CLEM MURRAY / Staff Photographer
“I try to be strong, not to show my family my pain.” - Jazmin Nazario
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Mourning After
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‘Enjoy the little things … ’
Jazmin Nazario recalls an affectionate life with her mother.
"Your mom was in an accident."
"Is she OK?"
He doesn't say yes or no, but she can tell from his voice that he's hiding something. She wants to pack a bag to stay with her mother at the hospital, but there's no time: An officer will be there any minute to pick her up.
Jazmin quickly puts on jeans and a pink hooded sweatshirt. Then she hurries downstairs and tells Pat what Carlos has said.
From that moment everything happens so quickly her memory skids over patches, then snags on details.
In the car she thinks, "I hope to God she hasn't passed away." Then, "Don't think that way." They come to a hospital. She has no idea which one. Helicopters thump overhead. She sees masses of reporters and police, TV trucks and patrol cars, and among the strangers Carlos standing with her aunt, Mimi Mohamad.
"This isn't just an accident," Jazmin thinks.
She and her grandmother get out of the car. Carlos wraps his arms around her. "She didn't make it," he says.
"No puede ser!" This can't be happening, Jazmin screams. In the emergency room, people turn to watch her. She can't control her cries. Carlos holds her tightly, trying to calm her. She is led to her mother's bedside.
"Cover her face, please," she asks a nurse. She doesn't want to remember Isabel like this. The impact crushed the patrol car. The door was plowed in, pinning her mother to the console. It took more than 35 minutes to pull her from the wreckage. Her mother's partner was trapped, too, and left in critical condition.
Jazmin sits awhile, praying and holding her mother's hand. It is cold and heavy. A nurse comes to talk to her.
"Her heart stopped instantly," the nurse says.
"She felt no pain," Jazmin reasons. The thought is comforting. Although, honestly, "nothing is comforting."
She remembers asking to be taken to the hospital chapel, but little else of that night and the next few days.
She stays with her cousin Bryanna, Aunt Mimi, and Uncle Walid for awhile. The police bring the contents from her mother's locker. Inside the police hat, she finds the seventh-grade picture. She is so young there, only 12. She's growing up abruptly now.
Jazmin is asked where she wants to bury her mother.
"Puerto Rico," she says. She remembers her mother being happiest there.
Jazmin passed all her courses this year, but there weren't many A's. In April, the FOP threw her a blowout Sweet Sixteen. Her braces were to come off finally at the end of June.
"I try to be strong, not to show my family my pain" she says. She asks her grandmother to leave the room when she talks about the accident. "It upsets her to see me cry."
Dreams of a mother's duty
