Cuba and Our Never-Ending Farewells
HAVANA TIMES – People, dreams, eras, go by with their arms raised high, while I remain stuck in the same place. Every stage of my life has been marked by a goodbye. Perhaps now, with my 42 years, I should be used to it, but every farewell leaves a footprint, a vacuum impossible to fill.
We Cubans exist amid a constant exercise of farewells. Our families are archipelagoes – fragmented, disperse, reunited only on WhatsApp where calls and messages are sometimes lost along the way.
I remember that in the nineties, when I was eight years old, my “aunts up North” came to visit for the first time. For us kids it was all a novelty – finally we could put a face on those letters that our grandparents read with teary eyes. The week was one constant celebration with the house full, laughter, hugs, twenty years of stories to share.
The visits began to repeat every year, but for my grandparents every farewell was harder. This could be the last time, this could be the last kiss, until the day arrived when the two old people were no longer there to say goodbye.
Later, cousins left; childhood friends; classmates. Some held parties, others left without a word, as if they were afraid the Island might charge them for daring to seek something better.
Love in Cuba is always on the waiting list. My first husband met a German woman one day, who was willing to get him out of here. He asked me to wait, that one day we’d reunite, but I gave him a choice – either stay with me or leave without me. He left. With time, I understood that in a country where the future is uncertain, love, too, has an expiration date.
Many people have had to choose between remaining with their partners or letting them go. Some maintain long-distance relationships with pixilated videocalls and promises. Others simply store their memories in a box.
We Cubans also say goodbye to material things. We say goodbye to the electricity, to medications, to leisure spots; to books, bread rolls from the shop, foods that disappear like passengers on a phantom train; to education, to hope, the professions. Engineers, doctors, and teachers say farewell to their careers to become taxi drivers, open a small business, or sell whatever they can on a corner to survive.
Death and distance are sometimes intertwined here. There are people who leave, and it’s as if they died – a silent but constant grief. Grandparents die waiting for their grandchild to obtain a visa to come see them for the last time; friends leave and we never hear anything about them again; parents grow old while their children promise: “Next year, I’ll come.” It hurts when someone says, “see you soon,” and “soon” could be never. Yet, despite everything, we continue inventing ways to keep them alive: their photos on the wall, their names spoken with each memory.
People ask me sometimes why I stay on here, when so many have left. The answer is simple: I don’t have the means to leave. Cuba is my home, despite its chaos. There are still people I love here, and it hurts me to leave them behind. My mother is growing old and has already suffered many farewells. This land holds my story. Yet even so, if I could, I too would leave for another place, where breathing isn’t so expensive. Meanwhile, my life goes on amid packed suitcases and embraces that never last long enough.