When Death Follows You to Paradise (And You Write Anyway)
A DISPATCH FROM THE UNDERWORLD
by Mandy Trichell
I am an apparition of myself as I navigate the narrow, cobblestone streets and the ever narrower flagstone sidewalks of San Miguel de Allende. I’ve traded in my signature crop top and joggers for flowy, monotoned mumus. I bought one in purple because I love purple, but I felt like Grimace when I tried it on. So, I’m wearing the gray one, layered underneath a shorter, slate blue piece.
I blend in with the sidewalk. If I were to lie down, I’d disappear into it, but as I walk, I clash with the vivid beauty surrounding us. I stand out, and not in the way I’d prefer. I’ve chosen this ensemble because pants will abrade the incision just above my navel, the one that looks like a second belly button, a gnarly new outie to complement my innie.
One week ago, after a trip to the ER landed me on antibiotics and morphine for two nights and two days, I had my gallbladder removed. Two weeks before that, my father died. I am in this vibrant Mexican city in the mountains to write with a small, sacred coven of other writers. Ariel Gore has us exploring the theme of Persephone—being pulled into the underworld, existing in it, and emerging from it—an undertaking apropos of my circumstances.
I am struggling to be present. It’s a gorgeous eight minute stroll from our place on the square to Barranca, where our writer friends await. We are surrounded by centuries-old adobe buildings in bright pinks, yellows, and turquoise with massive, medieval doorways framed in blooming bougainvillea. There is undeniable splendor at every turn. I appreciate it, but I can’t find the ardor that I know my mortal self wants to feel. My friend and travel companion, Lasara, is unabashedly enthusiastic, which helps keep me hovering in the overworld, feeling hues of awe, if not ardor itself.
Grief has its own will. It sleeps and awakens. Grief is jagged and humbling and requires tending, not unlike the surgical incisions on my abdomen. Scars, though, are easily cared for. There’s a simple routine to cleaning them and patting them dry, being mindful not to prematurely peel the dermal adhesive as it begins to flake away. Grief doesn’t present itself to be nurtured. Grief will let you shush it, and when it will no longer be shushed, it stumbles in uninvited.
I haven’t forgotten that my father died. I’m just not thinking about him. Until I am. Another writer asks me his name. “Danny. Pastor Danny. Brother Danny. Not Daniel, mind you. Danny. I called him Daddy and Dad. My kids called him Grandpa, but my youngest said he wished he had called him Papa, like the other grandkids kids had. My kids are just so much older, and didn’t know him until later. I know that doesn’t make sense, but they didn’t grow up near him, and… and… I’m sorry.” I use the sleeve of my mumu to wipe away surprise tears. “I know you just asked for his name.” I excuse myself to look for a tissue.
Beauty and historic preservation are important here. I live in Houston – a sprawling, ugly, concrete hellscape. It has beautiful people and incomparable food, but its infrastructure seems to have intentional neglect built into it, no consideration for aesthetic or safety, and a total disregard for what was. Its design holds in the worst of what nature brings—intolerable heat and humidity, and the flooding of tropical storms—like it wants to smother us, to drown us. Sometimes, it does. If you want to see beauty in a city like Houston, you have to get in your car and drive to where rich people live, or to a natural space designated for beauty. Here, it is everywhere.
I have only a few days before Houston and grief and doctor appointments come for me. So I walk and I rest. I eat with my friends. I find a new one in the Welsh bartender at the hotel bar across the street. I practice my Spanish in perfect weather with gracious strangers, under flower garlands. I take photos and visit old churches. Inside La Parroquia de San Miguel Arcángel, I say a secular prayer to the Virgin Mother for my dad, and I ask her to make my scars pretty. I laugh and laugh at the Jesus statue on hands and knees, presumably being flagellated, and dub him “Doggystyle Jesus.” At La Clandestina Tattoo, a man named Leo tattoos the observer bird, with its two eyes on a singular side of its body, onto my left shoulder.
And I write. I write in San Miguel de Allende.
Mandy Trichell lives under the devil’s tongue, aka Houston, TX. When she’s not writing, she makes art with discarded Barbies, bosses people around the gym, and spends time with her three adult children: a comic, an inventor, and a musician. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, Mountain Bluebird Magazine, The Literary Kitchen, Reading and Traveling, and in the anthology Shout Your Abortion. She has told stories on various stages, as well as on camera for the PBS program ‘Stories from the Stage.’ https://mandytrichell.substack.com/p/mandy-trichell
