Recently, I lost a relative whom I have known my entire life. It has taken me a while to process this loss, and make peace with the memories of seeing someone during his final days. 

He lived a quarter of a hemisphere from my hometown, and I had to fly across an ocean, and several US states, to get there. By the goodwill of certain family members, I had the opportunity to see him once more.

Among the numerous health issues, and the debilitating state that kept him confined to bed, he didn’t want to die. We believed it was because he feared death, but later confessed that he didn’t want us to feel sad about his departure.

Ten years ago, he lost his mother, and he didn’t want us to go through the torment of grief. For as much as he wanted to continue living, the miracles of medicine weren’t helping.

He couldn’t breathe appropriately, and you could hear fluids running through his lungs. Body scans found clots across his blood system. The strong painkillers he was prescribed, along with lack of energy, he would swing in and out of consciousness.

One of the most heartbreaking things he asked me was: “do you know someone who is suffering like me?” You can’t blame him for wanting to compare his situation with another’s.

Somehow, he clung to life in a way nobody understood. Even his doctor said he shouldn’t be alive in that condition. At one point, it became uncertain if he still had an opportunity to survive longer.

His sister, who admirably took care of him for the past three years, told him, with tears running down her cheeks, that it was okay to let go. Sometimes, you have to remind people what they mean to you. 

We told him he had been a good cousin, a good brother, a good friend, a good uncle, a good son, and a great human being. He replied, with his eyes closed, and in a whisper: “thank you.”

That same day, a Sunday, I felt a strange urge to visit the hospital chapel, and there I made an inquiry to the heavens.

“Any penance that remains for him to fulfill, forgive him. Let his transition to the afterlife be peaceful and without pain. He has suffered too long, and yet he has remained strong and faithful. Reward him with the eternal rest he deserves.”

Later, I returned to his room and found him in good spirits, telling jokes and eager to have dinner. I promised him that I’d see him the next day. 

I said: “See you tomorrow, champ!” Little did I know that my prayers were answered, and he was gone early the next morning.

If I have learned anything during that trip is how strong the human spirit can be all the way through the end. Him choosing life over death, to spare us from grief, to have his wish granted to spend another Christmas with his loved ones, I noticed how weak I am compared to him.

We only know by faith where we are going after the body expires. Religion doesn’t need to prove the existence of the afterlife, because belief is enough; and science can only explain how the perceivable and tangible world works.

The only comforting information that tells me death is but a transition, and nothing final, is that neither matter nor energy can be created or destroyed, only transformed. Whatever the soul is, whatever consciousness is, simply moves along in a different shape, in a dimension our senses cannot perceive.

There is nothing you can do anymore to build new memories with those who have passed along. You are left with going backwards, in time, in memory, in anecdotes. That is the real heartbreak about loss, but it doesn’t mean everything about them will perish.

They may not be physically alive, but they are in the warmth they provide when we think of them, in the wisdom they shared with us, in the laughs we had, in the stories we formed, in the way they shaped us to become better people.

We don’t need to wait for them in the afterlife. They are already with us.

This is dedicated to Esteban Canevaro Colón. Rest in eternal peace, dear cousin.

The following video commemorates his life. Edited by yours truly.