A Cuban emigrant in Spain shared this Tuesday on TikTok a soulbreaking video: the last hug she gave her grandmother before boarding the plane, not knowing that 27 days later she would lose her forever.
The author, identified on the platform as @marinmesa99, recounts that on March 12, she said goodbye to her grandmother in Cuba and left convinced that she would return to see her. On April 8, her grandmother passed away.
"On March 12, I said goodbye to my grandmother and boarded that plane thinking I would be able to hug her again. On April 8, she left forever. Now I understand that that hug was not a see you later. It was a goodbye," the young woman wrote in the description of the clip.
The video lasts just 31 seconds, but it encapsulates one of the most silent tragedies of Cuban emigration.
In the images, the grandmother can be heard pleading: "Hold me tight, hold me hard, my love, hold me."
The young woman had been four years away from the island when that reunion took place, which turned out to be the last. Four years during which her grandmother waited, and during which she, like so many emigrants, believed that time would suffice.
“She waited for me for four years… but she could no longer wait,” he wrote.
In her reflection, the Cuban points to one of the cruelest asymmetries of living far away: "For us, the years pass quickly amidst work, responsibilities, and a life we are trying to build from afar. But for those who stay, each day is just another day waiting for our return."
And it concludes with a phrase that summarizes the bitterest lesson: "The emigrant learns too late that while we count the years we have been away, our loved ones count the days they have been waiting for us."
The testimony of @marinmesa99 is not an isolated case. Losing loved ones while being away, without the chance to say goodbye or attend a funeral, has become a recurring experience among Cubans in the diaspora. Similar cases have shaken social media in recent months: a Cuban who returned after four years and her grandmother did not recognize her, or a young man who said goodbye to his grandmother before emigrating, telling her "I don’t know if I will be able to hug you again" in a video that garnered over 248,000 views.
Behind each of these testimonies lies the greatest migratory crisis in the history of Cuba. According to data from the National Office of Statistics and Information, in 2024, 251,221 Cubans emigrated, and it is estimated that between 2021 and 2024, around 1.79 million people left the island.
That massive separation has a human cost that no statistic can fully capture: grandmothers who wait for years to see their grandchildren and die before they can reunite; emigrants who learn, all too late, that time does not always wait.
"Emigrating is learning to say goodbye without knowing when it will be the last time," wrote @marinmesa99. For thousands of Cubans scattered around the world, that phrase is not a metaphor.
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