Call it an open letter, call it a channel to vent, call it a torrent of tears followed by a sigh. Last night I went to bed crying.I don't think I had done that in a long time.I did it when my friend died, I did it when a forever love ran its course in a few short months, I did it when my dog didn't make it. What all these situations have in common is that they were all endings, deaths. And last night, like almost every night I read about El Salvador, I read about a death. Only this time it was an eleven year old boy's death.
In the article it said that the funeral parlor employee that had to somehow put his limbs together (for his grandmother to see him) could not stop crying. The man has seen it all..but this...There is no need to go into detail about how it was done. Let it suffice to say that gang members outdid themselves in their cruelty.
I feel guilty because I live in a place where my car remains unlocked all night, as does my house unless we are out of town. I feel guilty because my kid at five months has already traveled, sat in fancy restaurants, and worn baby clothes more expensive than the average Salvadoran's monthly salary. I feel guilty because I don't have to worry if he will make it through the day.
In my mind, that boy's death represents the death of the place I grew up in, where we would ride our bikes until it got dark outside. Not looking over our shoulders, not even when there was a war going on. Memories of moving freely, driving in a car by myself without the sharp pang of paranoia jabbing at my ribs. Memories of my worst fear being running into my sister at a club I was not old enough to be in and her telling on me. Kids in El Salvador have far more serious worries now. They worry about violence, they worry about theft, they worry about an astronomical homicide rate that can -on any day-factor in their parents.
I don't know if it's the mother in me, the eternally-in-love with El Salvador citizen in me,or the fact that this place that I have called home for so long is now unrecognizable- but I feel a sadness unlike any other I have experienced. Maybe because when my best friend died it was not in the hands of a murderer, or when that love died it was a blessing in disguise and made way for the fantastic man that would later become my husband. Maybe because my dog had liver failure and the ammonia got to his brain and he did not feel a thing. Or maybe it's because it is the first time that I truly understand how horrific a human being can be, how greed, corruption, fear and those savages have turned my little paradise el rincon magico , into a place with no freedom -because freedom is of no use if fear has paralyzed you. And it has paralyzed a country. And it has left me homeless, because the country that I knew and loved no longer exists.
The naive part of me hopes that kid is resting in peace, in whatever his idea of heaven was. The heart in me is horrified at what his last moments must have been like. The fighter in me wants a plan to get her country back, and the mother in me hopes to raise a man strong enough and sensitive enough and compassionate enough to want to effect change.The Greenwich resident in me goes to bed every night,in an unlocked house, praying for everyone else down there.
