My Time in Texas
I’m going to take some time to write a blog post about what it was like in Texas for a week. I would have included photos, but to be honest we didn’t take many and I’d really just like to keep those as something between me and my family — not something for the internet.
I would also like to say if any of this seems overly lighthearted given the context of our trip, that’s on purpose. I really don’t want to share the emotional moments because again, I want those to stay between me and my family. I’m going to try to put a positive spin on this, mainly to make this writing process easier.
This trip to Texas was the second time I’ve flown in my whole life, the first time being my previous trip to Texas two years ago. If I’ve learned anything from those trips, it is that I don’t like flying. Maybe it’s that we have to fly coach, but I hate the cramped seats for hours at a time, and I REALLY hate landing. Something about the descent always does weird things to my stomach, and that moment of impact when we hit the ground is so jarring that I always end up gripping the armrests with a death grip. I would much rather experience a takeoff than a landing.
We made it to Texas with 0 problems — which was a new experience for me because on our previous trip our initial flight got delayed by TWELVE HOURS. Anyway, this time nothing like that happened, and we managed to get to Texas by noon (mind you we had to get up at 4am to get to the airport and through security for our flight at 7am). We had a connecting flight in Dallas, but we landed in Austin by noon.
By the time we got our rental car and made it to our hotel to check in, we were all exhausted and needed to just take some time for a nap before we even thought about going to see anyone. Then when we woke up it took us a while to get in contact with our family, who were at another relative’s house an hour away. We decided to wait until the next day to see everyone, but we did stop in to see my uncle at his house. He has a kind-of man cave set up in a building outside, and his cat (named Grayson but affectionately nicknamed Special K after the $1000 surgery he needed several years ago) hangs out there with him in the evenings.
The next day was when I finally got to see my Abuelita again, along with many of my aunts. My dad has 5 siblings, 1 brother and 4 sisters. I should clarify that the Uncle I talked about in the previous paragraph is married to one of the 4 sisters, he is not biologically my dad’s brother.
This time seeing my family, I got to see a lot more of their religious traditions. Much of my family is Catholic — although I am not — so a lot of the mourning traditions were in place and I got to learn about it all. For one, my Abuelita and aunts wore black every single day we were there, and they didn’t listen to music or watch TV at all. The only time I saw Abuelita’s TV on was on Sunday for Mass because she hasn’t gone in-person since the pandemic started.
Additionally, the services were different than what my PA family would do. I already lost both grandparents on my mother’s side, and for both of those funerals things were very relaxed. People wore nice shirts (of any color) and jeans to the funeral, would tell as many funny stories from that person’s life as they could think of, and besides a few prayers there were never too many religious traditions.
In Texas, with my Catholic family, it was incredibly different because they held a Rosary ceremony instead of a viewing. My mother and I, as well as other family members who aren’t Catholic, attended the Rosary but mostly just sat respectfully because there was a lot of praying we couldn’t keep up with. For my mother she had no idea what was going on for most of it because it all happened in Spanish, which she doesn’t know. I could at least understand the words, but I didn’t know the prayers beforehand. For anyone who doesn’t know, a Rosary ceremony is when they say a prayer for every bead on the Rosary — and it takes quite a while.
For my Abuelito, there wasn’t an official funeral the following day, but a Mass instead. My family had decided to have him cremated rather than buried, so there was no burial service to attend, just the Mass (also in Spanish), and then we all met up at my Abuelita’s house.
Over the days of this trip, I also got to meet more family members I’d never met before. For one, I met another one of my cousins who I’d never met, as well as three of my great-aunts and some of my dad’s cousins. I was especially happy to meet my great-aunts because they were my Abuelito’s sisters, and some of the sweetest women I’d ever met.
They were so happy to meet my mother and I, and when I spoke to my Abuelita in Spanish (which I do rather slowly and poorly), they were so delighted to hear any of their native language that they got so proud of me. They both spoke English pretty well, and they talked to my mother in a mixture of both languages about their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, and they were just so pleased the whole time. That first night we met them, one held my mom’s face in her hands and exclaimed, “I love you I love you!” while the other looked at us and said, “Mi bonita familia, my beautiful family.”
When I had to say goodbye to them at the end of the trip, they were both so thrilled to hear me say I love you to them in Spanish, and that made me so happy too. Afterwards, they told my father that he’s already stolen their hearts when he was a little boy, but meeting me and my mother stole their hearts all over again.
The circumstances were not what I wanted by any means, but I found some solace in the fact that I got to see my family once again. Losing my Abuelito was incredibly hard, and it still is, especially when I had expected many more years with him. I never even imagined a world where he wouldn’t be there at my wedding. I miss him a lot, and I miss the rest of my family.
