely fortunate to have somebody at his side who is putting into full practice the “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health” wedding vows that we commit ourselves to at the time of marriage. I guess when we say those words we don’t really think about those days and that they may eventually come.
The last time that I witnessed such dedication was between my parents. My mother had a heart condition for many years, and she spent the last seven and half months of her life in a hospital. In that period my father went almost every day regardless of the day of the week, season, weather, during Christmas, New Year, and her birthday even though by then she was unconscious.
What comes to mind are the words of Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians:
“3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Georgia is not in great health either. But she is sacrificing everything for Waldron. She does everything with patience, tolerance, understanding, respect and primarily love.
I am proud and blessed that, not only can I call them my friends, but that they consider me a friend as well. Although the journey from New Jersey is not exactly a short one, I am extremely happy to come and visit them, as I feel that I get more from my visit than what I feel I can give them, and I have been fortunate enough to come a few times since they move from Paterson to Lynchburg.

Anniversary of my mother's passing

As I reflect on the past 12 months, and what we have lived I look at my roller-coaster emotions.  Twelve months ago right at this time I felt a sensation through my body, like if something had happened, I didn’t know what it was. A few hours later my father called me to tell me the news that my mother had passed away. He was very emotional, he had been containing his emotions for days, weeks, possibly months. Once he told me my mind processed it but my heart took a while do so. It was like it had not sunk in. I think at times that it has not sunk in, that she is still in the hospital.  

In the days and weeks before my mother’s passing I used to question my creator on why was he extending the inevitable, why was he making my mother and everybody around her suffer. What was the purpose of it. Those are the mysteries of life. I guess that when we are face to face with God we will have plenty of time to ask him about his ways, even though by then those questions will surely become irrelevant.

As I traveled to Argentina in 2012 I was convinced that I was prepared for what the future would bring. but once the time came I realized that I was not. I went through a long period of depression, of mourning, of loss.

The loss of a parent, or a close one, in my view, is like a heart attack, the heart keeps beating but part of it no longer functions.  We will never be the same. It is like the end of our childhood, the end of an era. Parents always think of their children as kids, even though they are married and have kids of their own.

I miss my conversations with my mother, I miss her support, her love. When my mother passed away not only did I lose my mother I lost a close friend.

I hear her voice, I feel her presence.

I cannot say that I long for the past, like my mother used to do, but I do understand her, at least a little bit more.

Ironically enough my father has been in the hospital since Sunday, and after four days of studies, to his displeasure, he has not told when he is going home. This has made the day of the first anniversary of her passing a “strange” one.

My sister, being in the front line, as she is, has had to do most of the heavy lift, first with my mother, her passing, the support my father needed at the time, and now with him in the hospital, even though it may be hopefully just temporary. His reliance on her is enormous in every way.

As far as the last 365 days it is hard to believe that we have gone round the sun once since the day my mother left us. We may not be able to see her but her spirit, her joy and love will always stay with us.

God bless you, Mum. We love you.

Seven months after my mother passed away my father, my sister, my brother-in-law and the pastor of my parents’ church gave proper rest to my mother’s remains in the place that will hold her ashes until the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and at which time God will resurrect us in body and soul to join him in paradise. This was almost 7 months to the date. Although I was not there for her passing, her funeral or her burial I know that the small ceremony of final farewell was full of emotion, just like it had been at the time of her home going.
Although it has been, as I mentioned earlier, seven months since her death I still feel at times as if she has never left. I think that she is still at the hospital. Many times when I talk with my father over the computer, and he walks away from the camera I feel as if I can see her walking down the hallway, coming out of the kitchen or the bathroom.  At times although I cannot see her I feel her presence, her warmth, her love, always giving me strength and reassurance. I think about her every day, and many times that is all that I think about. I see her in my mind laying on the hospital bed.
My mother was a pessimist but she had love, and she would always find a way of sharing it.
My father, during my childhood was not a loving father, as he had come from a home where love was not present, but my mother would make him feel loved, and I think that is what he can take with him for the rest of his days. For those of us who were fortunate enough to have shared part of her path on this world we can also take her love with us.
My mother fully understood the meaning of the words of the Apostle Paul in the 1^st letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13 as she had lived it through my grandparents and their love to each other:

