Life finds strange ways for people to cross paths.

In 2011, only a few weeks after my mum had died, and when I was only a couple of months into reenacting, a very good friend (fellow reenactor) told me: “Why don’t we go big?”.

In 2013 it was the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. If you are going to make it to one American Civil War event, you would want to go to this one. More than 15.000 reenactors in the battle that changed US History.

We had no clue, who to ask, where to begin, but we knew something: we wanted to represent Spanish troops during the war. Yes, I know, Spanish troops? Yes, Spanish troops. From Spain. Why? Because Spanish presence in the Southern States was still very important in 1860´s as Luisiana was Spanish until 1803 and Florida until 1820. So we did lots of research and we found this Regiment: 10th Infantry Louisiana Company G which was almost completely formed by Spanish or descendants of Spanish soldiers. In that same regiment company C was mainly formed by Canadian.

In my search for someone to help us achieving our goal, I contacted the official website of the Canadian unit and got a positive response. I spent a year and half exchanging mails and chatting on Messenger with this amazing woman, Donna. Do you know when you have a perfect connection with someone you’ve never met and is far far away, but you still feel the spark? That’s what happened to me and Donna. I remember how nervous I was when I received her friendship request on Facebook, and the long and never tiring hours we spent talking, laughing, and planning for the event.

July 2013 arrived and after almost two years talking on a daily basis, we meet face to face, and it was fantastic. She was a ginger hurricane, always ready to tease anyone, but that would freeze just with one look. We spend a week together at the reenactment site and it was one of the most perfect weeks of my life. Days lasted what they should: they were not too long nor too short. I was happy to be there, to be able to participate in such a big event and to be able to pay honors to all those who died. Soldiers are the price the powerful pay to obtain what they want. Generals, Politicians, Presidents, Kings are all remembered by History. Soldiers are just soldiers. It was my tribute to them, their sacrifice is the one I remember.

When the event was over, we parted our ways, all parties promising we should all meet again. Making our paths cross again was my only wish.

But life has other plans, and even if I visited US again, I could not make it to Canada. Donna and I kept chatting and exchanging emails very often. We knew we had each other. Donna usually told me she thought about me as another daughter, and I thought about her as big sister and someone who was always close to me. Whenever something good happened, I just sent her a message. She was the one who got me again into writing Christmas cards, as every year I would receive one from her.

In 2018 I received very bad news as she told me she had been diagnosed with two different kinds of cancer. One of them was lung cancer. My mum died of lung cancer and I know what that diagnosis means. I was totally heartbroken, but still we chatted online and I tried to comment everything she posted on Facebook to let her know I was there. When I didn’t have news for more than a week, I was so worried, and then relieved when she came back because chemo had been so hard. She was always honest, calling things by its name, never hiding the truth.

One day I got an email from another friend, saying she was in hospital and with palliative care. It was more than I could handle, I confess, but when talking to that other friend, he send me her cellphone number, a special one she had with her. I knew that if I made that call it would be to say goodbye, so I gathered all my courage to dial the number and I was lucky my friend was visiting that day (he had told me so I also had the chance to talk to him). I can be a very good clown, so I played the clown for ten minutes or more on the phone, talking about this and that, asking her not to be mad at me because I was planning a trip to Japan and not to Canada. I didn’t want to hang up. Could that moment last forever? You all know the answer, it couldn’t. So after I told her “I love you lots and lots and lots and lots” I had to hang up. She barely said a couple of words while I was talking, I could hear her fighting to breath, probably with the help wit some machine. After I hung up, I think I was crying for over an hour. But as heartbreaking as it was, one of the hardest experiences of my life, I would do it again. Because you have to tell the people you love that you love them, even when it’s obvious. Don’t you ever regret not having said it.

For all the I loves you that you hesitate to say, just don’t.

Love,

February