Free Have You Seen Marie? by Sandra Cisneros

AFTERWORD
    In Mexico they say when someone you love dies, a part of you dies with them. But they forget to mention that a part of them is born in you—not immediately, I’ve learned, but eventually, and gradually. It’s an opportunity to be reborn. When you are in between births, there should be some way to indicate to all, “Beware, I am not as I was before. Handle me with care.”
    I live in San Antonio on the left bank of the river in an area of the city called King William, famous for its historic homes. South of Alamo Street, beyond King William proper, the San Antonio River transforms itself into a wildlife refuge as it makes its way toward the Spanish missions. Behind my house the river is more creek than river. It still has its natural sandy bottom. It hasn’t been covered over with concrete yet. Wild animals live in the tall grass and in its waters. My dogs and I can wade across and watch tadpoles and turtles and fish darting about. There are hawks and cranes and owls and other splendid winged creatures in the trees. It is calming and beautiful, especially when you’re sad and in need of big doses of beauty.
    In the spring after my mother died, a doctor wanted to prescribe pills for depression. “But if I don’t feel,” I said, “how will I be able to write?” I need to be able to feel things deeply, good or bad, and wade through an emotion to the other shore, toward my rebirth. I knew if I put off moving through grief, the wandering between worlds would only take longer. Even sadness has its place in the universe.
    I wish somebody had told me then that death allows you the chance to experience the world soulfully, that the heart is open like the aperture of a camera, taking in everything, painful as well as joyous, sensitive as the skin of water.
    I wish somebody had told me to draw near me objects of pure spirit when living between births. My dogs. The trees along the San Antonio River. The sky and clouds reflected in its water. Wind with its scent of spring. Flowers, especially the sympathetic daisy.
    I wish somebody had told me love does not die, that we can continue to receive and give love after death. This news is so astonishing to me even now, I wonder why it isn’t flashed across the bottom of the television screen on CNN.
    I wrote this story in the wake of death— poco a poco , slow by slow, little by little. A writer who had come to visit had lost her cat. The real Marie eluded capture for over a week, but searching for her forced me during those days to meet neighbors, and the idea for this book came about.
    Some people who heard me perform it out loud thought it was for children, but I wrote it for adults, because something was needed for people like me who suddenly found themselves orphans in midlife. I wanted to be able to make something I could give those who were in mourning, something that would help them find balance again and walk toward their rebirth. Since I’ve long admired her work, and because she’d recently lost her own mother, too, I knew that the artist Ester Hernández would be right for this collaboration.
    Ester flew out from California to San Antonio on a scouting mission. Neighbors and their kids posed for us and got involved in the project: we included real people, houses, and places almost as if we were creating a documentary, and this book became a collective community effort.
    I liked the idea of the pictures telling another story about the people of San Antonio, of cultures colliding and creating something new: Folks with blond hair, a German last name, and a Spanish first name inherited from a Mexican grandmother several generations back. Tex-Mexicans with Arab and indigenous features and a Scottish surname. Ultra-devout Catholics with Sephardic roots. Stories the Alamo forgets to remember.
    We are a village, of sorts, with big houses and little houses, home to trust-fund babies as well as folks who have to take the bus to buy their groceries. We have houses with