Un Mundo
Every life is a world of its own.
When someone dies, the world they carried within also dies.
Yesterday, February 2, 2025, my beloved Tío Edmundo left this world.
He was 86-years-old and will be missed by many.
My Tío was also my Padrino (Godfather), a role he took very seriously.
He cared for me and loved me deeply.
When I look back at my life, he is a fixture in it.
And now he is gone and today marks the beginning of my life and the world without my Tío’s physical presence.
Years ago, when my husband came into my life and had met my extended family, he could not hear the “Ed” in my Tío’s name and renamed him, “Tío Mundo,” which means “Uncle World.” The name stuck.
Now that my Tío is gone, his nickname feels even more significant.
Every life is a world of its own and the world my Tío carried is now gone.
It is now up to us — the living — to keep his memory and his essence alive.
My Tío died just days before another trip around the sun for me.
As has been the case for me with my father’s death date (11/29) and my son’s birthday (12/1), I will now always remember losing my Tío so close to my birthday.
As hard as it is to reconcile such vastly different emotions, I have come to learn that it is that reconciliation that is the nature of being alive.
No life is void of pain and no life is void of joy.
In the last conversation my Tío and I had, just before the holidays, we talked quite a bit about my 14-year-old son and his high school applications.
In the conversation I told my Tío how beautiful, wonderful, frightening and overwhelming it is to let go of my son. I told him that as much as I intellectually know he is ready for more independence, it is still hard because he is my heart beating outside of my body.
My Tío concurred that this is the truest challenge of being a parent but that he felt confident in the job my husband and I are doing and he is impressed with who my son already is. I remember him saying he thinks more than one high school will want my son.
It now saddens me that he will never know what high school my son will attend, but I will cherish that conversation for the rest of my life.
I will cherish having had my Tío Mundo for almost 47 years.
All of us who knew and loved him now carry his light and his memory will forever be a blessing.
