Again it calls my attention, the appeal of the government of my planet that we redouble our efforts and work harder for a better future.

For us, the ones who were adolescents when the revolution succeeded, youth was spent waiting for the promised future that never arrived.  We watched them leave — our best friends, our acquaintances, and later, our children — because the present was suffocating them.  Some, the most fortunate, were able to catch a plane.  Others lost their lives trying to cross the Straights of Florida, which, after all these years, has become a great cemetery where the lost hopes of so many Cubans who tried to reach the promised land lie together with their bodies.

I think of so many women, who have had to endure the sad experience of never knowing what happened to their children.  I have friends to whom I don’t dare say “Happy Mother’s Day,” for fear of reviving their pain.  Others, like me, at least know that our children are well, although we don’t know when we will embrace them again.

We have not only lost from our lives our children, siblings, friends.  We have grandchildren who we hardly know.  Their pictures adorn the walls of an empty house or refresh the screen of a computer, the few that we own.  And still they dare to speak to us of the future!

Translated by: Benjamin