She never spoke badly of them.
That impressed me.
She would only say,
“A mother never stops being a mother, even when her children forget how to be children.”
One day I found, in a half-closed drawer, several old letters returned by the mail.
All addressed to the same place in Monterrey.
All with the same last name.
None opened.
I said nothing.
Neither did she.
But that night, for the first time, when I was leaving, she asked,
“Could you come back tomorrow?”
I did.
And the next day as well.
Her health began to worsen quickly.
She could hardly get up by herself.
Her breathing came in small, struggling efforts.
One morning the doctor at the community clinic pulled me aside and told me bluntly,
“She’s very weak. I don’t think she has much time left.”
That afternoon, leaving the clinic, I helped her slowly into a taxi. Doña Carmen stayed quiet, looking out the window as if she were seeing a city that no longer belonged to her.
Before getting out in front of her house, she said,
“Diego… when I die, don’t let them throw away my things without checking the wardrobe.”
I felt a blow in my chest.
“Don’t say that.”
“Promise me.”
That word again.
And again, I nodded.
The last two weeks were very hard.
She could hardly eat anything.
I moistened her lips with water.
I tucked in her blankets.
I read newspaper headlines out loud so she could feel that the world was still entering through her door.
One night she grabbed my wrist with a strength I didn’t know she still had.
