Thinking of South Texas, Life & Loss

Loida Casares Ruiz

Wife, Mother, Writer, Advertising Manager

Loida Casares Ruiz grew up in Northeast Houston. She graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Minor in English. She received a Master of Arts in Communication in 2001. She works in advertising by day and is a mother, wife, and writer by night. She has al...

Loida Casares Ruiz

Wednesday, July, 23, 2008

This morning I woke up thinking about South Texas, my parents’ homeland. Hurricane Dolly is still headed straight there.

My sister told me yesterday that the news said that they were about to experience the amount of rain that Houston did in 2001 with Tropical Storm Allison. She also said she heard that the levees of the Rio Grande were so old they probably wouldn’t hold the water.

It reminded me of New Orleans and of Iowa, more recently. Our country is falling apart! What a disaster!

I also woke up with the thought that we never know what way the storm can turn, even at the last minute. It could decide to head straight towards us. Life is a lot like that too, isn’t it?

We can sit here and we can plan our lives, but we never know what direction it can go unexpectedly. I think of that often, especially after losing my sister at the young age of 42, 13 years ago, and then losing my mother 5 years later.

When I tell people I lost both of them, five years apart, I’m often met with disbelief. Not that they don’t believe me, but surprise that I went through that. Many times it’s from people who have never lost anyone that close to them. There are a lot of people who have never lost an immediate family member.

Ironically, it does make you a stronger person sometimes. It makes you more aware of your own mortality. I know that when I lost my sister I had a really hard time. When I lost my mother it hurt even more, because it was my mother, yet it was easier to bear.

Life is like that. With every loss we learn to cope and we get stronger.