Yadira is not there. I look for his new entries on the Facebook wall, which has been silent for several days. Every morning, your posts made my day. He mostly published poems by others. Also, sharp, lucid observations, committed to the best ideas and the noblest feelings.
had taken over a hashtag that I now see multiplying on the networks, among his real and virtual acquaintances: #pleaseleapoesia. It is not a command, but a request. I know he won’t be there anymore. But I refuse to believe it.
On Sunday, January 4, her warrior’s heart stopped. He fought until the last minute. She was stoic, brave. When we exchanged greetings, he never spoke to me about his pain, even though he knew that I knew, since I witnessed the first symptoms of the disease.
From Mexico, to decorate his mornings of aggressive treatments as much as possible, he sent Y—that’s what he called her—photos of bouquets of flowers he took in the markets, and asked her to choose one. It was a game between us. He told me he preferred the wild ones. Then I began to photograph for her the humble flowers of the streets, those that were born, against all odds, in the cracks of the sidewalks, those that looked out of windows and balconies to get a little of the air and sunlight that they were denied, those of the few barren lots. Flowers that, like her, insisted on being.
Yadira Álvarez Betancourt (Yadira Albet, for the networks) was born in Havana in 1980. She was a pedagogue, science fiction narrator and chronicler. He cultivated this last facet in alternative media until he was prohibited from continuing to do so. His chronicles and articles, carefully argued, were elegant and truthful, and contributed to forming a close and plural vision of our complex day-to-day life.
When she learned that she had the terrible disease, she began to publish a blog that she called “Diary of a Race,” and that she dedicated to some of the women in her family who did not reach the finish line: she ran with them, for them, to break the chain of tragic events. This is how he saw his battle, as a competition against Patricia, as he named adversity, his contender, a fight for life or death (sic).
At the time the pernicious cough began, he had found a new love and was beginning a job with young artists. His partner stayed by his side every minute during the chemo sessions, and in the rare intervals of calm. At least, in this section, the gratifying feeling of knowing she was loved did not elude her.
I have asked your partner’s permission to share some diary entries. I would have liked to publish them all. If they were collected in one volume, I would provide myself as editor ad honorem. He would ensure that every word, every punctuation mark was in its place, and that it was a beautiful book, like his life was, like the memory he leaves us.
And do you hear me? A week without you is a long time. “I do not forgive death in love, / I do not forgive inattentive life, I do not forgive the earth or nothing.”
The air, the light
April 25, 2025
A few days ago I had to leave the hospital to have an exam at another institution. I had been indoors for almost a week and, just in case, they took me in a wheelchair, although I can walk.
The air… how special the air, the glow, the noise. When we have them we take many things for granted. We realize their value by losing them, even temporarily.
When we were on scholarship, we discovered that the street was wonderful, but it could only be enjoyed every two weeks. With the quarantine we discovered that we missed a lot of people and we couldn’t see them. If we get wild indigestion we understand that mangoes are the tastiest thing in the world, but we can’t touch them. In the end. Realizing that everything taken for granted and certain could suddenly be out of your reach… and you long for it.
Everything “given”, a multitude of gifts. Some very simple, others not so much.
The sun, the people, walking around, seeing the Malecón, and at night being able to sleep without tilting the bed (I’ve been sleeping sitting up for almost two months). In twenty minutes of medical management I became drunk with light.
Gifts we take for granted. Why wait until you lose them to know what they are worth? You don’t want to sound like coaching emotional, with its toxic positivity, yet falls into the truism that life is precious, even in its tiniest, most basic events.
Go for a walk or sit in a comfortable, safe place and take a deep breath. Listen to music, sing, dance without grace or with grace.
Do not take life and any of its gifts for granted: gifts are to be used, shared, loved, with enthusiasm and gratitude, even if they are small.
In the country of disease
May 7, 2025
Small scenes that I can’t capture in photos but I can capture them in words.
About twenty years ago in the Juan Manuel Márquez oncology ward, a child was lying down, with a tense expression, opening and closing his hand on the venous line. “That medicine burns a lot when it happens,” says the mother. The child’s lips move and I read in them fifteen, sixteen, seventeen… Pain, strength.
A few days ago, a father was playing chess with his son, beating him with an advantage and then calling the nurse: “Sir, I’m out of the IV, can you change it for me, please?”… Fun, tranquility, peace.
A few hours ago, my roommate, who has minimal fuzz on her head, carefully brushed and perfumed herself after bathing… Hope, flirtatiousness, serenity.
Yesterday, also my roommate, laughing outrageously at a joke and her mother scolding her: “Oh, let her laugh however she wants, girl, she feels good now, let her laugh,” says the nurse… Joy, relief, joy.
A week ago, my previous roommate’s companion, brandishing a coffee pot, said, “Do you want me to add a little bit of coffee to the white milk you’re drinking? No? Well, I’m going to take it to the nurses,” and she left after blowing me an air kiss… Generosity, affection, company.
