Ashes.

How often do we truly grasp the fragility of life? Its breathtaking yet cruel way of dissolving in an instant—vanishing before we can even comprehend it. Life, as delicate as a child's bubble, floats freely into the unknown, carried by the wind until, without warning, it bursts—leaving no trace of its existence.

And yet, we live as if it's a fire that will never dim, as if the embers will never fade to ashes. How do we make peace with the reality that our loved ones—or even ourselves—can be here, warm and present, only to slip away the moment we turn our heads?

Since my dad's passing, I've been trying to understand it—to find meaning in it—without letting myself drown in the deep sea of grief it carries. There have been moments when the weight of giving up knocked at my door, pressing against it with a force I wasn’t sure I could resist. But with everything in me, I’ve held it shut, refusing to let it seep in and ruin the present. And more often than not, I’ve managed to keep it at bay.

But life has its own way of testing you. It always finds another door to knock on, another fire to set ablaze. Is it a test? A trial by flame to see if we can endure? Or is it the universe’s way of asking—do you truly deserve to keep living?

Now, the fire burns again—this time, it’s my grandfather.

And I can’t help but wonder:
Does life ever stop asking for proof?
Proof that we are strong enough, proof that we can withstand loss without crumbling, proof that we deserve the time we are given?
Is every loss just another silent reminder that we are next?
That at any moment, we too could dissolve into the air, reduced to nothing but memories and dust?

Or is there something more to all of this? Some meaning hidden beneath the ashes?
And if there is, why does it only seem to reveal itself in the aftermath—when the fire has already taken what it came for?

DAD

I think about him every day. Some days, it’s in the quiet moments—when the world slows down just enough for memories to surface. Other times, he appears in the in-between spaces of my mind, uninvited yet never unwelcome, as if reminding me that he is not gone, just somewhere I can’t yet reach.

I remember the nights I went out partying with friends, how he always said, "If you need me to pick you up, just call." And though I often didn’t—choosing not to wake him—he still woke up every single time. Without fail, in the middle of the night, he would turn to my mom and whisper, "Did the kid get home?" She would answer, "Not yet." And he would close his eyes again, waiting, trusting that soon, I would get home safe.

The nights I did call, he never hesitated. He would throw on his clothes, step into the night, and drive to wherever it was to gather me and my friends—some of whom were so drunk they couldn’t string a sentence together, sometimes me as well. And yet, he always laughed. No judgment. No lectures. No looks of disappointment. Just a father doing what fathers do. And in the early hours of the morning, while the rest of the world slept off the night before, there he was—showered, dressed, heading out to buy fresh bread for breakfast.

He carried life that way: with grace, with patience, with an unshakable ability to move forward.

My parents never spoke about politics at home—not until I was well into my twenties. They stood on opposite sides of that line, yet they had chosen early on to keep those battles outside our walls. They didn’t want us shaped by their arguments or forced into inherited beliefs. Choose for yourself, they said, choose the path that feels right to you.

And so, for most of my life, I never understood why my father would flinch awake when I kissed his forehead after coming home late. The sudden jolt in his body, the way his eyes widened in momentary fear before he registered that it was just me. "Hey, it's me, I'm home," I’d whisper before heading to bed. I didn’t think much of it at that time.

Until one day, I had to learn the hard and honest truth.

My dad was a political detainee during the coup in Chile. Taken, beaten, held captive in a stadium where fear had a voice and pain had no escape. He was young, hopeful, just trying to become a professional—until that day stole it all away. His ribs were broken, his face unrecognizable, his mind forever altered. He had seen things no human should ever see. People dragged into the shadows, people who never came back.

He lost everything. His future, his home, his country. He fled to Brazil with nothing but a scarred body and the remnants of a life that no longer belonged to him. He spent five years in exile, building something out of nothing, trying to find a way back to the person he once was.

And yet—despite all of it—I never once saw hatred in his eyes.
Not toward those who had wronged him.
Not toward those who stood on the opposite side of his beliefs.
Not toward the life that had taken so much from him.

He never spoke with bitterness, never used his suffering as a weapon. He simply chose to keep living.

He found love. He built a family. He gave my brother and me a life where we could be anything we wanted to be. And he never once let the weight of the past crush the foundation of the present.

And then, just like that—it was over.

Now, his story lives in fragments. Ashes of memories scattered in the corners of my mind, slipping through my fingers every time I try to hold them all at once.

It’s strange how time works—how it can take a man, a life, decades of laughter, sacrifice, and resilience and condense it all into a single month of decline.

Thirty-eight years of stories between us, erased by fleeting weeks that had no mercy.

TATA

My grandfather’s story is nothing like my father’s—not as cruel, not as tragic. His was a story woven with love, though wrapped in rough edges, delivered through knuckles on the head, playful shoves, and dumb, silly jokes. The kind of love that wasn’t spoken, only felt—the kind built from old ways and hardened hands.

When my parents were still fighting for stability, my brother and I lived under the warmth of my grandparents’ roof. Summers stretched long and endless, filled with scraped knees, laughter that echoed through the neighborhood, and nights where our bodies collapsed into sleep before we could even say goodnight. My parents would check in every day before returning to their own battlefield, fighting to give us the life they never had.

And then there were the mornings.

