written October 16, 2025

I was certain my Papi would die suddenly and tragically,at that.

His complex trauma, addictions and ancestral wounding moved him in ways where I was perpetually waiting for the call…

”we found your Father in an abandoned warehouse in Grand Rapids”
“under a bridge in Chicago”
“in a lake in Louisiana”
or yet, another version of heartbreak, ending up in a box somewhere as an “unclaimed” deceased person leaving us with a dreadful forever wonder. I didn’t ever think his death story would include being surrounded by all 4 of his daughters ritually uplifting him in love as he entered the death portal.
It’s been two months since he died (Aug. 4th - exactly 3years3months3weeks apart from my Mami’s death). I sit here in equal parts gratitude & how-the-fuck-did-we-all-consent-to-sending-him-off-despite-the-shit-he-put-us-through! And tbh, while I’m Earthside, I won’t ever know the full extent of the why’s and how’s we we’re emotionally able to show up for him these past 4 months, but we did - and on the days when I get really quiet, I can feel the enormity of the immense bloodline re-circuiting that’s happened/is happening in my cells from the work we put into his death rites. Despite us not being fully conscious of what the hell we just did for him/us/the children/our lineages - the ancestral completion cycles are deeply felt - and past/present/future timelines have all been impressed upon 🥁.
These days I sit deep in my griefwell, but I’m also experiencing an indescribable peace - exhaling a 44-years-long held breath🌬️.
The past 3 years have been nothing short of compounded stress, emotional upheaval and Divine ancestrally led miracles - from him going missing in Chicago in 2020 during a global pandemic, to finding him on his birthday in 2023 severely neglected in a nursing home on the Northside of Chicago, to being stone walled by Homeland Security for almost a year in effort to secure a copy of his Naturalization Certificate so that we could transfer him to Michigan, to finally transferring him to a nursing facility in Holland, Michigan where he’d be the most present he’s EVER been in my life for exactly 4 months before dying.
Facts. My Papi caused a lot of harm to people known and unknown. Especially to my Mom, my sisters and me. I will not excuse him for that, nor will I air out all the details of his “demons” - I’ll let him continue transmuting the density of them on his travels 🕊️.
But I will acknowledge how he was riddled with debilitating effects of colonization, supremacy culture, internalized oppression, toxic masculinity, unexpressed/unprocessed grief, ancestral curses, addictions and mental illness. Many of us recognize how all of these things compound and shape a person (communities/cultures, for that matter), leaving behind a trail of destruction, craters of pain and calcified hearts. The lasting impact of this devastates

Upon immigrating to Chicago from Peru at 18 years of age, he tried to contort himself into the boxes America the Great fooled him into believing he needed to be in order to “fit in” “blend”. He spent most of his life searching for meaning, belonging, love, acceptance and freedom. Running a continuous cycle of capitulate-resist capitulate-resist until his last earthly breath. He was a man of the streets, mostly the streets of Chicago. He knew how to play the system - landing himself in jail just before the freezing cold temperatures arrived. That’s about when he’d start calling again, which would then signal to my brain “ you have a Father and he’s still alive”. My little Rebecca heart would open up hoping he’d finally find and stay on the healing path, but only to close off again when he’d disappear. I got to a place where it was easier to wish him dead than to let him back into my heart.

One could look at his life story as pitiful, sorrowful even, cuz I surely did - so much so, that I erased him from my daily thought cycle. It was too painful to let him back into my heart each time he returned from the underworld. He was estranged for most of my life, in and out of religious treatments centers, incarceration, unhoused shelters - roaming the streets. I grew up asking “why can’t he just stop doing x y z and be a present Father?”, “why is he choosing to live a life like this?”, “why is God doing this to him?” Oooooofffff😮‍💨!

I’ve spent years in 12-step programs, therapy, decolonizing spaces & healing circles untangling the mess and scooping out the ferment. Searching for understanding & serenity - piecing myself back together.

My beliefs and inner knowing about his life path & Soul contract are much different now. But it was the death of my Mom, in 2022, that was catalyzing compass I needed to really SEE 👁️ what the assignment has always been.