While The Sun Hangs In The Sky

Last week was a nightmare. 

Around nine o'clock, as I was having a Skype meeting with a couple of colleagues from Mexico City and Juriquilla, Queretaro, in front of my laptop in Lerma de Villada, beginning the 4th week of classes, one of my closest colleagues arrived to his lab, located a few meters away from the University, in Mexico City –a space which he, his wife and my previous boss rented since two years ago, when September 19th's Earthquake damaged the building on which they worked... and on which I worked for the previous three years–, bought an orange juice, left it on a desk and said to his wife that he would go to the bank. 

It would be the last time she would see him.  

At 14: 00, her wife tried to call him on the cellphone –they used to eat together, at that time– and he didn't answer. All day long, she tried to do it, over and over again. 
On Monday's night, she reported him as a missing person.

I knew about the situation, from a friend of my wife, until Tuesday, as I was about to teach my class of Drug Addiction. It was so shocking. He's not the kind of person who disappears, leaving his entire family distraught. 

Immediately, my wife and myself started to share information about him and the situation on our social networks. We were close to them. My wife and myself shared a small office with them for the last two years. 
We saw them everyday... 
Sometimes we ate with them... 

I shared a bigger office with both of them on the previous three years. 
I worked with them for the last five years. 

We even have a publish paper and another one that I'm writing. 

I saw them when they told me that she was pregnant and I saw them when they took her baby daughter to the University when the baby started to walk and to go to the kindergarten... 

I saw their entire family when they took them to the University, when they were on holidays... 

Both of them invited me to teach a few classes and seminars for their undergraduate and postgraduate students... He, a researcher from Oregon and myself shared the advisory of a postgraduate student... 

At the end of each year, since we started to work together, my wife and myself went to their house for the last dinner of the year. My wife even cooked a few deserts they loved. 

They sometimes gave us a ride on their Van, if we accidentally saw them on an Avenue next to the University, on which they passed right after leaving their baby daughter in the kindergarten. They even asked us if we wanted the baby tub of their baby daughter, when we told them that we wanted to have a baby. 

I was beside him during the Earthquake... on the third floor of the soon-to-be-damaged building... and I saw them so preoccupied –his wife was in another building of the University and their daughters were at their schools, a few miles away– and I saw them helping a couple of women whom had lost their minds, as soon as the Earthquake finished...

On Wednesday's night, we knew via Whatsapp that he had been found in a small town in Oaxaca. The message was brief and sad: it said it weren't good news. 

On Thursday's morning it was official: he was dead. 

The circumstances of his death are suspicious.
The authorities seem to have an urge to close the case as soon as possible.

They say he commited suicide. It is unreal. 
A few of his colleagues –including me– have a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology. 
We don't think so.
He was the most positive person I have ever knew. 
He had five kids. The younger of them has four years old.  

His pupils say that on the previous days of his missing, he was so optimistic. 

Finally, after two years, the authorities of the University had told him that, at the end of October, he and her wife will have a new lab... inside the University... and so they will have an appropriate space to continue with their experimental research... and so they will not longer have to pay a rent, with their own money, for a space a few blocks away from the University... 

His pupils say that he and his wife were making plans to celebrate it with a big travel in boat across the ocean. 

No one around him, agrees with this suicidal hypothesis. 
Some journalists have spread the new that his family accepted that he was depressed. 
None of this is true. 

I still can't believe it. 
I can't believe I will not see him ever again.

The last time I saw him was on July.
It was the quarterly progress examination of a postgraduate student. 

As usual, he hugged me and he seemed pretty happy. 

At the end of the exam, we walked downstairs.

He gave me the cellphone number of one of his friends.
His friend was looking for a younger researcher. She was able to interview some candidates in order to contract one of them. He thought I could be interested. I was the third person he told about it. I got a new job on January. The other two persons are still postdocs. 

He started to smoke.
I wanted to ask him which were his thoughts about the last strike on the University.

On April, I saw him and I saw his wife at some protests against the three month strike.
(I even uploaded a couple of videos of these protests on my YouTube Channel.)
It was such a disturbing situation that we didn't talk at all. I had no money. I had to spend all my savings to survive. I had no patience to talk to anyone. 

Back then, on July, I wanted to ask him which were his thoughts about unionized professors... but we spoke very few. He had to see someone else. 

Then, I went to the office we shared for the last two years –since we lost our building–, to say Hi to her wife. She was really warm and she was really happy to see me. I knew things weren't cool at all, at the office. 
It seemed that she and his husband had been threatened by members of the new administration –those who had left them without a workspace since the Earthquake of 2017– and she wasn't happy at all. It was weird. She's one of the most passionate scientist I have ever met. 

These guys of the new administration seemed to have an urge to occupy the office, no matter if it wasn't their office and no matter if my colleagues saw it as a temporary asylum... because the new administration had not assigned them an appropriate space. 
It seemed more important to them to have the office rather than to give to my colleagues a decent space to continue with their experimental research. 

I tried to distract her and I asked her for her advice.
I' was about to become an Editor in a Neuroscience Topic in an Open Access Journal, and she was Editor of this Journal a few years ago. 

We said Goodbye. 

On this awful weekend I sent her a couple of messages. 
She didn't give an answer. I understand her. She said –no doubt about it– there were the worst days of her life.

Last Friday, it was the funeral of his husband.

