Mourning Across the Border

4/25/2023 

In my life people don't die, they just disappear. If you’re lucky enough to have papers or visas, you get to see them from time to time. You watch them age slowly; you see that they're slowly becoming more wrinkly, weaker, more forgetful. 

And one day, they just don't visit you anymore. Or if you go visit, their house is empty. 

Mourning on this side of the border is unsatisfactory. We’re already used to missing our loved ones. If we get to see them at all, we see them for a few days out of the year. We wait a long time between every visit. When they leave this earth, it feels like an extended time between visits. We’re already used to living without them. The next time we ‘visit’ will be when we get to heaven too. 

I'm lucky because I got to cross the border easily, so maybe I shouldn't even complain. Some people aren’t so lucky. They hug their parents goodbye when they’re young hoping to come back home soon. But years go by. Often decades. Then it’s too late. People die. There's no hope of ever seeing them again, not in this life at least. 

Maybe it’s easier for us on this side of the border. We don’t have to face the reality of their lifeless body. We don’t have a funeral to go to. We just go to work or school as if it were a regular day and not the day our grandparents, parents, and loved ones were buried. Routine and distance give us a false sense that everything is normal - after all, we’re already used to missing them. Missing our loved ones, our family, our origins. Key pieces of ourselves. 

Or maybe it’s harder for us. We’re mourning their loss but for people like me, who always grew up far away from them, we’re also mourning the relationship we never have had. We cherish the 2 memories we have with them and yearn for more. 

We're spared the sadness of seeing them wither away and seeing their life leave their eyes. We’re spared the pain of seeing them suffer with illness, the sleepless nights in the hospital rooms. We’re spared so much. But we’re denied our goodbye. 

I was always on the wrong side of the border when someone died. My grandfather died the day that I graduated from high school. I think he waited until after I crossed the stage before letting go. Even though he was in another country, he waited to cross the border of life and death until I had crossed the stage.

When my cousin died, I was actually in Mexico but she died in the United States. Again, I was on the wrong side of the border. I didn't get to go to her funeral. I don't think I've ever gone to a funeral of a close loved one. 

In 2020 when the deaths started, I didn't get the closure of being at my grandfather’s funeral or burial, or my aunt’s, or my grandmother’s. I was on the wrong side of the border. I just learned to miss people for longer and longer periods of time. Because they just disappear. They don't die.