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The past few months have not been easy for me, I cannot say that I am still mourning, even though that is what my therapist calls it, but what I feel is that her passing has knocked me off my rails, it’s like I have lost my path, I feel many times like a ship without a helm, simply going in circles without being able to move forward or with any direction.

I recently watched a movie called The Descendants in which the wife has suffered an accident that has left her brain dead. The husband is told by doctors that there is nothing they can do and that the proper thing to consider is disconnecting her. He has two daughters, and the process of saying goodbye is very painful. I am conscious that I did not go through those motions like this family does in the movie, but being at 5000 miles does not alleviate the pain, the sorrow, the loss and the vacuum of my mother’s passing.
A very good friend of mine who lost his brother when we were very young asked me if I had any regrets about being so far during the last few years of my mother’s life, not enjoying or being nearer during the last few months, and I told him that I didn’t have an answer. My parents were not happy when we moved far away, but they knew it was for the best, and that, together with the fact that we tried to see them as often as we were able to, even though towards the last few years it only meant once a year, made things a little bit easier. Many times people who are physically close does not guarantee that they are emotionally closer.  
I know that my mother is at peace, her ashes are right by the place that she was most attached during all her life, the church. Her spirit belongs to God, and to all of us who loved her, and while she is in our memory she will always be alive.
God bless you, Mum.

