The Absent One

The first time she lost someone without anyone dying, she was still in Cuba. It was a university friend. Her name was Gilda. They had shared their university years, research projects, walks, literary gatherings, ice creams, birthdays, and confidences. They were cheerful and responsible young women, the kind who could spend hours talking about literature while also taking a fieldwork assignment very seriously.

They did not live in the same city. She was staying somewhere and each weekend she would embark on the difficult journey back home. At her friend's house, she found something akin to a refuge. There, she could eat, bathe, and converse. They also shared a research project that led them to walk through Santiago neighborhoods, knock on doors, talk to the residents, record their voices, and then return with those words to analyze them. They studied the popular speech and phonetics. The voice of the people became the focus of their study, while they were still learning to build their own lives.

They graduated in the year 2000. Then she lost contact with her friend. She defended her thesis while pregnant. Her first child had arrived while she was finishing her studies, and she no longer lived that scholarship routine. She had entered another stage. After that, life went on.

He had children. He moved to a new house. He changed locations. He met new people. Some stayed for years; others barely shared a few moments. One neighbor became a kind of surrogate mother to one of his children. She bathed him, cared for him, made tamales that he still remembers as if he could taste them, prepared duck soup, drank coffee with her, and they would talk for hours.

When she started working as an independent journalist, that woman was there. The threats also came to that house. They asked her not to continue caring for the child. But she did not turn her back. There are people who enter your life in such a decisive way that one day they will have to be remembered.

Perhaps that's why farewells often come to mind late. She also left behind places. From the East, she moved to other spots in the same region. She passed through Mella and then returned to Santiago. With each move, there were people left behind. They weren't yet the big farewells that would come later. They were small, almost invisible losses, caused by distance, by a new home, by a new stage of life.

In Santiago, she engaged in more intense political activism and met the father of her youngest child. She also began traveling outside of Cuba: to Spain, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, the United States, South Korea, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, etc.

She would leave and return. For a while, leaving still meant coming back. During one of those international experiences, she participated in an important regional summit. There, she met other activists, spoke about Cuba, and experienced moments of tension with supporters of the Cuban regime who had also attended the meeting. The denunciation eventually made its way to various media outlets. Those were intense days, filled with raised voices and emotions that were hard to forget.

But there was still a way back. The possibility of taking a plane, crossing the sky, and returning to familiar ground still existed. After ending her relationship with her daughter's father, when the girl was only two and a half years old, she moved to the West. And she started over.

In every place, he built a small network of people. A conversation here. A friendship there. Someone asking about the children. Someone needing help with a school matter. Someone stopping by to buy something, to sell something, to seek advice. Many passed by that little sales table, which eventually also became a meeting point.

Life was made up of people. There were neighbors like Cheo, who knew everything that was happening on the block. There were those like Chichiro who brought bread, milk, and groceries, always very helpful. There was someone selling avocados. There was a sharpened who roamed the street and brought home root vegetables and salads every day. There was a lonely elderly woman with whom one could share a small glass of milk or some fried snacks in the mornings.

There was Juana, with her coffees and medicinal plants. There was the professor who had been a great athlete and who one day left very ill. There was that very old woman, still strong and upright, sociable, who later moved to another province. The children were running through the porch, playing, and participating in sports. The soccer matches that could end in tears or laughter depending on the team. The afternoons at the beach. The sweets from the local candy shop. The ice creams at night. There were the power outages.

When the electricity went out, the neighbors would gather on the porches. They would chat, share stories, set up makeshift beds, and could end up sleeping until two or three in the morning. Sometimes the food would be left half-cooked because the power had gone out.

Water was also lacking. So the neighbors helped each other so that everyone could collect at least a little. And then the pandemic arrived. There were croquettes, homemade face masks, and children studying inside their homes. The house became a school, a dining room, a shelter, and a world.

Today, as she reflects on that time, she realizes that she misses not only the people but also everything that surrounded them. Because memory preserves not just faces. It retains gestures, sounds, flavors, routines, objects, and little habits. It keeps a voice calling from a doorway, the smell of coffee, a conversation cut short, a child who gets lost playing soccer and returns when many have already started to worry.

It even preserves what seemed insignificant. Perhaps because, when one is far away, the insignificant takes on a different magnitude. Her life continued to change. She kept working, writing, and engaging in activism. The political circumstances increasingly tightened the space in which she could live and work. She had suffered searches of her home, arrests, brief imprisonments, threats, and the loss of her job as a university professor.

But she continued. Until the moment when leaving stopped meaning coming back. By then, she had already learned that people could disappear from a life in many ways. Some died. Others emigrated. Some moved to another province. Others remained on the other side of a border. And some simply got left behind because she had to leave.

He said goodbye to his family many days before the final departure. It wasn't an airport farewell. It took place in a house, with the painful anticipation of someone who knows they are closing a chapter, even if the moment to leave has not yet arrived. Then came the journey from the West to the East with his youngest daughter. It was a sad, uncomfortable trip, overshadowed by uncertainty. The departure was delayed for about eight weeks while he awaited news about the child’s father and whether they would finally be able to leave.

When they arrived at the airport, she still wasn't sure about anything. There was tension. Waiting. Paperwork. Hours that seemed endless. And then the moment came. They told her she could leave. She could board the plane. She had dreamed for years of leaving. She had imagined other lives, other horizons, a less hostile environment for her children and for herself.

However, when she heard that she could finally board the plane, something happened that none of those wishes could have anticipated. She understood that she was leaving her homeland. It wasn’t just another trip. It wasn’t a departure to return. It was a departure.

And perhaps it was then that she understood that emigrating was not just about changing countries. It also meant starting to live with farewells that had never taken place.

Later, there were other absences. People who emigrated before I could embrace them one last time. People who passed away while she was away. People whose lives carried on elsewhere and who, even though they were still alive, no longer played a part in everyday life.

Among them were Mayi, Yali, and Zizi, her friends. Neighbors, acquaintances, people with whom she had shared years and little things that never seemed important until they became impossible.

Not only do we lose those who die. We also lose, sometimes forever, the chance to say goodbye to those who are still alive. And there is another, more silent loss: not being present at the birthday celebration that wasn't attended. The illness that was diagnosed too late. The coffee that was no longer shared. The medicinal plant that someone could no longer offer. The conversation that was left unfinished. The child who grew up without her being able to witness all his changes. The mother who ages far away.

Being connected, calls and messages allow us to know, but the screen does not replace the portal. It doesn't replace coffee. It doesn't replace a hand on the shoulder. It doesn't replace being there.

Now she is almost fifty years old and can look back and discover a life filled with people. She was never a lonely woman. She had too many people around her. And perhaps that's why she now knows a particular kind of loneliness: feeling alone after having had so much. But there is a fear that is even more difficult to accommodate. Her grandmother, the woman who raised her, is ninety years old.

It is there. And precisely because it is there, fear exists. The fear of someday receiving news and being unable to reach it. The fear of losing your mother, your children while being far away. The fear that other deaths will once again find her at a distance that she cannot cross.

There are losses that have already occurred. There are others that have not yet happened. And in between lies the uncertainty. Because since she left, she learned something she didn't know when she was a girl playing under the mango tree: that a person can be alive and yet begin to become part of the absence.

And that emigrating can also mean this: losing farewells, before realizing that they were being lost.