Monica

Well, more on Chile. My Chilean friend, the one I've been writing about, there's more to say. See, the back story is that I stayed with his grandmother for a few months in 2002. As I've reconnected with him, he has told me that his grandmother died in May of 2008. I don't yet have any details about this, but let me tell you that it has hit my heart hard.


This woman was in her mid 60s when she opened her home to me. She was a painter. She painted landscapes and women's bodies and she was incredibly talented. She had a strained relationship with her children, but was incredibly close to her grandkids. She was devoted to the women incarcerated at the Arica Women's Prison- she went there every week to talk to them, teach painting classes, and just be their friend. She brought me there and opened up my eyes to a world where women are incarcerated while men go free for turning in more connected drug lords. She found this an incredible injustice. She was right.

She had her own emotional and substance use issues. Our relationship was not always smooth or tranquil. As is so common in relationships among people with strong personalities, we had arguments. But for whatever reason or happenstance, our souls were aligned. We made sense to one another. She painted me. I posed for her paintings, something I have never shared with anyone. I never have seen the finished product of what she painted.

I am feeling a tremendous amount of regret for having lost touch with her. A tremendous amount of regret for never telling her how dear she was to me; how much she impacted me; how much I learned while living with her. I always imagined that I would go back to the little poblano artesenal where she lived in Northern Chile and revisit all of her energy and love and art. It won't happen.

I am looking for her paintings online- but haven't found any. Hopefully, I'll get my hands on one and be able to share. I am hoping that I will be able to purchase one of her works from her grandson. We are trying to work out the details.

It is extraordinary and bizarre to me that I would never have known she died were it not for the earthquake. She died almost 2 years before the earthquake, yet in this minutely small way, the earthquake's aftershocks are more tremendous that one can imagine.