I didn't die, I woke up

By Marcela Gutiérrez Bravo

Does the Mexican laugh at death?
Find out with these three death stories that will take you for a walk through the Mexican psyche, not all, but a part;  due to the grandiose variety of this unique people's identity.
Some character, some soul, some situation will make the reader feel irremediably identified and,  hopefully, help him to continue on the best path the way of his existence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Oct 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9781386755029

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I didn't die, I woke up

Marcela Gutiérrez Bravo

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Translated by Eduardo L Rosario y Diego Andrés Sánchez G 

I didn't die, I woke up

Written By Marcela Gutiérrez Bravo

Copyright © 2023 Marcela Gutiérrez Bravo

All rights reserved

Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

www.babelcube.com

Translated by Eduardo L Rosario y Diego Andrés Sánchez G

Cover Design © 2023 NyxFeratu

Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

I DIDN'T DIE, I WOKE UP

3 Tales of Death

Author:  Marcela Gutiérrez Bravo

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Cover page: Nyxferatu

Translation: Eduardo L. Rosario and Diego Andrés Sánchez Gutiérrez

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For my 3 children

Free us, Domine

Ab initio

Not long ago Frida and José Miguel had planned a trip to Veracruz, a trip that was not a vacation or a walk; it was a trip for a considerable time, just as its importance. 

The meticulous planning was not done together, because they were not together, they did not even know each other, they could not have any idea that their names would be linked by that trip, because in that perfect plan there was no ligation to anyone, in no way. 

Frida was 18 years old living a life that did not satisfy her old soul or her senses; that's why she was fleeing that day. She was running away from a beautiful family united like few others.  She lived in a perfect home in the state of Morelos, Mexico; nothing more and nothing less than in Cuernavaca, the city of eternal spring. Hers was an escape from the supposed happiness that made her an unhappy being. No, please do not ask me to try to explain this, the most reasonable gloss that I can provide is that, sometimes, we have everything that everyone wants and we crave that as impossible as imperfect in a world where nobody can have everything. I don’t know! The best thing would have been to ask her. Frida was like this all her life, always incongruous or difficult to the common understanding.  Her brothers and sisters opened her eyes lovingly so that she would notice the thousand and one reasons she had to be happy and Frida saw them, yes she saw them, but she said she needed a little unhappiness, even if it's a  small reason to spill at least a fair part of the tears that were bubbling in her body and that, because she was born privileged, she could not, much less should, keep containing.

***

José Miguel had also had a difficult life; that is, normal! Not that Frida's was not, but Frida, as we saw, was incomprehensible; José Miguel's life was normal in his suffering, which was understandable. Or that it was in plain sight.

He was seventeen then and had always had to fight for what he wanted. Being male among two others, he had to demonstrate a strength of character within a middle-class family (going down to low-class); I mean something that may be poverty in Europe and a comfortable life in Africa, if I may portray it like that. José Miguel did not have a father; not with him, because we all have one. He and his brothers were all what his mother had to move forward, but she tried to respect his passions, yes. José Miguel wished to be a bullfighter, like any good young man of Huamantla, He wanted it and he fought for that... What? What the hell is Huamantla? True; Huamantla is what in Mexico is known as a Pueblo Mágico[1], a town with strong indigenous and colonial roots still visible in every cultural aspect, famous for happy and unhappy activities (not all the Magical Towns have this last characteristic, Huamantla does).  An example of the unfortunateness of Huamantla is the celebration of the Fiesta Brava[2]. The inhabitants of Huamantla, despite having other prides, boast of breeding fighting bulls, bullfighters, and of drunken throats that tempt death in a tracing of the Spanish Pamplona sadly known as the Huamantlada. Roughly, that's Huamantla, a small old town, picturesque and ghostly within the old, picturesque and ghostly Tlaxcala...

What is Tlaxcala? Enough! God! You have internet! Now let me continue... 

Suffice to say that José Miguel wanted to be a bullfighter, but, after his younger brother ended his life in a car accident,  he could no longer pretend that he would make a living with something for which, to date, he had not shown any gift.

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Frida planned the date; the place, of course, was