ESTA ES SU CASA--JULY 2012
To view the June newsletter in HD, click the link to THE BEACON:
https://www.stlbeacon.org/#!/content/25313/dulick_may_flores_053012
They have postponed Chemo’s cardio-cath operation till October. The folks of the Brigada, composed of world-class doctors and nurses from the United States and elsewhere, are the best people on Earth, but the reason surprised me. “Unfortunately, we do not have a cardiologist in June.” What? They’re doing open-heart surgery on kids and they’re not cardiologists? But, wait. While the catheterization to plug a tiny hole in Chemo’s heart is obviously a much simpler procedure than cutting into a child’s chest cavity, it takes a...cardiologist. All I know is that Dr. Manuel Acuna, who diagnosed Chemo’s problem in April, will be back in October. We’ll just have to wait.
But there is some urgency to Chemo’s situation, or so I thought. By October, Chemo will be 18, and I will no longer be his legal guardian. Everyone is assuring me it will be no problem, because he will be “of age.” He can sign himself into the hospital. OK, but I’m still a little nervous. Please bridge the gap with your kind thoughts and prayers.
I went to St. Louis for two weeks to catch up on my sisters Barb and Nancy, and my brothers John and Bob. Barb loves Mondays, when she babysits her granddaughter Jaslyn, and nieces Jaime and Justine. And Jason and Sonja broke the news that Jaslyn would be getting a little brother or sister next January. Nancy brought her dog Jah to compete in the friendly little neighborhood dog show, where he won “Fluffiest Dog.” Nancy’s son Dan stays the summers at Barb’s house and turned us on to the night drummers in Forest Park. We saw the Chinese Lanterns at Shaw’s Garden. We ate at Crown Candy, where Barb swears she could win the 5-malt challenge. Believe me, any of us Dulicks would like to try! We took John to lunch at Steak n Shake, and he distributed the clippings and articles he collects that he knows will be of interest to one or another of us. I also got to meet my newest little niece, Lara, daughter of Nancy Myia and her husband Geoff. But I still fell short. I could not connect with Bob; living on Social Security disability, he cannot even pay his phone. Ironically, I finally talked with him after I got back to Honduras. The Caller ID said I was calling from Louisiana.
Extending “family” a little, I was so fortunate to see Fr. Dick Dunphy, S.J., just diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. He’s opting out of “treatment,” but he is not sad, much less afraid. With the same luminous serenity that has blessed hundreds of retreatants over the years, he says, “Miguel, I am ready, for the Light.”
I also got to attend Teresa Jorgen’s nephew Bryan’s graduation from Lindbergh High School. The ceremony was at St. Louis U’s Chaifetz Center, where they even built a special ramp for Bryan’s wheelchair. That same weekend, I saw Bryan at Challenger Baseball, where he scored three runs with his patented “slide” into Home.
Former student Jennifer Pittman stepped out of FACEBOOK when she posted that she would be in St. Louis, taking a break from a high-tech consulting stint at Las Vegas, Nevada, hospitals, and could we get together? Class of 2000 at Parkway North, she had to represent all the wonderful students I have been reconnecting with till I come back in September, when I hope to see a lot more.
I got to pet the hand that feeds me when I showed up at The Beacon just to say hi, and they invited me to their staff meeting! There I could see live the fairness, excellence, and commitment that is on display in every edition.
Meanwhile, I started planning my return to St. Louis in September to coincide with the “Labor of Love” walk/run fundraiser for Micah House, a great place in Tegucigalpa that takes kids in off the streets and sponsors their education all the way to university, if they want to go that far. I have visited them a few times, but they have to move to a safer part of the city. Jeanette Sipp-White, who is fighting through the tangles of Honduran bureaucracy to adopt a child, is one of the main organizers. As a Spanish teacher at Parkway South High School, she has already done so much for “my” kids in Las Vegas, and always arranges for my talks to students at South. I already signed up online. Gonna get a free tee-shirt! It’s on Labor Day, see? So “Labor of Love.”
http://www.micah2point0.org/#/micah-20-events/labor-of-love-info?ref=em-A843hlZTfV5G
When Pastor Dennis Lindberg was at St. John’s Mercy on a death-watch following a heart attack, I swore to the family that I would visit him there, in the ICU, as soon as I could get to St. Louis. When a dozen little miracles gave him a chance for recovery, I swore I would visit him in his hospital room, which seemed to change every time his wife Jane posted on Caring Bridge. When he continued to improve, and they secured a place for him at a rehab out on Olive St. Rd., I googled a map so I could visit him there. But, heck, by the time I actually got to St. Louis, he was back home! So we had a wonderful dinner on the deck, all very low-cal, low-salt, low-fat, but still tasty, including strawberry shortcake, and Dennis never looked better!
Suddenly, Honduras jumped on my back when Gerardo (“Tato”) Barahona, 25, was murdered in San Pedro Sula. It was a robbery after dark, some depraved kid, high or drunk, armed with a broken bottle, gouged a hole in Gerardo’s leg despite the jeans he was wearing, ripping an artery. Gerardo, a husky guy, Army-trained, smart, handsome, a
supervisor at the local Russell Athletic plant, loving husband of Loyda and daddy of a two-year old, Tatito, a proud Las Vegas success story, was lost--he quickly bled to death. I think I read somewhere it only takes 6 pumps of the heart to shoot enough blood out of the body to kill you.
