There are goodbyes that words cannot capture, gestures that only the deepest love can conceive.
When Aniurmat Padilla Domínguez lost her youngest son just two months ago, she found a way to honor him that deeply moves those who know her: she took him to the sea, his place in the world, to make his "final dive."
An emotional audiovisual published on Facebook captures his story and has touched the hearts of thousands of people.
Eduardo, affectionately nicknamed "Dado," was 18 years old when he passed away. He was a biology student, a volunteer at the National Aquarium of Cuba, and a young man passionate about the sea, caving, and rappelling.
The images in the video show an urn placed on the seabed, surrounded by flowers and a small headstone, in an intimate ceremony that her mother describes with a serenity that touches the soul.
"For me, Dado is not dead, Dado went to do his last dive," says Aniurmat in front of the camera, wearing her son's hat.
That hat has its own story. A week before he died, the doctor informed Dado that he would have to shave his head.
The young man, as young people do, went out to buy it immediately. He didn't have a chance to use it.
Aniurmat wears it now, every day, as if that gesture could keep him close.
"This little hat he gave me a week before: 'Chama, next week I'm going to shave your head, go buy a hat.' And he, you know how young people are, he bought it, couldn't use it, couldn't see it, but I wear it," he recounted.
But Aniurmat's tribute to his son doesn't stop there. Dado dreamed that the Festival Pa'Cuba would one day reach the National Aquarium, the institution where his mother has been working for nearly thirty years and where he himself was a volunteer.
That dream came true in the fifth edition of the festival, held this summer, but he was no longer able to see it.
It was Aniurmat herself who made it possible: she personally contacted the organizing committee of Grupo Palco, facilitated the partnership, and succeeded in having the event take place for the first time at the Aquarium, breaking with the tradition of being held at Pabexpo or the Pabellón Cuba.
"I located the people from the organizing committee, and nothing came of it. We formed an alliance between Grupo Palco and the Aquarium; they came, visited us, and this is a possibility we had as an aquarium in what we are looking at today," he explained.
The National Aquarium has been experiencing a deep crisis of deterioration for years, with its staff reduced from 299 to only 65 workers, minimum wages, scarcity of basic supplies, and more than a year without offering dolphin shows.
The alliance with the Palco Group has enabled the waterproofing of roofs, the salvaging of toilets, and the reactivation of cafeterias, in what Aniurmat calls a "blessed revolution."
She arrived at that place at the age of twenty, in 1997, after studying civil construction, and she never left. She has seen the Aquarium fade and then be reborn, and today she experiences it as a dual tribute: to the space she built with her own hands and to the son who wanted to work there.
"He wanted to work at the aquarium, and since he liked Pa'Cuba, I said, 'He is going to be here,' and here he is," concluded Aniurmat.
"Dado is in the sea. We took him diving," she declared.
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