The past 13 months

As I reflect on the past months, 13 months to be precise, I can think of June 21st 2012 as the day when the world changed for the Anderson family. My mother had been hospitalized many times since1993 when she developed a heart condition and was at the brink of death. But the real beginning of the rapid descent began in 2007 when she started with pulmonary edemas . My mother would be hospitalized for a week or so, they would put her on a severe "diet" of diuretics,  she would be drained of the liquid she had been building up and then sent back home to return to her activities. But June 21st was not an ordinary hospitalization. For me, from the distance, something didn't sound right when my father told me that my mother had been put into an induced coma. This had never happened before.
From the distance I found myself puzzled and confused about the development of what I thought would be a routine hospitalization. My mother was in an induced coma for a period of two to three weeks.
As I found myself having to travel to Argentina to be with my father I was uncertain what I would find when I arrived. By then my mother had been almost three months in the Coronary Unit of a hospital. The day I arrived we went to see her. She had limited visiting hours, from 12.30pm to 2.00 pm. It hardly gave us time to interact with her and talk with the doctors and nurses before the visiting hours were over. My parents live over an hour away by public transport from the hospital where my mother was staying. There was another visiting hour in the evening but my father felt that it made no sense to go back, primarily because of the length of the journey.
As I was getting ready to travel to see my parents I had some questions for the doctors and nurses who attended my mother. Those questions became irrelevant once I got there and the head of the doctors met us in the hallway of the hospital and explained to my father and me that my mother was then a patient who should not be alive, that she should have deceased with the heart condition she had, and to make matters worse she was having trouble with her lungs as well at the time. That gave me an indication of the severity of my mother's illness. As I had not lived near her for over 27 years I had never seen her in a hospital before. She had completely lost her muscle tone, she could not speak because she had a tracheotomy, and she constantly had secretions from her lungs. She was also suffering from almost complete deafness so communicating with her was not exactly easy. Also, as I spoke to nurses who attended to my mother, I came to realize that there was no way that she could leave the hospital as she was under constant surveillance,  something that made her return to their home out of the question.
My parents live in a 3rd floor apartment with no elevator. Getting in and out for them is somewhat of an ordeal as it is not easy climbing up the steps. Even if my mother could recover to the point where she could return home, getting out would make it impossible, therefore she would just come back to die there. As I said earlier, all these things gave me a very clear picture of the future. It was just a matter of time and when God would have compassion on her and call her home.
My father was not there yet, at least my impression at the time was that he was hopeful for a recovery. I am usually someone who loves to bring people down to reality as I feel that reality is, although tough, the only real barometer of things.
On the other hand, my mother was frustrated, she felt jailed, "tied down" to a bed with all the tubes that she had connected. One day I witnessed the volatile rapid change of her condition. In just a matter of minutes she deteriorated, going from stable to struggling, as her sugar level had gone down. This was all foreign to me.
I was there with them for almost three weeks, and during the last week, as I knew that this would probably be the last time that I would see my mother alive, I wanted to spend a little more time with her. She was alone in a room for 22 and a half hours. I know that I would blow my brains out in that situation. So I decided to go to the hospital twice a day, once with my father from 12.30 pm to 2.00 pm, then go back to my parent's home with my father, have something to eat and then turn around and go back. As I said earlier, we would leave the apartment at around 11.00am, get to the hospital at 12.15pm (if everything went ok with the traffic), stay there until 2.00 pm, take the bus back, arrive at my parent's home around 3.15 pm, have lunch and finish around 4.00 pm. Then leave the apartment around 5.45 pm, arrive at the hospital around 7.00 pm (2nd daily visiting hour). leave at 8.00 pm, arrive at my parent's home around 9.15pm, eat dinner, then relax a little while,  and go back and do the same the next day, until I left on Sunday evening.
Saying goodbye to my mother was actually saying goodbye forever as we both pretty much knew that we would not see each other again. It was the toughest goodbye.
For the next few months I kept in contact with my father on a daily basis, and although my mother tried to get up and walk, I don't know if it was through her own will or my father trying to push her forward, she eventually started feeling the impact of being so many months in the hospital and she started deteriorating gradually but surely. First, around the end of last year, her kidneys stopped functioning properly, and she started retaining more and more liquid around her body and then because of the doctor's recommendations, she was sedated continuously as she suffered from panic attacks when she was not under the effects of the drugs. By then my father started telling me that this would probably go on until her body gave up which gave me the feeling that he was trying to prepare me for the inevitable, my mother's passing, something that, back in August, when I arrived there I knew would be the outcome of her hospitalization. I think that, deep down, he was trying to prepare himself for what he realized was the inevitable.
When I received the call from my father on the morning of February 6th I knew perfectly well why he was calling as he never called in the morning. The news for me was expected. I felt that although saying goodbye to one of your parents, to the person who always supported me regardless of what it was, and always trusted me, I felt that God had finally called her home. She was my mother, a friend and a shoulder. She loved unconditionally. She was warm and caring. It took me some time to come to the realization that she is no longer with us. I have felt her presence at times, when I'm alone. I felt it a few days after her passing. A good friend of mine says that it is all in our mind and that may be the case, but some of us still feel the spirit of a loved one near.
At times I feel I'm still not over her passing. As I wasn't there at the time of her passing, I did not see her body lying on the hospital bed, I did not travel to her funeral and witness the disappearance of her casket on the belt as it was going to the place of her cremation, I say that I did not go through the motions of her death and loss.
After my mother's passing my father came to stay with my family in the U.S. for a couple of months. It was the first time that we would be physically together since her passing. We spoke about the events, the last period of her life, and his hopes, but primarily it was a time of sharing, a time of getting closer, of not having to talk, of mutual support, and of loss.
Like my father said while he was staying on vacation with us, “life goes on”.
There will be another sunset and another sunrise. We will eventually go down the same path that my mother took. Our body is not eternal. But it still doesn't get any easier to get used to. Just as I would always tell my mother while she was alive, we always have to be thankful for what God gives us, that we were able to enjoy my mother's life and the way she enriched all of ours.