Aroldo

Continuing with my theme of how the supernatural has always been a part of my life, here is the second of a blog series for October.

May 10, 2018.

Aroldo comes to visit me. It is 10pm at night, and he arrives on the blue and black sleek motorcycle that means more to him than life. It roars into my yard like a sotrm. Aroldo is distraught. I have not seen him in some 6 months. He has black hair, a broad but fit torso, a piercing gaze, and literally the most beautiful voice I have ever heard.

“I need you,” he says to me. “I cannot get out of this depression, and I need a reason to keep living. I need you to come back tome.” He sits at my kitchen table, hands shaking. I have known him for two years; as a fellow poet, lover, and friend; long enough to know this talented man has demons he cannot overcome.

“I am sorry. David and I got back together last month,” I tell him, “And I want to focus there. I really cannot help you in the way you are thinking.” Open relationships are tricky, and ever-changing, and we had entered a stage where ours needed us both to focus.

“I want to marry you,” Aroldo says. I sit in stunned silence. I really care about this man, but there is a reason we had been no more than friends for over a year. He continues, “I think you could teach me how to live again.”

“Aroldo, you and barely know each other,” I start cautiously. He and I continue back and forth for some two hours. He starts to tell me of his nightmares of blackness, of his fear of dying alone. He is some 12 years younger than me, and has told me, he always regretted focusing more on developing his career than on learning to build relationships. He says now, he is under tremendous pressure from his family. He says, he has had these horrible nightmares. He points outside in the blackness, at his racing bike.

“I had her at 100 miles per hour last week, on the mountain passes. It did not feel fast enough.” He starts speaking quietly, stops, thinks for a minute, then continues, “I do think I have much longer on this earth.”

I offer to work with him. I can teach him some exercises for reconnecting to the soul when the body and mind feel lost. He vacillates between saying, he will consider it, and then saying, there is no reason to try. I do not know what else to say. I try to convince him to stay in the world. My words are not enough. He wants a promise for marriage, and I keep telling him, “I am back with David now, lo siento, lo siento.”

He starts crying and then pressuring me for sex. I deny him, and he gets more and more forceful. I am afraid as he starts laying hands on me, and I tell him, he has to leave. We start shouting at each other. I end up finally shoving him out the door and closing it on him. I call my dogs into the house through the back door.

I had seen his extreme mood swings and deep depression and had surmised his alcohol issues, but had never seen this side of him before. There was so much that did not add up, like him unfriending me on social media after we started dating during a time of separation with David. We had some of the most beautiful dates ever, waterfalls and forests and lightning bugs and long hours of poetry by candlelight. I fell in love with him, but realized, he had a dangerous edge and could not connect to me. I broke things off, and we continued poetry dates but not romantic ones.

It is several minutes before his bike roars away. I finally go to bed, troubled. That night, two things happen:

1)   1)   The septic system starts its two years of weekly, then daily, flooding and backing up into my living room

2)    2)  I have a very vivid dream where Aroldo visits me. We sit and talk for a while on a mountaintop. I do not remember all we talked about, but I do remember the last thing he says to me in the dream. “I have a long journey to make, dear friend.”

May 18, 2018

I am working in Quetzaltenango (Xela). I am in Café Barista, working on the thesis I never got published. I see a message on the group chat of our poetry group, Casa Los Altos. Aroldo was not a member, but he had been an invited guest at some of our events- where we had met.

“We are meeting at 5 pm tonight as a group to go to Aroldo’s viewing tonight.”

My blood runs cold. I almost faint. Nobody called me- nobody knew we were friends, let alone how close. That this man had shared so many of his dreams and hopes and fears with me. That I had shared my body with him. 

Our Maya intern Manuel is caring for the house and farm. He did not know Aroldo. I call him to tell him I will not be home tonight, and tell him why. He sends condolences, and then says, he will care for things at the farm.

Then it starts to rain. Apocalyptic rain. Rain like I had never seen before outside of a tropical storm. The entire city floods, the road to my house floods, the road to where Aroldo lives, floods. Nobody can get in or out. Manuel calls in a panic, asking how to deal with the flood waters rising at home.

