Galápagos (English version)
This essay was originally written in Spanish, you can read it here.
The unavoidable law of life is that it ends and, even though death is what we have in common with all living creatures on this planet, we are perhaps the only species that knows of and recognizes its own mortality. What we do with this knowledge depends on each person–their values, beliefs, religion, the language they have to describe it, and the experience they gain along the way.
Charles Darwin created the theory of evolution and natural selection two hundred years ago, inspired by the Galápagos Islands. Today, these islands experience tremendous changes that show us the fragility and resilience of the Earth, changes that are a consequence of human activity. Interestingly, the meaning these islands have to human history is that, while they’re not the place where life began, they are a symbol of humans’ need to question and understand our origin.
Personally, I feel fortunate that I’m able to rely on my Mexican identity to feel prepared when thinking about death. Día de muertos has always been a refuge to me; it offers me comfort in accepting that everyone I love and I will part from this world one day without any certainty of what comes after, if there’s anything that comes after.
However, for me día de muertos has always been a theoretical tradition, not a practical one, given that I’m fortunate that none of my loved ones have died. A few years ago, this fortune started feeling as a source of anxiety when thinking about my maternal grandmother, who’s been a structural pillar in my life. I frequently think of my mom, my dad, and my grandma as the triad that raised me, a perfect tricycle that wouldn’t have worked if it had only had two wheels.
Life in the Galápagos islands, named after their big tortoises, has been constantly impacted by humans, from the introduction of goats that consumed their grassfields to the tourism that today puts at risk what it depends on. What a way do humans have to mistreat and threaten the sacredness of our places of origin, whether real or symbolic. The protected statuses that have been given to the islands have only been small efforts that try, insufficiently, to catch up with the problems that surpass them. Biologists and conservationists gather resources to overcome the challenges and solve the problems that pile on in an unfortunate game of pick-up sticks, in which the only true solution is to go back in time and make different decisions. However, even it seems like a lost cause, scientists aren’t deterred from holding onto hope and trying to rescue the islands, or at least to slow down the aggressiveness of the changes that threaten them. Maybe the most representative example of these efforts was lonesome George, the last known individual of a subspecies of Galápagos tortoises.
I lived with my grandmother for the first eighteen years of my life and, after moving out of her house, I continued visiting her on Mondays when she hosted me for lunch the way we do in México: with soup or salad to start, a main dish, and dessert with coffee. Our lunches were always delicious, but even more so were the long talks we shared.
Fifteen years ago, I migrated from Toluca, México to Vancouver, Canada, bringing with me a silver plate necklace that she gifted me, engraved with the words To Dany With Love and the date I graduated from University. I have no doubt that, if I hadn’t been able to talk to my grandma every week over video call, I wouldn’t have been able to stay away from her.
We kept our tradition to meet every Monday and had video calls that lasted hours; filled with laughter, long conversations and teachings; because, since I missed her lunches, she had no excuse left to avoid what she never did while I lived with her: finally teaching me to cook.
George was found on Pinta Island in 1971, and from that moment until his death in 2012, the efforts to keep him alive and attempt to mate him touched the most sensitive fibers of scientific communities around the world—people who dedicated their entire careers and lives to one purpose: ensuring we would never have to answer the question, What would the world be without tortoises in the Galápagos? What was the world George was born into before he became lonesome? Perhaps just half a century after Darwin arrived on the islands, George hatched into a world that would no longer exist by the time of his death. Born into abundance, he lived through the brutality of whalers who exterminated his island’s tortoises, until one day he became the last of his subspecies—surviving only to witness the gradual imbalance of his own habitat.
The anxiety I felt when thinking about my grandma’s inevitable death grew as years passed by, especially since I migrated. At the end of every visit in México, after every good bye, I left with a lump in my throat and filled with nausea thinking that, maybe, this was the last time I saw her.
In her efforts to prepare herself, and us, my grandma left her wishes for her eventual passing clearly written. All her children and grandchildren know what will happen when the day comes. Strong and practical, she did what she could to avoid the scenario of a family divided and torn apart after seeing so many other ones that fractured with fights over properties, rights, and obligations.
Likewise, in my eagerness to prepare myself for losing her, in every visit I took it upon myself to hold her hands in mine, trying to sear into my memory the texture of her skin, the appearance of her sunspots, her wrinkles and–the most important thing– the way it feels when her hands fill space in mine. I trained my hands to remember the exact position they will have to take to feel as if I’m holding her when she’s no longer here. The day that my grandma dies, I thought, the world I know will die with her, because I’ve never known a world where she doesn’t exist.
