Hope

In Puerto Rico there is a legend that, before a person dies, there is a huge moth, with the face of a skull, that visits the house of the dying to announce the impending end.

The remarkable moth in the picture above showed up at our house a few days before my father's death and disappeared shortly afterward. The first night it was on the back porch but it spent most of its time in the front porch, arranging itself at one point on our small gargoyle, which is meant to protect us from evil.

Today is two weeks since my father went to el otro lado de las cosas, as he liked to say. We had a nice memorial service here at my small college on the hill, attended by my good friends and colleagues and some of my former students, and then my husband and I traveled to Puerto Rico where my family held a memorial mass in my father's honor last Monday.

The void my father leaves nothing will ever fill. But life does go on and we're hoping to make the most of what remains of the summer. In my huerto, which I have long neglected because of more pressing obligations, the cherry tomatoes are beginning to redden and my sweet peppers are getting bigger by the day. The lettuce is going wild but the onions, the strawberries and the watermelon have been a bust.

I guess that's what they say about life, that there's always una de cal y otra de arena.

This has been a very hard half of the year so far. Here's to hoping that the second half will be about practicing resurrection.