Eulogy for Luis Rafael Cabrera
People are neither wholly good nor evil. We come to this world imperfectly seeking love, receiving love, and offering love. This is the work of being human. In the end, how well we learn to do these things is really what matters in our becoming.
Luis Rafael Cabrera taught us that the shape of this journey of becoming can be unforgiving. Part of the work of being human is navigating how we address the harm that is done to us and how we repair the harm that we do to others. My father navigated the world with more models of how to run from this work than models that demonstrated how to walk toward it. As a result, his attempts at seeking love, receiving love, and loving were roughly shaped. Those shapes left his children, Mitzy, Luis Jr., Rosa, and Wallis; and the love of his life, Teolinda, each with a deep yearning. One thing that is for sure is that he was loved by us. Our love for him took on odd human shapes as well. Surrounded by our deep yearning and our oddly shaped love, my father tried not to let our models for loving be as rough as his were.
In a recent conversation, he told me, “You know I’m really proud of all of my kids. Mitzy, Luisito, Wallis, and you. You all came out well.” I responded, “Yea, thanks. We doing alright.” And then he added, “none of you turned out to be crooks.” I laughed on the phone at the low bar that should not have surprised me, but he wasn’t joking. Though he left us with a yearning for more of him, more time, more tenderness, he gave us much more than he had been offered. Each of us took the yearning, his tenaciousness, his hunger for life, and his thirst for understanding, and shaped our own blossoming models for seeking love, receiving love, and loving. We watched him dance without apology and learned how to dance with more spirit. We saw him work tirelessly and learned how to align our hard work with purpose. We witnessed his awe of culture and people and we spread ourselves out into new places to explore and call home. We heard him debate with a steadfast passion and we defended our choices in lifestyle, lovestyle, spiritual beliefs, and politics against anyone or anything that would attempt to make us stray away from ourselves. The yearning and those rough ingredients for loving ourselves gave us each what we needed to ask more of life, ourselves, and each other. He gave in his life what we needed in order to receive in his death.
He transitioned in a room with miracles happening around him. For his four children, there was more softening in places that were hardened by ego and fear, there was more openness to understanding in parts of us that clung to constricting stories of each other, and there was more compassion in the chests that had been arrested by deep pain and resentment. We were pulled together with him to practice life’s most significant work. He lessened the depth of our yearning as we deepened our courage to become better humans the moment our journeys converged. Receiving any perfect and longed for words of forgiveness meant less than accepting his human shape and offering care to the places we located his tenderness. Our disarmament made us strong.
Many times in his last moments I found him waking up to look for us in a way that felt familiar to my body as a child, searching for his warmth. He freed that child self when our breathing oscillated to a slow current together as I assured him, “estoy aqui, papi.” He taught me that accountable acceptance is stronger and more fruitful than yearning. We could honor the parts of us that wanted more of the best of him while honoring the best parts of him that he had worked to become. We could free him to his own journey and strengthen our own capacity for growth and change. Towards the end of his human journey and his spirited life, the love that sprang from that change in his children was all that he sought. It was the only thing that mattered.
May the tenderness he received throughout his human journey continue to grow manyfold in the presence of loving ancestors and the Great Spirit. May he expand his capacity to tenderly seek love, receive love, and offer love in the spirit realm holding with him great human attainment: he was loved, he was loved, he was loved, he was loved.
Rosa Giselle Cabrera
