El Escritor de La Familia – A Reflection After My Abuelito’s Passing.

My great-grandfather died on January 4, 2025. This was days after Puerto Rico suffered through another mass blackout to usher in the new year, and days before what would have been his 87th birthday. With his death, my grandmother inherited the title as elder among our family. She’s approaching her 70’s and I sit with a growing dread that she may not have the opportunity to do what Hippolita Colón Ramos did for me. My grandmother may not have the time to inherit the title of Abuelita, one reserved, in my household, for my great-grandmother.

At my Abuelito’s funeral, a Titi who I knew only by name introduced me to someone over WhatsApp video as “El Escritor de La Familia.” The Writer of the Family. I shook at this description. The weight of it rocked me. The responsibility. The histories of pain and joy that this familiar stranger so casually claimed were my cross to bear made their power known. But they didn’t come as a tsunami (although, funny enough, there was a scare of one on the island not long after that).

No, they came more like the growing heat of water from the showerhead. They’ve come more like the swingset motion of grief. 

I don’t know that I’ll ever feel ready to tell the stories of my loved ones. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel worthy of the honor. I don’t know that I’ll ever do you all justice as I inscribe pieces of you in a sentence or line of verse. Neither the page nor my breath will capture the contours of your beauty.

But as Writer, I make the same promise I make as friend. I make the same promise I make as son. I make the same promise I make as all the things I’ve been, and all that I am, and all that I will become.

I promise to love. I promise to love as well as I can. I promise to allow love to exceed what appears reasonable, and in doing so, to do what guarding one’s heart really means.

I promise not to let our pain make me apathetic. I promise that out of pain will come more love. I promise that for every loss we suffer I will remind us that loving remains worthwhile.

I promise that when they find me, they will find you too. Because like Louis Reyes Rivera said, I am nothing more than a metaphor for everyone who came before me. And, if I might add, those that came alongside me. A signpost for ancient love that stretches back and forth from the Creator to the ever-changing present moment.

Thank you, viejitos, for your love. Thank you, family, for your love. Thank you, friends for your love. Knowing and loving you as well as being known and loved by you is enough for me.

Not long ago, I sat in my Abuelos’ house, at their dinner table, and told my grandmother that I hoped people cry at my funeral. Not because I want my people to suffer (how cruel could I be?).

No, I hope people cry because despite how happy they are I’ve transitioned, they know that I loved them well. I hope my people cry because my love gave them reason to miss that love. And I hope that their tears give them the reason to keep loving well themselves.

The way Abuelita loved. The way my Grandmother loves. The way my Mother loves.

I hope my writing pushes people to love. I hope my life pushes people to love. I hope my death pushes people to love. I hope my love pushes people to love.

To love dangerously. To love in ways that could be costly. To love with fear, and despite it. To love without guarantees, or expectations, or conditions. And to keep loving, especially when its hard.

Even when its terrifying. Even when it ends in pain. Because guarding your heart doesn’t mean being guarded. It doesn’t mean avoiding pain. It doesn’t mean fleeing at the sight of potential suffering.

It means choosing, despite all that, to keep loving anyway. Pain can and will take so much from us.

Never let it take your love.

I love you Abuelito. From this life, to the next.

¿Bendición?

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