I last saw Gerardo when he came home for Holy Week. And now I shuddered to think of the screams in Las Vegas, where the biggest “news” lately had been a supposed face of Jesus miraculously “carved” into the trunk of a cedar tree near the cemetery. Gerardo’s mother Jacobina, crippled by a twisted leg, is Las Vegas’ go-to baker for the rolls and breads served with coffee at our communal grievings, and a horrible image popped into my mind, if Jacobina baked the breads for her own son’s funeral, poisoning any pleasure in her livelihood forever. But neighbors quickly intervened. Maricela, who lives nearby, assured me, “Miguel, it was never even a question, we did all the baking.”
When I finally got back to Honduras, I saw Jacobina’s ruined face; she was all but destroyed. Mothers--and fathers--who lose their sons, their children, are torn inside out by an unspeakable, unbearable grief, forever stamped in Picasso’s 1937 painting “Woman Weeping.” For the sorry task of emptying all of Gerardo’s stuff in San Pedro, they borrowed a truck and returned with a huge load, including a refrigerator, a washing machine, a bed, sofa, furniture, a ton of clothes. Gerardo had settled into a good life, never expecting a catastrophe. They all went, Jacobina, two other sons Noelvis and Felix, her daughter Nancy and Nancy’s husband Osman, plus her father, old Pedro, the fearless veteran of the fireworks that I talked about last month; a face of granite, but with this blow, water from the rock in unaccustomed tears; I had never before seen him even come close to crying; a man of deep faith his whole life, now his twisted expression seemed to say, helplessly, “Why?”
Management at Gerardo’s work took advantage of the family’s return to present them with a special memorial they had made, a photo of Gerardo framed with their signature shirt “QUALITY.” (In a short video of the funeral that someone showed me, I saw a similar shirt signed by Gerardo’s fellow workers, draping his casket.)
That gave me the idea to ask Chepito to do one of his drawings for Jacobina. He said he would, but after about a week passed, he gave up: “I don’t know what to draw.” Then I remembered that in St. Louis my sister Nancy had picked one of Chepito’s drawings, a heart with wings. So he did that, and he went one better; he also drew a gorgeous emblem of Gerardo’s favorite soccer team, Barcelona. The hardest part was to get Chepito to actually hand the drawings to Jacobina; I finally had to do it, the artist himself standing at the door. But Jacobina was not shy about her gratitude, and her face softened.
Gerardo is a perfect statistic for Honduras. One of the daily average of 17 violent deaths, up to 500 a month, most of the carnage a human sacrifice to the god of drugs, whose worship prostrates the youth--and other “hipsters”--of the United States. Honduras is just the mailbox, between Colombia, Venezuela, etc., and your local dealer. But it’s a pipeline full of blood. Some say legalize, legalize. Here, the corruption is so wide and deep that the same criminals would no doubt still have all the money even if the laws changed. And in the U.S., the “choom” train runs on tracks of corruption, too, filling for-profit jails with first offenders. Yet I guess I cannot call myself a Christian, or a believer, or even a person, if I do not have a hope of salvation for every human being. Like the father of the poor, bedeviled boy in the gospel, I cry, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!”
So, the other day, about four weeks after his death, I gathered a group of kids to visit Gerardo’s grave, where we said the Rosary. The load of flowers that had painted the mound of dirt with bright colors were all brown and brittle now, dust to dust.
But there is hope, as long as a baby gets born, or a birthday is celebrated. Maricela’s Helen turned 13, and her brother Felipe made his First Communion, so we combined the celebrations, and Carlota designed the perfect cake for it, a half and half. Santos, 38. and daughter Mirna, 14, share the same birthday, and for them Profe Flor whipped up one of her giant confections with barely a day’s notice. Cristian and Aurora had a baby girl that, after a week or so of debate, they named Yeimi Tatiana, the first so called, I’m sure, in these parts!
And, against all odds, I guess you could say, the parish celebrated its second annual Youth Day, in Victoria. A big crowd gathered to affirm our faith, beg for hope, and choose love.
Yet nothing gold can stay. So, while I was still working on this dreadful letter, this tiny child with a big name, Jeslyn Mercedes Dubon Ramirez, was born; she spent just one day with us and the rest in eternity. Her daddy Oscar with her little casket, the mother Deysi beside herself, we trudged up to the cemetery, past the mournful Jesus in the cedar tree, to console the family as well as we could with sheer numbers. “Mercedes,” of course, means ‘mercy,’ that--would to God!--tempers all our disputes and conflicts and empty longings.
I used to read a Shakespeare play every now and then; it’s been at least a couple years, so I thought I’d try his last one “Henry VIII,” returning to his salad days, when he cut his dramatic teeth on English history. Cardinal Woolsey, the villain of the piece, the very image of corruption, is laid low at last. Chastened and repentant, he seems to mouth Shakespeare’s own hard-won wisdom at the end of his career.
“Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition!
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee.
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in the right hand carry gentle peace
To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not.” (3.2.441-447)
Love, Miguel
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