When somebody dies in Guatemala, embalming services are not common. The body is dealt with the same day, friends and family and loved ones are called; there is a viewing in the home and the body is buried almost immediately. I never got to say goodbye. I rent a hotel room in Xela that night and recall feeling a coldness so intense my teeth are chattering and I can see my breath. I do not have a change of clothes, nothing. Social media posts start to explain how Aroldo had died. His motorcycle had collided with a pickup truck at high velocity near his home in San Cristobal.

I knew at once, it was not an accident.

The next day, I go home as early as I can. The road to my community is devastated and covered with landslide remnants, almost impassable. I get to the house, and Manuel is trying to empty 6 inches of mud and sewage water out of the first floor of my house. We set our backs into the work, barely speaking. A few hours later, he asks me, “the young man who died last night… did he by any chance know this house?”

I tell Manuel a little of the full story, and that yes, in fact, he had even just visited 10 days ago, talking about having premonitions of his death.

Manuel pauses, then says, “He came here last night, looking for you.” He explains that he fled the floodwaters, holed up in the guest room, and was preparing to sleep, when the room went ice cold and he could see his breath.

“A figure appeared before me, demanding to know who I was and why I was here. He was insistent that he needed to talk to you. He threatened me, and then, he left.”

Manuel goes home that day, shaken (he lives in Totonicapan, another department).

My friend Sara knew Aroldo, and she texts me. I am pretty sure she and Aroldo actually had a fling, but never asked- none of my business. “OMG!” her message starts, “Did you know Aroldo had a wife and kid in the capital, and a fiancé in Totonicapán?”

I recall sitting down with the wind knocked out of me. “What?” I text back, “He told me he was single, and had NEVER had anyone significant in his life.”

“He told me the same thing.”

I know I need to talk to David. I tell him the whole story, and he is stunned. We had agreed on an open relationship, but he never wanted to know any details. I tell him, “Please know, I never would have knowingly gotten involved like that had I known any of what he was hiding.”

Things got even weirder. David knew of at least one other woman Aroldo had had something with, another woman in our circle. And someone else in the capital. This man apparently had a triple life at best.

That night, I sleep in my own house, in my own bed. I have a waking dream where Aroldo visits me, angry and accusing me of causing his death. I am shaken to my core. When I get up, there is a line of wet human footprints across my floor.

Two nights later, he visits me a third time. This time in tears. We go back to the mountaintop where I had seen him a few weeks earlier. There is a meadow, a golden door. He asks me for two things: forgiveness, and a hand to hold when he enters that door. He says, “I think I can let go now.”

I tell him that I forgive him, and that I understand. That he is completely absolved in my book. I take his had and walk him to the door. He enters, and that is it.

I see him once again, a good year or so later, while doing a photo shoot at dusk for my friend Fidel. In the dim light, I can see a dim figure behind Fidel, in a red flannel shirt and jeans. It is Aroldo, grinning. Other than that, I never see him again, but am left with three big questions. One perplexes me; the other two haunt me.

One, how many visits did he have to make before that last one to the door?

Two, what more could or should I have done? I do change my way of dealing with people who are hurting at his level. I take no chances. I tell others, I build a network, and we check in on the person. every day.

Three, will I ever see him again? Will he be given another chance at a life that is kinder to him?

***
Since my experience with him, I have helped a number of people cross over- too many to be coincidence. Manuel has, too, although he is more a witness than a guide. My friend Adolfo, Luis, Ana María, the wife of a friend in the US. Recently, David´s mother visited me, saying she was starting to prepare. I apparently also helped heal a major medical issue that almost killed her and that she is now being treated for.

I wish sometimes I knew what I am supposed to do with these things, other than write about them. I wish we had spoken words of kindness in person that last time I saw him. If I had made love to him, would he still be here? So many regrets, so many unknowns. 

I still hear his gorgeous voice reading poetry to me on nights when I cannot sleep. 

 

 

Author's Note

this is a blog i am turning into a memoir