"Papi tiene muerte cerebral.”
I don’t know when my cousin originally sent the text, but it buzzed through to Connecticut from Puerto Rico’s battered communications towers last Sunday at 6:27 a.m. My uncle was brain dead.
“Hay que desconectarlo.”
The machines keeping him in a state resembling life could not undo the damage that had been done. Soon, they would let him pass.
At 78, my uncle had survived Hurricane Maria’s winds and the floods its rains unleashed. But the deadliest time in most hurricanes is after the storm passes. And for my uncle, the devastation of the island where he’d lived his whole life was too much to bear. A week and a half after Maria made landfall, he hanged himself at his ruined home...
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