This country, once the backdrop of my childhood, has now become the place where I came to gather what was left of my father. On the first night here, after dinner, our cousin handed us the box holding his ashes. No ceremony. No words. Just the quiet thud of finality. The kind of silence that carries more weight than any speech could.
Seven months have passed since he died. Seven months of navigating the raw, unpredictable terrain of grief. I have cried in airports and at banks, laughed at old stories, and sat in silence with people who did not have the language or the willingness to meet the pain honestly.
I called one of his sisters to come say goodbye to him. Watching her, I saw our father in her—the tilt of her head, her stillness, her presence. We did not say much. We just let the grief sit with us, and for once, that was enough.
But grief was only one part of this trip. I have also been grieving the living—letting go of my ex-fiancé in the quiet way that real heartbreak often happens. Not with fireworks, but with the slow realization that the story we wrote together is over. There were no dramatic endings, just truth showing up again and again, until I could not ignore it anymore.
As if that were not enough, my body joined the grieving too. My period arrived like clockwork, layering physical pain on top of emotional exhaustion. It felt like everything—my body, my heart, my soul—was purging at once.
And while I walked through these losses, I saw clearly what I could no longer unsee: who shows up and who simply does not. What family really means. Which friends hold space without needing explanations. And which people wear the title of family but do not carry the spirit of it.
Even some of the people my father loved most failed him. That realization is still sitting heavy with me, but I know it is not mine to carry forever. What is mine is the truth. The closure. The right to remember him with clarity—and on my terms.
We have spent days closing his accounts, visiting properties, meeting with lawyers, making decisions. But beneath all the logistics has been something deeper—my own reckoning with legacy, loss, and liberation.
I came here to pick up ashes, but I am leaving with something more:
A clearer understanding of what love looks like when it is real.
A deeper trust in myself.
And a fierce commitment to honor my father in ways that no paperwork ever could.
Tomorrow I board a plane. I will carry my dad’s ashes with me, but more than that, I will carry his stories, his mistakes, his dreams, and the unspoken love between us. I will carry the tears I shed, the boundaries I strengthened, the healing I began.
I am not leaving empty. I am leaving full of truth.
For my father, José Ricardo Serra —
May the parts of you that live in me continue forward with dignity and fire.
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