On Saturday, December 21st we received the sad news that my aunt, we call her tía Mimi, had finally let go of her earthly body. She was the matriarch figure of my mom’s family, the eldest daughter of 8 children, the home we would stay in when we would visit Guatemala, the home where all the families would come to share a meal. I only visited a few times while I was growing up, but I was always immediately welcomed. While I was American through and through and my Spanish was terrible and I was too shy to speak my terrible Spanish and actually get better by speaking, I was never treated as a stranger by her, but welcomed home into an embrace of belonging. I was loved simply for being. What a gift she gave me early on.
Her love was not a touchy-feely baking cookies type of love. It was more of a steady presence. A foundational type of love.
The way I process things in life is always through art making and writing. I knew I had to make a collage of her in my journal. I finally completed it yesterday. It is a simple one. But I needed time alone and some quiet. I went into my mom’s albums and I found one from the late 1950s after my mom’s family moved to Guatemala from Panama. From what I have been told my aunt quickly became enthralled with the indigenous cultures of Guatemala. She would often accompany her father, my grandfather into the mountain villages when he would go preach. The photo of her is of her wearing the traditional clothing of Guatemala. She knew I loved the traditional weavings of Guatemala and through the years she sent me the most beautiful huipiles from her collection. They are my prized possessions. So picking a photo of her wearing the traje was important to me.
I placed a piece of script writing behind her because she was a studious woman with a love of books and learning. A child psychologist and a professor, in fact.
The tree trunk. Well, I have a photo of a beauty of a tree, a giant tree, a big old Sycamore. This Sycamore is the type of tree one would call the Mother Tree. Mother Trees act as central hubs, communicating with the young seedlings around them. They send younger trees excess carbon, water and nutrients to help them grow and give them a better chance of survival. I’ve always wanted to make art with this particular photo, but could never figure out what. I ended up using a teeny tiny part of the original photo, but it was perfect for what I needed.
When I finally figured out attaching the Sycamore trunk to her image in my journal, it was like a sigh was released and it felt right. My aunt was like a Mother Tree to me and the multiple generations of her extended family. I understood my grief a little better.
The last time I saw my aunt was when I was 15, as that was the last time I was in Guatemala. How do we keep relationships with family that are so distant? How do form a relationship when you speak two different languages? How do you understand what family is when your immediate family is the one branch thousands of miles away from the main tree trunk? Was the grief I was feeling also from a sense of loss of all the years apart? I remember wondering what it would have been like growing up there with such a strong sense of family and belonging. But my aunt demonstrated that it was possible.
Then I remembered that when I was preschool age, my aunt actually came to live with us for two years to help my mom during some challenging years. She saw that I loved to draw and she would constantly be giving me paper and pencils and always encouraging my creativity. Maybe through the fog of the years, my cells remembered this early connection to her. She was one of the people that nurtured my creativity at a young age.
Several years ago one of my cousins created a Facebook account for her. She sent me a message saying how proud she was of me for taking the creative path in life and that she was looking forward to seeing my progress in my posts. That meant so much.
But mostly I heard about her from my mom. I was surprised by the strength of the grief when it hit me last Saturday. Grief comes in waves and rolled over me last weekend. I think that around the holidays we especially remember the people we have lost through the years and feel their absence more keenly. Her passing opened the door to what is normally kept locked up. Through the celebrating of the season, there is always a little sadness. But that’s what it means to be human on this Earth- to love and to grieve, to have and to let go.
I’ve read that Mother Trees will keep feeding and nurturing the other trees around them, even after they have died. How beautifully perfect is that?