Right now, by the window: “I really want to eat a mango,” says the daughter. “I’ll go down now and see if I can find any there,” the mother responds and touches the girl’s forehead: the fever is rising again… Longing, worry, love.
We temporarily inhabit the country of illness and to it we bring everything that makes us human.
Diary of a career
September 23, 2025
From one of these windows, perhaps this very one, Yamila said goodbye to me. Next to that black Chevrolet with a gray roof I can imagine a little Pole that at that time still had the Polish orange color that everyone used to arrive in Cuba. I had to stay below because children are prohibited from accessing adult hospitals and in 1986 there were no possible exceptions or indiscipline in that.
My dad went up to see it first. Then my mom stayed that night, like almost every night. I was sitting on the hood, my weight was so light that it did not deform it.
When my dad came down he told me to look at a window. Two people looked out against the light and began to say goodbye.
I had a little wind-up doll that crawled. There were two of them: one dressed in pink and the other blue. The blue one was Yamila’s, but that day I was with that one, I didn’t play with the other one again. I reached out with the doll and shook it, then I started crying, shaking the doll back and forth until the little people in the distance moved away from the light.
I didn’t know anything. I didn’t suspect anything. I didn’t even know what cancer was, let alone lymphoma. But I cried, who knows what I was feeling. We forget those things. It was the last time I saw Yamila, far away and like a tiny shadow saying goodbye. The next day they took me to Bauta, to the house of a friendly family, and I stayed there until everything was over.
Yamila, great-grandmother Nena and the great-great-grandmother whose name we never knew, only that she fell in love with a Chinese emperor and started our family line, did not manage to reach the goal of their career.
I run for the three of them, and although I don’t believe in another world or another life after death, I like to think that they look at me, that the things I tell myself to cheer myself up come from them, that the strength and humor I have are an inheritance from Yamila, Nena and who I call Grandma China.
It’s been a tough race. My body is suffering and Patricia is a fierce opponent for my docs. It has been reduced and apparently has not managed to colonize areas far from the mediastinum, but it still insists on building towers of its Gothic castle as seen in the new growth of the subclavicular region, smaller than the first. It’s still dangerous.
But I run faster than she builds. I beat him or I beat him, and we will be four women from the same family who will win.
From floor 12A, bed 20, of Amejeiras Hospital, Year of Low Quality Dystopia.
The four fears
October 20, 2025
A while without coming here. The marathon has left the track and has become a cross-country race. I thought it would be, not easy, but not that difficult either. Ilusa me: I have never done anything easy in my life, why would this be any different? With me everything is epic, dramatic, complicated.
Patricia is chemoresistant and also lives in strange and dangerous places. One part will have to be radiated and the other will have to see what is done to it, there are options, and in any case this is not over until it is over.
Getting into those mountains full of mud and leaves has given me time to analyze my fears, a useful exercise if you want to know them and not be a slave to them. This is how I discovered how many there are and what faces they have, peering into the abyss.
The first fear, common to everyone and that so many confuse with the fear of dying, is the fear of how to die.
Dying is natural. As long as it is not an accident or violence, unfair ways of dying, or negligence and abandonment, sad, unnecessary ways, it is as natural as being born, like giving birth. Due to old age or illness, the body malfunctions and shuts down, and we are gone. Ants, trees, elephants, whales, cats, people, we’re leaving.
That’s not my fear, it’s the how. I’m afraid of how it hurts, of lack of air, of anxiety, of loneliness, of the merciless nature of traffic.
The second fear is terrifying, a spiritual fear: that of the people he loves. You fear what will happen to others if you leave. Will your family and loves be able to bear the grief? Won’t you become a chronic, disabling wound, a sticky ghost that won’t let anyone be happy, an incurable disease? Won’t your friends have longings that make them sad when they think of you? Will they be protected without you? It is a tremendous fear: not wanting to be a reason for unhappiness or helplessness for those who love you, even momentarily.
The third fear is that of not fulfilling your purposes. All the untold stories, the unrealized dreams, the unrealized knowledge, the undone things. From the most sublime to questions as pedestrian as whether you should buy cat food. The eternal “no, I need more time, I have a lot to do, only I can do it!”
And the fourth fear, the most selfish of all: that of not having told everyone what you wanted to say. Not having told some that you loved them and that you supported them, others how grateful you are, even others who, definitely, did not deserve your forgiveness (because forgiveness is not obligatory and some are looking for a hard time).
Looking into that abyss I see my fears and I conjure them. I run feeling their weight on my back, but they don’t stop me because I know who they are and how to face them. There are others typical of the race: the pain in the veins, the bad taste in the mouth, the vomiting, the coughing spells, the boredom and prison feeling of the chemo, the bad news, but those are small scars.
I run, with fear in my luggage but without being its slave, without stopping.
