Why Meeting Your Long Lost Family Can Teach You So Much

If your only sibling was ripped away, gone without a goodbye, no longer your partner and confident for life, how would you cope? By digging in your roots, clinging to those who are left, letting the waves of pain rise, slowly but surely, until you’re washed away, too? Or would you rise above the tides, seeking solace in motion, to take your broken heart on a journey?

I waded for a while, then learned to float, allowing myself to be pulled along by the idea of a pilgrimage. I rode all the way to Pacific coast of Peru, to a coastal neighborhood called Choritos. On paper, my plans to travel in South America seemed to line up with that of other backpackers: a dotting of towns from North to South across the long and dry continent, but mine revolved around an entirely different motive. The reason I’d chosen this continent and not the mirage of Thai islands or the stony ancients of Greece, was to come to Peru. I hadn’t dreamed all my life of the mounting peaks of Machu Picchu, surfing the glass barrels of Mancora, or finding God in the Amazon rainforest of Iquitos.

The reason I came was simple, and at the same time, anything but. With the pain of loss fresh in my heart, I was here to meet my long, lost family.

This fabled family, simultaneously ageing somewhere in the Southern hemisphere, had been quietly stirring in my imagination since I was a girl. My family here in North America is tiny. My brother and I grew up close to my parents and the only family we had: my Mom’s sister’s similarly tiny one. One cousin, one aunt, one uncle. I love and cherish them, but after spending holidays with friends across the states, I got a peek into what life with an extended family looked like. I was delighted to learn there were so many types of cousins, that you could have a “favorite uncle,” or witness the birth of a new generation. I loved the mishmash of energy flowing between iterations of extended kin, the welcoming mantra of “the more the merrier,” and the endless combinations of genes showing up to Thanksgiving dinner.

I dreamed what it would be like to find my reflection another pair of leafy brown irises, to see my genes splayed out across another’s. My brother, eyes blue like October sky and skin a few shades lighter, showed me one version of myself as another genetic cocktail. But my curiosity remained. As kids, and as we grew older, we both felt isolated in the insular nature of our nuclear family. We looked for family in friends, keeping close circles of support around us, even as we grew apart from each other. But we never forgot that we had relatives who were out there, spoken of in rich tones. A far-away look would wash over my dad’s own fishtank eyes, glittering in the memory of his childhood visits to Puerto Rico as a boy, enmeshed then with those now missing family links. It was his dream to go to Peru to see them again some day, and Alex and I spoke of making the trip together one day, too.

Five years ago, my parents took the ancestral leap and visited Peru, and I put names, email addresses, and a city — Lima — to these mystery relatives. My Dad reunited with his cousin, Nilda, after almost 20 years. Though now pushing 60,they still held each other in deep affection, despite living nearly their whole lives on different continents. There had been hugs and tears, celebratory pisco sours and ceviche, and a forgotten branch of the family tree re-attached. It was a decades long wish fulfilled for my Dad, and he encouraged me to realize my dream as well. There was an outstanding invitation from Nilda for me and my brother to come when the time was right. I started planning the trip after I graduated from college, but years passed waiting on subway platforms and chasing boys. Then I quit New York, my home of many years, and a new chapter began: travel, independence, discovery. And meeting this family was at the top of the list.

Then, on January 1, everything changed. Alex died, leaving behind a mystery that I’ll never have the chance to solve. My tentative plans to travel to Peru rose out of my hands and into the air. Part of me wanted to burrow into the dark basement of my parents’ home and pass the winter in mourning, smelling his old shirts until there was no scent left, pouring over the journals he had diligently carved a strange, slanted script into. The other part of me wanted to grab tight to something, anything, that I had control over.

And I knew, more than anything, that he would have wanted me to go. I addressed the levitating plans in the most effective way I could: by using them as reins.

I reformatted the next months around the destination of Lima, the place my brother would never be able to go, to meet those that he never would. To meet the people in the world that held a little piece of him, embedded into their DNA, living and breathing in the deepest core of their heart on a faraway continent. I wasn’t sure what I was seeking, but there was only one way to find out. I brandished my back with a new tattoo, augmenting one that had been in its place. I transformed the lone outline of a floating isosceles triangle into two, a bold, opaque double triangle, small dotted mountains rising above and a small flower vanishing down my spine below. I would be carrying the two together, like I would myself and Alex, forever moving forward.

