I’ve been dreaming of home since the day I arrived. Every night I’ll dream about my friends and family…one night I didn’t dream about my friends or family but instead of going Christmas shopping with Hulk Hogan and his wife. But on most nights, I dream of home. During the day, as I work, I’m thinking about what I’ll do when I’m back. Which people I’ll see, plans for the summer, starting college and all that jazz. Don’t get me wrong – I’m enjoying every day here in Ecuador. But it’s impossible for me not to miss home.
Last Thursday, I was working in the workshop when Wilo (Nicole’s husband, and one of the owners of UPDC) told me Nicole wanted to talk to me. Whenever I hear that someone “wants to talk to me” I assume I’m in trouble – but I’d done nothing wrong to my knowledge…so I was curious as to what Niki wanted to talk to me about. I walked into their house and asked her what was up. She told me that my dad had sent her a Facebook message. He does this quite often and its usually when he hasn’t heard from me in a while or needs to make sure I know something. In this case it was the second of these. My grandma had died. In fact she’d died on Monday, three days before.
I didn’t cry when she told me at first. It didn’t really feel real. Bu (what we call my grandma) had always seemed to defy the odds to me. She was living independently until she was 93. She had fallen several times, once she laid on her living room floor for 12 hours until help arrived. She’d beaten cancer. She lived well passed when people said she would die. A part of me believed she would never die. So I was shocked, extremely shocked when Nicole told me she’d passed away. I logged onto Facebook and found 8 messages. Two were messages from my parents and the rest from friends sending me their condolences. When I started reading the messages it all just kind of hit me. I would never see Bu again. I wouldn’t be with my family to say good-bye at her funeral. I wouldn’t be able to properly say adios to Bu. That’s when I started to cry, and that is when I really started to miss home.
Before I left for Ecuador, my mom and I made a decision that I wouldn’t come back if Bu died while I was gone. The money for a plane ticket would just be too much and it might not be easy but it’d probably be better if I just stayed in Ecuador. So I knew I wouldn’t be attending Bu’s funeral. However, yesterday, Nicole asked me to come talk with her again. She’d received another message from my dad. He’d looked into flights from Ecuador to the US and found that they weren’t super expensive. So he booked them. I’ll be flying to Chicago this Thursday and spending a week back home then returning to Ecuador. My dreams of reuniting with family and friends would come true a bit sooner that I’d expected. A strange set of events that still hasn’t quite set in. In 4 days I’ll be at my grandmother’s funeral. In 2 days I’ll be in the United States. And in 8 days I’ll be right back here in the rainforest. Weird.
EcuaCora 