Juan Herrera, Notebooks of a Chile Verde Smuggler
Pg. 117

“Each one spoke in the narrow circle. Barlow read a poem & it was the first time I ever heard my tia Albina talk about my mother. When it was my turn, next to my mother’s ashes, at the open center believe me, camaradas, I began to cry. This was my beginning.”

His mother had been sick for a while but he had never really acted on it. He just went on with his daily life not paying attention to what could happen. Than when she finally died and the shock hit him like a wave. The sadness was more then he thought more because he didn’t cherish the time they had left and also she was the biggest influence on him and he loved her.

Pg. 119

“At sixteen, at midnight they came knocking. Said my father had died of complications. My mother shuddered. Fell. Something dropped inside of her and grew above us. A tiny flame of sweetness and black. For years, in that wild shadow, she smoked and kissed a stray that crossed our window.

When his father died there was sadness and confusion they didn’t know what had happen. His mother at first was more shocked then sad “my mother shuddered” and the special feeling inside her fell and was lost. The sadness had grown above them like a wave of darkness and sorrow. The sweetness was them noticing the love they had for him and the black was the morn of his loss.