And so, as best as we could, we braced ourselves; never imagining that death is not the only way we lose people.
When a species becomes extinct, it is perhaps a triple death. When the last known individual dies, the animal dies, the species dies, and so does the world that once hosted it. The scale of devastation is deep and that may be the reason why it’s hard to reconcile with the idea that it doesn’t happen suddenly, but gradually. It’s sad to accept that there are multiple warning signs that prevent us from that ending, that there are plenty of opportunities before the last one, and that had we taken them, the cost would have been lower and the chances of success far greater. For four decades, biologists tried in many ways to help George mate with similar tortoises, even getting close when two females laid eggs that, unfortunately, were not fertilized and never produced the desired hybrid specimen. The efforts to try to avoid the extinction of George’s subspecies were fully and famously documented, which not only provided a chronicle of a death foretold, but also documented the grief we feel when we gradually lose a species, the different reactions and decisions we make when we can see that the end is near.
In 2020, because of the COVID pandemic, my grandmother had to isolate herself from the world. Her daily outings to Toluca’s downtown stopped suddenly, the ones that provided her with valuable time of physical and mental activity to walk to pay her cable, buy vegetables at the local produce shop or whatever was on sale at Soriana, the supermarket. My grandma was the stock market of Soriana, she knew that on Mondays they offered 2x1 on deodorants; on Tuesdays, they had produce on sale; on Wednesdays, promotions for oils or beans; and so her whole week passed as a game in which she tried to stretch her pesos.
I wish I could say I remember when was the last time I spoke with my grandma alone, but I don’t. Our conversations started having guests like my mom, my aunt, or my cousin when they created a pod during the pandemic and during that time, gradually, her short-term memory started to fail.
During that time, my grandma had her first pneumonia, one that wildfired her lung capacity and forced her to use an oxygen tank for the first time, for several weeks. A year later, the oxygen tank became permanent. In 2021, a walker joined her, and with it came the need to assist her to climb up and down the stairs that she managed on her own for more than eight decades, to help her to get up from the couch, and to go to the bathroom.
The following years, with relative stability, pneumonias kept coming in winter and my grandma spent all her time sitting in front of the tv watching Yo soy Betty, la fea (Ugly Betty). Watching her, completely lost in the story of Betty, Don Armando, and the ugly club broke my heart. Almost nothing remains from those long conversations we enjoyed together: her short-term memory lasts a few minutes and in our current conversations she asks me the same questions over and over again.
George’s story divided conservationists into two camps: those who prefer to spend resources and effort trying to recover what has been lost, and those who believe that, given the devastation caused by climate change, within the next few decades around 30 to 40% of animal species will become extinct, forcing us to make difficult decisions to prioritize those with the greatest chances of survival.
There are times when I don’t know what to do with the grief that this loss brings me. I confess that seeing and touching my grandma is hard for me, the physicality that I once held onto now feels impossible. To try and make these moments less difficult, I found a way to talk to her by asking her things about our past together. It’s ironic that she can no longer remember what she asked me five minutes ago, but as I evoke my childhood nights when I went looking for her in her bedroom to sleep together, she vividly remembers every detail, like the color of my pj’s, the onesie with footies.
Last winter, after another pneumonia crisis during my time in México, I had to force myself to see her. I admit with shame that the sadness of seeing her decline is perhaps bigger than the fear I had for her death. But when I visited her, I told her I wanted to sing her a song that makes me think of her. I kneeled before her, and I looked up Círculo de amor by El Gran Silencio in my phone and, sobbing, I was able to sing the only serenade I’ve ever given:
Such beautiful eyes my girl has / Qué lindos ojos tiene mi chata
Look how they shine when they see me / Cómo relumbran cuando me ven
They’re black black like the night / Son negros negros como la noche
And as serene as my faith / Y tan serenos como mi fe
Those little eyes are my hope / Esos ojitos son mi esperanza/
Lord, don’t take them from me / No me los quites nunca señor
Holy lord, don’t take them from me / No me los quites diosito santo
Because without them I’d die of love / Porque sin ellos muero de amor
I don’t need you to tell me that you love me / No necesito que me digas que me quieres
Because I know it and I see how you look at me / Porque ya lo sé y miro cómo me miras/
And I also know you think of me every time I leave / Y también sé que piensas en mí cada vez que me voy
And when I’m not here, you wait for me / Y cuando no estoy me esperas/
Because you know that I have to come back to you / Porque sabes bien que tengo que regresar contigo
Because I like being with you the same way I like to sing and sing and sing... / Porque me gusta estar contigo como me gusta cantar y cantar y cantar…
…
And that’s enough for me to say that I love you / Y eso me basta para decirte que te quiero/
That I love you, I love you, and I love you / Que te quiero, que te quiero y que te quiero
That I love you and without you I despair / Que te quiero y sin ti me desespero
When the song ended, I was holding her legs and resting my head on her lap, and she asked me why I was crying:
-Because I miss you.