For years, my grandfather woke up before the sun, ready to take me to school. He had a school bus, the same route, the same kids, the same streets, and always—the same music. Ricardo Arjona, Alejandro Sanz, Andrea Bocelli, Pimpinela. Day after day, two times a day, the soundtrack of my childhood, looping endlessly. Maybe that’s why I can’t stand those songs now. They were once just melodies, but now they feel like ghosts—pulling me back into a bus seat, to a time that no longer exists, to a person who is slipping away.

And then, suddenly, time caught up with him.

About a couple months ago, he stopped eating. Stopped drinking water. His skin lost its color, his body shrinking into something unrecognizable. His mind, once sharp, started unraveling at the seams. He would rise from his chair, walk aimlessly through the house, then return to sit—only to rise again, as if he had already forgotten that he just stood up.

Maybe that’s what time does. It doesn’t just take people—it makes them forget they ever lived before it finally takes them away.

At first, we told ourselves it was just age. That his body was simply growing tired, that his mind was only drifting as old minds sometimes do. But then, the house—the very place that had always held him—began to reject him. The walks became shorter, the silences longer. He no longer remembered if he had eaten, but even when we reminded him, he refused food. Water became an afterthought.

One evening, he sat in his chair, staring at nothing, his body so thin it looked like the fabric of his clothes was the only thing holding him together. That was the moment we knew—this wasn’t something that would pass.

The next day, he was in a hospital bed.

I had been putting off visiting him. Life kept me busy, or at least that’s the excuse I tell myself. But about two weeks ago, I finally went—I took my grandmother to see him.

And there he was.

Lying in a bed, wrapped in tubes and wires, tangled like the cords behind an old television set. His body, once strong, reduced to something so small, so fragile. His eyes lit up when he saw me—wide, joyful, as if for a moment, the years and pain disappeared. And then, just as quickly, his face collapsed, his eyes fluttering shut—not out of sleep, but out of exhaustion. Out of pain. Out of a body that no longer had the strength to hold itself up.

I stood there, frozen.

In just a few weeks, the man I knew had unraveled before my eyes.

The rough hands that once ruffled my hair, the voice that once filled the morning bus rides, the presence that once felt unmovable—all of it, fading. I wanted to reach for something, to hold onto a version of him that no longer existed.

But how do you hold onto someone who is already slipping through your fingers?

HOW HEAVY IS TIME?

But grief is a strange thing.

For a while, it feels like we exist in two timelines—one where they are still here, and another where they are already gone. We linger in that space, uncertain of how to move forward. Do we simply endure, letting time wear us down until memory is all that remains? Or do we learn how to carry it, to exist not just in survival, but in presence?

Because life doesn’t wait for us to be ready. It keeps moving, whether we are paying attention or not.

So, how do we continue?

Do we let the weight of loss dictate our days, moving on autopilot, barely aware of the moments passing us by? Or do we choose to be present—not just existing, but truly living?

Maybe the answer isn’t about forgetting or even about moving on. Maybe it’s about learning to exist with everything that has shaped us—the love, the loss, the time that we had, and the time that we still have.

Maybe it’s about waking up with purpose, answering when we are called, showing up for the people who are still here. Because time is both ruthless and generous—it takes, but it also gives.

Maybe we don’t need to have all the answers. Maybe all we need to do is pay attention.

Because if there’s one thing we know for certain, it’s this: life is fragile. And that’s exactly why we must live it fully.

FROM ASHES, WE GROW

But how do we honor those who came before us? How do we make sure their stories don’t disappear, reduced to nothing but dust carried by the wind?

Maybe we start by realizing that memories are not just echoes of the past—they are seeds for the future.

Fire consumes. It destroys. Like a wildfire, it leaves behind nothing but blackened remains—weightless fragments of what once was. But fire is also a beginning. Ashes sink into the earth, feeding the soil, making way for something new to grow.

Maybe we carry their lessons not as burdens, but as roots.
Maybe we let their love take shape in the way we love others.
Maybe the patience they taught us, the resilience they showed us, the laughter they left behind—maybe all of it becomes the foundation upon which we build.

We are not just what we’ve lost.
We are what we do with what remains.

Maybe honoring them means being fully here. Not watching life from a distance, not letting time slip through our hands unnoticed, not letting our days become a collection of routines we sleepwalk through.
Maybe it means waking up—truly waking up—and making sure that the life we live is one they would be proud of.

But what if loss itself is also a message?
A missing spark meant to ignite something we had let burn too low?
What if grief is not just an emptiness, but a fire—a divine whisper from the universe, or whatever force you believe in, shaking us awake?

What if, all this time, we had been looking at loss as an ending, when in reality, it was a door? A final gift. A sign to step forward, to build, to rebuild, to finally understand what we were always meant to become.

What if everything we’ve been through—every loss, every change, every unanswered question—was not a mistake, but a piece of the puzzle we didn’t yet know where to place?
And what if now, after everything, we finally see where it fits?

Because ashes are not just remnants of what once was. They are proof that something burned bright enough to change the world around it. And from them, if we choose, something new can rise.

And maybe that’s the lesson—the one hidden in loss, in fire, in time itself. That life is fragile, fleeting, unpredictable. But that’s exactly why we must live it fully.

Because the present—the now—is more than just time passing.

It is a gift—buried in the ashes, waiting for us to dig deep enough to find it.