The first time I looked death in the eyes, or to be more precise, when death forced me to face it, I was about 9 years old. I came home from school, and the news awaited me that my grandfather had passed away due to heart problems.

I don’t know how to explain what I felt. Until today, the emotions and sensations I experienced seem confusing and elusive. During that time, I lacked sufficient vocabulary to describe it, and even now, as if I had remained at 9 years old, I still can’t find the precise words to express what I felt. Perhaps it’s because I feared, and still fear, that by naming those emotions, death might take possession and establish itself permanently, as if life did not come bundled with death.

I fear death because I’m terrified of change, I’m terrified of the passage of time, and I’m terrified of impermanence.

And today, once again, death compels me to look it in the eyes. Today, with greater awareness and vocabulary, I can recognize and give meaning to what I feel to a greater extent, but it still falls short when I try to express it in words.

It’s an abstract process where the other still occupies a space but is no longer physical or tangible. You must persuade your mind that they occupy a place, even though they will never be present again; you won’t be able to see them, touch them, smell them, or feel their heartbeat.

The task involves adjustment. How to reconstruct that space that was physically occupied and now does so symbolically?

The etymology of grief in spannish (duelo) is pain, the problem is that it’s not known where it hurts. The emptiness is initially filled with pain, a lot of pain, and we seek distractions with things, people, situations, experiences; because the silence becomes unbearable. As it fills with the absence of what we lost, it hurts to the core and tears apart.

It is up to us to go through the pain to empty ourselves of it and build a new symbolic space for that being in our hearts and in our souls.

We are to inhabit the space we once shared as two, and now only one remains. Sit where we used to be accompanied, and now only one seat is taken. Look where we used to find another’s gaze and realize that no one is looking anymore. Request a table for two when there’s only one to eat. Start conversations that won’t have a response. Wrap ourselves in blankets, adjusting the temperature for one body. Call out loudly without receiving an answer. And in all these acts, feel the pain, sense the absence, experience stabs in the chest that tighten it and don’t allow air to flow, release a tearing cry, complain to the universe, demand what was taken from us, bear the guilt for what was and cannot change, yearn for what was lacking and cannot be completed.

And one day you wake up, in that moment of confusion between dream and wakefulness, and you are certain that that being no longer exists. Contrary to bringing you anguish and sadness, a sense of tranquility arrives, knowing that you loved and were loved for what was and what you both were. On that day, you rise, and where you used to see them, you no longer search. Where they used to sit, you know you won’t find them. Where you used to look for them, they are no longer found. Where you used to remember them, they no longer reside.

It’s already within you. You close your eyes, and there in your heart, that being continues to beat and will keep living. You are okay with that because you know that, even though they are gone, they remain within you, having transformed your life with their life… and with their death.