So I ran away to Mexico. I always said I would if things got really bad. My husband and I spent our 25th wedding anniversary there and fell in love with a little fishing village on the Yucatan. So I went back. And I brought him with me.
They almost didn’t let me through customs at the airport. They wanted me to open the urn his ashes were in. I suppose they wanted to see if I was smuggling in cocaine (which is stupid because people don’t smuggle it from the US into Mexico, it goes the other way) I had all the necessary paper work, but they were suspicious.
The guy checking our luggage said I needed to open the urn, but he didn’t want to be the one to look inside. He went to get someone else, who went to get some else, who went to get someone else. Apparently, the Mexicans are very superstitious about the dead. For me, that was a good thing. Finally, I was able to leave the airport with my husband’s remains undisturbed.
I went to my favorite little hotel in Puerto Morelos where my good friends, Crescent and William, have their dive shop. I put the urn on the shelf and I left the room and locked it. I sat on the beach all day. I stared at the waves and tried to be social to people who walked by. I was numb.
Two days later, Crescent agreed to go to Akumal with me. Akumal is a beach town with a bay where turtles come every year to lay their eggs. In fact, Akumal means place of the turtles in Mayan. The reef there is close to shore. You can swim out and watch tiny, brightly colored fish and sea fans and underwater flying turtles in peace under the hot Mexican sun. It was where my beloved wanted to spend his final days. I promised I would take him there, not for his final days, but for eternity.
It rained.
Still I hired a small panga to take us out to the reef. So we went, Crescent and I. And my daughter. She was the one who kept my head above water.
This is what I wrote later in my journal concerning that day.
Mexico wasn’t what I thought it would be. I planned a whale shark adventure, some snorkeling and a trip into the biosphere. Little did I know a storm was brewing.
It was late afternoon on day two of my trip and the thunderheads were gathering. I’d already hired a boat for my trip out to the reef and despite the threatening weather, I was reluctant to cancel. So, I watched the clouds and then the rain.
The ashes were in a beautiful wooden box, in a soft purple drawstring bag, in a dark green fabric shopping bag. I had not looked inside. How could I?
I figured the rain would pass, so I stashed the bag between my feet in the front seat of a dear friend’s van and made the 45-minute trip to Akumal Bay.
Ah Akumal, where endangered sea turtles float in the clear Caribbean and sea fans wave in a watery wind 15 feet beneath the surface of the sea. You were good to me.
Thank you for embracing my dear one and taking him into your depths where he can rest and I can visit him again someday.
The sky was dark and the shore was green. We motored slowly back to the beach and I splashed into the shallows and waded onto the sand.
I am so tired of waxing poetic. Life is what it is. I spent a few moments playing with my friend’s 3-year-old son and then we headed to the dolphin pools and had dinner. I have no idea what I ate. I suppose, if I thought long enough, I could remember. But what does it matter?
The following day, word came a hurricane was poised to engulf the entire east coast. I made plans to go home and beat the storm.
So long Mexico
I am not sure if I will return.
Little did I know, I would be back sooner than expected. And not only would I be back, but I would make my home there. I would wander those beaches and make lifelong friends in those sleepy fishing villages. I would find comfort and begin to get outside of myself and immerse myself in the beauty around me—the beauty I was meant to somehow document and share—the beauty of the people and the flowers and the families and the food and the lack and the relationships and the heat and the struggle and the grace and the laughter. How do I write it all down? How do I take this thing that is burning inside me and expose it to you?
Mexico set me on a journey like no other. A journey that began with loss and resulted in setting my course, dredging up compassion and passion in me that previously, I barely knew existed.
We never know where life will bring us. We cannot foresee what devastation might bring us into joy.
I buried my husband in Mexico and I found life there. It continues to this day. As you read the rest of my story, I hope you will feel the passion that burns within me, forgive all my wanderings, and try to hear what I am trying to say.