Death In The Family - Dealing With Loss When You’re An Expat

When I was five, I left two important people behind in Argentina, and I spent most of my childhood imagining the day that I would see them again. I got my wish, but it wasn't exactly what I had expected. 

My uncle and I

My grandmother

Today I visited the cemetery where my grandmother and uncle were buried. My grandmother died in 2000 of natural causes, and my uncle died in 2004 in a tragic bus accident at the age of 43. But before I tell you what happened next, let me give you a little history first. 

When I was five, my mom and I went to live with my grandmother and uncle for what would have been my final year in Argentina, before moving to the United States. During that year I bonded with my grandmother and my uncle (who had been like a second dad to me during that year). I had to say goodbye to my grandmother at her home in Cordoba because she wasn't feeling well and the ride to the airport would have been too much for her. Then my mom, uncle and I traveled to the Cordoba airport. The last memory I have of him was a silhouette waving at me from inside the airport as I looked out of the airplane window. I promised myself that I’d find a way to see him, and my grandmother again, but that promise never came. 

Back in the States, I’d encountered people whom I came to consider family. However they weren't blood relatives and one silly argument was all it took for them to throw it in my face how much I wasn’t a part of their family. 

This was different.  

These two corpses lying six feet underground, were my true family, but they’re gone now. Somehow this made my return to Argentina a little more difficult to handle, but what’s worse is, my parents didn't seem to care. When I turned to them for comfort, my mother said that she finds burials offensive and that she didn't want to end up in a cemetery when her time came. My father provided no emotional support, though he never has and suspect that he never will.

He said: “Once they’re dead there’s nothing left. The dead don’t grieve, or feel sadness, or happiness, nor do they suffer. Funerals and gravestones are for the living, who out of guilt, tend to the graves to make up for the lack of attention they gave to them in life.”  

The odd thing was that these graves were poorly attended to which means no one has visited them in years. 

So there I was, a grieving grandson and nephew, who kept his promise to return to them, but I couldn’t beat two predators: time and death.