-I’m still here, mi niña.
As humans, we live in a collective grief caused by climate change that, even though it’s gradual, it becomes bigger, crueler, and more voracious. In this loss that everyone can see, there are the ones who deny it, others try to recover what’s been lost, some try to preserve and take care of everything that’s still here, there are those who with stoic pragmatism try to evaluate and prioritize what can be saved, and finally, those who accept with resignation the fact that death is unavoidable. As a Mexican and Canadian citizen, I see how the effects of climate change bring us loss every year. I see winters get harsher and summers blazing in wildfires or sinking in floods.
With every crisis, the family crumbles, divided in two camps: those who want my grandma to be placed in assisted living and those who want to keep caring for her at their homes. My mom decided to become her primary caregiver and she shares the responsibility with one of her sisters, while they both have to endure the questioning of the rest of the family about the care they provide and the money they spend.
After every argument and fight, I wonder if during those long conversations I had with my grandma we should have talked less about death and more about disability, if I should have insisted that she built a full bathroom on the ground floor of her house, if I should have asked her what did she expect from her family for what we’re going through today. I told my grandma everything, I consulted her for everything, I wish I could ask her what to do with the time she has left because we prepared ourselves for everything but this.
A few months ago, her feet failed her as she was walking with the walker and when she fell, she violently hit her head. She had to have surgery and doctors feared she could lose an eye that was previously blind; and while the doctor was able to save the organ, he recently informed us that given the damage, it’s amalgamating to other tissues, disappearing inside the eye cavity.
My girl’s beautiful eye is yet another loss on a list I can no longer keep track of. And I hear the news from 4,773 kilometers away, protected for now until the next time I see her, when I will once again have to face the idea that, even though I still live in a world where my grandma is alive, the grief of losing her began five years ago and seems likely to continue for much longer.
In 2020 in Vancouver, I lived two weeks during the first summer of the COVID pandemic with the windows closed and orange skies covered in smoke that came from wildfires in other towns from BC and Alberta. In 2021, Lytton, a town that’s only 260 kilometers away from Vancouver, was completely consumed in flames, leaving two people dead and more than one thousand people stranded. In 2023, with tears in my eyes, I saw videos of Mexican firefighters who came to help with wildfires in Ontario. In 2024, flames that reached higher than one hundred meters, burned close to 32,500 acres of Jasper, the national park in Alberta. In 2025, I see how Iztapalapa and other neighbourhoods in Mexico City flood, just 77 kilometers away from my father’s house in Metepec, México. And while the wildfires have happened far away from Vancouver, the smoke reaches my lungs. Even though the floods caused by incessant rain have happened far away from my father’s house, it has new leaks. For now, distance protects me; for now, Lytton, Jasper, and Iztapalapa are far away.
Losing something or someone from far away gives us the illusion of protection, to think that while the loss is gradual, the end is not coming yet. However, the grief arrives with every pneumonia, fall and loss of memories; with every wildfire, flood, or extinct species. And with that, come the concessions and decisions we make with the time we have left, and what we want or can preserve.
One of the most deceiving feelings we experience when grieving gradually is the illusion that we still have time–to make decisions, to have the conversations we haven’t had, and visit the places we haven’t been. Some will optimistically try to recover lost time; others will manage to enjoy what’s still here. Some will plan with stoicism and pragmatism, some will seek refuge in denial, and some will simply accept what we know is unavoidable.
For now, the zones that were not impacted in Jasper will be open during the summer and the memes with Tláloc flooding Iztapalapa can be seen on Instagram. Today, we still have 13 of 15 of tortoise subspecies in Galápagos, and my grandma is still alive.