Summer of Death

We are at the verge of ending one of the worst summers I seem to remember. Granted, in my life, summer seems to be the moment of bad things to happen, but this one tops the bill. Why? Because there were a lot of people cashing their final check during this summer. Of course, I know that this summer was also great for many people that I know, and many people that I don’t, and that’s how life is, but the number of grievances let me to call this summer as the, well, you know the title.

There has been a series of murders overall and while that’s not new, nor some psycho taking many guns and start shooting randomly at whoever was at the wrong place (God bless the second amendment, right?), on the wrong time and the wrong day, it seems as if it became a fashion during the past month or so. Aurora, Wisconsin, New York and others send a series of anonymous to their graves. As well as there where a great number of people with no face dying because the war on drugs, or the war at wherever they are. They are “anonymous” for me and the media, but not for each and every friend and family of each and every victim. Their pain is no spectacular flashy news, but is a departure and trauma that will take a long time to heal.

There were so many deaths during these past months that it’s absurd. I even heard a friend talking to her friend about the passing of her friend’s uncle. It was a distant death to me, but at that point it was the beginning of August and I was just fed up with the hint of death. It was past the…

The most recent famous death was that of Neil Amstrong. Yeah, the “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” guy. He was 82, and he did something that I bet I’ll never do, fucking walk in the moon! Oh, and for those who love the conspiracy theories and believe that it was all a lie from Uncle Sam to distract people from the Vietnam fiasco? Really?! As if even the veterans of that bullshit war didn’t and doesn’t know that it was a disaster. Stop smoking of that one dudes.

There were also many deaths concerning artists and the entertainment business. Among the toll there were writers, musicians, editors, singers, and so on. I guess that for Latin America the biggest depart was that of Chavela Vargas. Of course, she had a long and joyful life, as well as a huge work to leave behind. A year after Cabral left us (another summer), “la llorona” followed him leaving us with a desire to hear her music and drink mescal forever. For North Americans the biggest lost was that of writer Gore Vidal, though many idiots thought it was Al Gore who died. Vidal was the last of his generation.

On August 11 Von Freeman, the jazz legend, also said the eternal farewell. Not to panic, he was almost 90 years old so he was long past due, plus he was a jazz legend and all. Two days later Helen Gurley Brown joined him, the editor of “Cosmopolitan”, the fashion magazine. Helen was also 90 by the time death came knocking at her door.

Carlo Rambaldi was 86, and he also received the bill to check out. Rambalbi was the superb creator of ET (the actual alien or what you see as such), which was an ugly motherfucker, but Carlo managed to make it cute enough to have a lot of people crying in the middle of the film’s climax. And talking about ugly motherfuckers, he was also responsible for the monster on the original “Alien”.

However, it was not all about famous people. In fact, I can’t care less about them. But the summer of death brought the surprise on a personal level, for me, and for people that are part of my life. Right to the last days of summer, there were people dying. Even the mother-in-law of the Department Chair of where I work now died last week. On May 26, death took Jessica’s father, marking the beginning of a long summer for her. Who is Jessica? Well, for those who don’t know about her, she is the one behind the curtain in the graduate program I am part of at Notre Dame. She is the one who runs the show with little credits. And with little credits, she mentioned that she was going to be out for some weeks, while she said good-bye to her father. Losing a father…very close to the lost of a god.

Mara Negrón: a relatively young professor back at the UPR, who also checked out as a result of leukemia. I never took classes with her, but most of my friends did and they cared for her, respected her. I also respected her. She had brilliant things to say and write, she was a mentor of many of my friends, she was a dear friend of my old master’s advisor, and, even when I never took a course with her, she always greeted me with a kiss and a big smile. She respected me as I respected her, and apparently, in both cases, thanks to references. Her death was way too familiar for me (and it brought unpleasant memories). She died of the same disease as my mother, at the same age. Granted, my mother was not a teacher nor an intellectual, so she didn’t touch as many lives, but it was a familiar script for me. I was only happy that so many people had so many caring and respectful words for her. She had the promise to say many other brilliant things, but she said enough to create a wave of respect, words-works and love for her once it was her sudden time.

I was thinking about Mara until I could not care anymore, until death knocked into my own door.

My sister. The biggest lost for me during this summer was that of my sister. July 11, 2012, two weeks or less after Mara passed away, like it was a preview of things to come. My sister…who was released from a hell of a life with a lot of diseases, but, as I wrote before, was more than a sister, was a friend. She respected me, she gave me hope with my nephews, she always missed me every time I got to leave, and loved me. She was my heroine, as she did I could have never done on her circumstances. My sister, who I still can’t believe that I can’t just pick up the phone and call her and complaint about not understanding a thing she would say because she didn’t articulate. My sister who I still can’t believe is a bunch of ashes (oh man, why did I open that box?). My sister, whose departure defined new meanings for pain, new meanings of hell, new depths for darkness that I can even comprehend, that words fail me to describe.

Summer 2012. A brutal summer. A long summer. A painful summer. The summer of death.