Saludos queridos amigos y familia!
I’m currently writing you from the air as I’m making my way back from New Jersey to Costa Rica. This month of August has been filled with lots of travel as I spent the first week in Argentina, a week and a half back in Los Chiles, and a week in New Jersey.
My trip to New Jersey was unexpected, as my Lolo (grandfather in Tagalog) just passed away a week ago today. Loss is hard. And I am also so thankful for the gift of this week to be together as a family.
Today’s isn’t a story directly from the work that I’m doing alongside the migrant community right now, but it’s a story that I would love to share because it was a reminder to me of the Spirit’s nearness to us.
I share it also in honor of my Lolo’s life, acknowledging too that he/my family made their migrant journey to the U.S. a little less than 60 years ago. It looked much different than the journey many of the people I’m meeting are having to take, but that’s perhaps a story for another time. I’ve included a few reflections/laments at the end about loosing a loved one that come from some of the stories that I’ve heard in Los Chiles.
But here’s my story for today:
From some countries away, on August 14th, the morning of his passing, I found myself waking up at around 5:30 in the morning. I truly believe in was the Spirit of God and the nudging of my Lolo too, that I woke up and wandered into the office.
I sat down and began to read Scripture, and soon found myself picking up my journal. I began to write. I wrote at the top of the page “My Lolo” and out burst what was both a lament, as I wrote and wept, and also a celebration of the sweet memories of him that I hold dear to me… he had been put on hospice the week before, so we knew the end of his days on this earth were drawing near.
This is what I wrote: August 14, 2024 // 6am
“My Lolo”
He might be nearing the end… or is this the beginning?
The beginning of his days where his body can move freely — he will walk and run.
He will dance with his Beloved.
He will sing karaoke songs and belt hymns from deep in his belly.
He will be freed — restored.
I get my eyebrows from him — our eyebrows express of kind of quiet yet firm, spontaneous and humorous engagement with life. We might not always tell you, but if you watch us, you’ll see it written on our faces.
My dad and I — we get our deep love and connection to music from him. The way we can listen to a song over and over and over again… it’s the way we savor the goodness of life, the holiness of a moment. And it’s also the way that we open ourselves up to the emotions that each of our tender hearts holds, but that we don’t always know how to share.
I love his laugh — it’s a laugh that I have more sparse memories of before he took some of his first falls. Then the laughter fell silent for some time as we all in our own ways reeled with the confusion of diagnoses (and lack of). Each fall sent ripples of fear through my family as we fought to make sense of the disease. But the laughter returned, and far more abundantly. New life from a kind of death.
I will carry with me all of these moments of laughter; we all returned again to play like children. We’ve danced and sang and hummed and held hands and hugged and cried and prayed… together…
(Psalm 23)
The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
He leads me beside quiet waters,
He restores my soul.
He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
I’ll hold in my memory the softness of the skin on his hands, his napkin swans, the way he always wanted people at church to know we were his grandkids, his hymns that he loved to sing… his tenderness. His reverence for the Lord…
In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.
Lolo, the Lord of hosts goes before you and behind you, takes your hand and walks beside you. Our faithful friend.
// 7am
Soon after I finished writing, I got a text from my dad asking to call, and that was when he told me that Lolo had gone — gone to be with our Christ. I was writing this piece exactly in the last hour of his life… and I know this was my Lolo’s way of connecting with me… through writing, which I so love. He knew how to meet me in that moment, just as I know Christ was meeting him in that moment.
As I sit here on the airplane, getting ready to return to Los Chiles, I’m also finding myself thinking about the way pain and grief must be amplified when you loose a loved one and you can’t return to your country to mourn their loss alongside family. Or when your loved one dies in the middle of the Darién Gap and their body remains there because you have to continue on for your own survival. Or when your family doesn’t have enough money for the kind of burial you would want for your loved one. Or when you know that your loved one died in pain and agony. Or when your loved one has been disappeared by a government or a militia group. Or when death comes far too soon…. instead of at the beautiful age of 88 years old, where you pass peacefully in your home with your family close.
So I hold both a deep sense of gratitude for this last week that I’ve been able to grieve with my family in tension with the deep lament that I hold alongside these families that I’m meeting in my life and work in Los Chiles.
Jesus wept.
And the invitation to us is that we would weep with those who weep. And in this weeping together, there is space to lament our personal losses and these systemic injustices. So we weep together for all these things as we cling to Christ, hold one another close, and also move and act against unjust systems, structures, and policies that rob the imago dei of life.
This morning I am committing myself again to always choosing to celebrate life... and to live and move in the world in a way in which we are all able to celebrate the gift of life... may the structures and systems that oppress flourishing life come crumbling down.
Con la paz de Cristo,
Elena
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