I arrived at the airport in Lima at 1am on a Monday morning with an email claiming my aunt would be waiting for me with open arms. When I wandered into the welcome terminal in a daze, it dawned on me that I didn’t know what she looked like. Luckily she must have come to the same conclusion at the same time, because a message popped up on my phone with a photo of her, holding a sign, “Maria Elisa.” Immediately I spotted her: a middle-aged woman, expertly-highlighted bob and long white sundress, nervously peering over the barrier, painted nails clasped around a paper sign. I smiled nervously as I tapped her shoulder.

“Maria!” She cried, big green eyes brimming with tears, arms wide like a mama bird, smothering me in the first of so many hugs, “We’ve been waiting for you!” In a breathless embrace, only my mind could respond: I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.

It happened almost instantaneously, from the first time I laid eyes on my Aunt, her stately, dynamic nature echoing something deeply ingrained in the nature of my father, too. With her dramatic gestures, empathetic nature, generous smile, and keen ear for listening, I for the first time saw my father, who was an only child, in someone else. Nilda, her name and her Mother’s before her, was a woman to be reckoned with. She liked omelettes with homemade fruit spread on top, dry white wine, all-white outfits, contemporary art, and above all other luxuries, the purest one: family. The love with which she enveloped every member of her kin- from juggling her new grandchildren, fiery triplet boys, to me, a long lost niece she’d never met, was remarkable. She’s a powerful woman who loves as much as she fights for what’s right. She speaks her mind freely, is loathe to suffer fools, doesn’t let anyone else interfere in her personal matters, and could give two shits about what the cabbie thinks. Qualities I was relieved to experience, since they are also ones engrained in me, the stubborn apple that fell far from my parent’s boughs.

The beginning of a new chapter in my life. An exclamation mark now replacing the question mark long lingering in my psyche about this fabled family. The end of my doubt that these relatives really existed and that they really cared about me. No matter how little blood we had in common, they considered me their family. My Aunt Nilda and her husband Kiko hosted me in their home for two weeks, taking me to dinner and touring Lima, my every wish fulfilled. Their wonderful sons Alejandro and Enrique, their daughter Nicole, and the plethora of kids between them were all extensions of my genes. These new relatives welcomed me with a kiss on the cheek, as though the mystery of my life, background, reasons for coming, and sadness in my heart could all just be swept under the rug of “family.” And a plush rug it was. They introduced me to friends, took me to their country house, introduced me as “la Tia Maria” to my new nephews, showed me the fruits of the Andes, the traditions of the Incas, the lifestyle of Lima, and the treasures that exist within family.

I came to realize how at home my brother would have felt here, among people that loved and admired him even though they never knew him. Maybe it’s Latin culture, or maybe it’s human nature, but there is a deep well of love where there is family.

I found it indescribable: a spirit of sorts, tangled up in shared genetics, alive across oceans and mountains. It’s this essence that just tags along, an afterthought, a subconscious rhythm, a falling-in-step that only occurs among relatives, no matter how far removed.

Love lodged into the heart of someone whose blood is the same shade as your own transcends obligation.

They were little pieces of me, they were little pieces of Alex. We spoke of Alex, or I did. We looked at photos of him, and I retraced some of my favorite memories of our childhood. I drank piscos in his honor. We grieved his death and celebrated his memory. And I felt the waves coming on heavy: regret, guilt, fear, longing. But, overlooking the Pacific lapping against the dark-sanded beaches along the Peruvian coast, the rising tides no longer scared me in the same way. I was tucked away above the bluffs, safe, loved, and taken care of in the arms of my long, lost family. I love my brother and miss him deeply every day, but the only way to heal is to love. There is nothing more valuable I could have done in the wake of his passing than meet his long lost relatives, our family.

In their glance, I see that their spirit is a shimmer of the same one that glows inside me. And when they look at me, they see not just this iteration of my spirit, but that of my father and mother, my grandparents and all those that came before us that weaved our stories closer together. And they see my brother, a distant shimmer deep in the black of my pupils, the rise and fall of my broad ribcage, the heartbeat pumping blood through hearty veins that stand out of my freckled forearms.

I am the only thing that remains of him, the same genetics rolled into a different package and with another consciousness.

While that knowledge is terrifying, I am honored to hold a part of him within me, my heart, my soul, my blood, and my future. And I am beyond grateful to have had the chance to experience that shimmer of him reflected back at me, even in those he will never know.

Happy Birthday, Alex.