Grief’s Gravity

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It took months for me to realize this was not about betrayal, but being left out. But why should I have been included? As much as I may have thought of myself as a participant in Jesica’s tragedy, my pain was fabricated and self-inflicted, and I think now, had I really been her mother, I would have looked at someone like me and said, What are you doing here? Why can’t you leave us alone? Why I imagined I could provide deus ex machina is perhaps presumptuous, even shameful, but I don’t think it is unique; believing one can swoop in and deliver salvation is powerful stuff; Frank thought he could be Jesica’s hero, too, albeit he tried harder than I did, for longer.

The truth is, we don’t often get to pick our heroes. Mack, for better and for worse, has been Jesica’s champion for four years. He still runs Jesica’s Hope Chest, and is still fighting for Magdalena. He is the last man standing. While his firing of Frank was unceremonious, it was perhaps prudent: Since June, Jesica’s case has been handled by Howard Nations, a highly regarded personal-injury lawyer from Houston, Texas, who said last week by phone, “We’ve gathered all the facts about what happened to Jesica, and we are in negotiations and making every effort to come to a settlement with Duke.” He sounded confident.

Had Mack not blown the whistle on Duke, the world never would have known of Jesica Santillan, of this I am certain. As a direct result of her death, Duke last year instituted procedural changes that bars doctors from requesting organs for patients not on the recipient list, and that also requires more than one person checks that blood types match. JHC recently produced a series of public service announcements, in English and Spanish, featuring Magdalena speaking about the importance of organ donation, a crusade that, according to Nations, has lifted her out of her grief and provided some purpose to her daughter’s death. Last August, Melecio left and went back to Mexico. Magdalena remains in Louisburg. While her status in the United States is in limbo, she and her two surviving children continue to be supported by Mack, who recently installed a marble bench near Jesica’s mausoleum, where Magdalena goes and sits five days a week.