At the main entrance of the room, it was a photograph of the seven members of the family.
Later, she said to her father in law that they took that photograph on December, a couple of years ago. 

It was so heartbreaking. His husband looked so happy and smiled, as we, who knew him, saw him daily. 

When I saw her widow, we hugged and I was unable to say something smart. 
She told me that she thought that she wouldn't find her husband's body... and that it gave her some peace of mind. 

I was unable to say something. I didn't find the appropriate words to give her comfort.

My wife and myself were in the funeral until the next day. 
We spoke with colleagues and pupils. 

I feel terrible. I'm still on shock. 
I would like to help her widow somehow, but I dunno what to do or to say. 

I met her when I was about to start my postgraduate studies, more than ten years ago. 
Then she was about to obtain her PhD degree. She's about my age. 
We were professors at the School of Psychology. 
Sometimes we saw each other and spoke a few words. 

I cannot stop thinking of them. 
We shared so many memories. It's awful and painful.
I remember both of them being the most pacifist and friendly persons I have ever met. 

Since I knew of his death, I've been thinking on this song. 

In one of our last conversations on Monday, almost a year ago, he confessed that he was a big fan of Queen. One day after,I just had seen the movie of Freddie Mercury and I told him so.

He asked me if the movie had sexual or violent or inappropriate scenes... so he can get his four old year-daughter to see it to the movie theatre... 

I never knew if he watched it.
I will remember him as the enthusiastic and smiling guy he was.  

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Innuendo

Cuando Pase El Temblor

On September 19th, I woke up earlier than usual. I had a nightmare and I couldn't fell asleep again. I felt somewhat nervous and anxious. I had a bad feeling and I started to read the news on my cellphone, to get rid off that bad feeling. 

Against my need to alleviate myself from the nightmare, almost all of the news were related to the 32nd anniversary of the devastating earthquake that destroyed a lot of buildings and lives in Mexico City in 1985. 

Back then I was just a child, but the news gave me the chills and I started to remember how I experienced that earthquake. 

It was such a surprise to realize that I avoid to think about it. 

  

I guess it was so awful that I never think of it. It's not a conscious act. 
I guess I repress all those memories related to that event. 
Then, in a few months, I was about to celebrate my fifth birthday, but I had a few weeks on the first grade of elementary school. 

Then, as I prepared myself to take a shower, I remembered. 

My dad was not present at that time. He had left home earlier and he was at Insurgentes Sur Avenue, waiting for a Van of the company he worked for. On the previous months, he had been sick. He almost had a nervous breakdown and the physician suggested him to not drive his car. He had a silver Volkswagen.  

We lived in the 5th floor, in a small apartment. 

When the earthquake started, I was having breakfast, just about to go to school. 
Suddenly everything started to move and I thought that I was ill because of the breakfast.
My mom hugged me and told me not to worry. 
It was a nightmare. Some things hanging on the walls of the apartment fall apart and broke.
It looked like the earthquake was never going to finish. 
The building moved like a small boat drifting on the gigantic sea.
The movement was fierce and unpredictable. 
It lasted just about two minutes, but nearly 20, 000 people died. 

A lot of people lost everything, in just about two minutes. 
Mom took me to the school and dad called her later.
None of the buildings around our apartment, looked damaged. 

We were fine -dad and mom and my brother and myself-, but scared.  

I had to stop reading the news, 'cause I was already worried and sad.

Late that day, at the University -and in the entire city- we had a simulation of an earthquake evacuation. Everything happened as it was supposed to happened. 

I was alone -my colleagues were occupied at another buildings of the University- and it made feel strange and abandoned.  

When the simulation finished, I still felt somewhat anxious and nervous -as early in the morning-, but I went back to work. 

My office is located on the 3rd floor of the heaviest building of the University. 

I was about to send documents for a CONACyT announcement. We needed money for research.   

At some point, I took a break. 

I was reading a paper of Neurobiology of Learning & Memory. 
It was an interesting study. Authors wanted to evaluate how sleep restriction affected both short- and long- term memories in Aplysia. Besides, they showed how a sleep opportunity of just a few hours, reverted the negative effect of sleep restriction. 

Simultaneously, my colleagues were talking about René Drucker -he just died a night before- and I was curious about what they think of him as a scientist. I have a published paper with him, and he also was advisor of my advisor.

People, usually not related to neurosciences, saw Drucker as an important scientist.
They don't even know that his most recognized papers are those related to his studies on sleep mechanisms in the cat, rather than his studies on Parkinson.

My colleagues said that he was once invited to a Parkinson conference and that he was not really welcome by the specialists. They even kinda hated him and thought he was so arrogant. 

I saw him once at a conference in an annual meeting of the Sociedad Mexicana para la Investigación y Medicina del Sueño, and he was really rude. 

He spoke of an old study -never published- about the relationship between depression and nicotine. It was supposed to be an awesome experiment with depressed women, but I thought it was weird that Drucker -or his student- decided to left it unpublished. 

Another possibility was that the paper, in fact, would have been rejected from an indexed journal. 

He treated my advisor so badly, like if my advisor were his slave. 

Nonetheless, when I had to do something with Drucker, he wasn't rude at all -he was present in my candidacy examination and I had to look for him several times-, but I refuse to accept that people are not dumb and that they don't read but have an opinion for everything.  

People are convinced by appearances.  

Suddenly, it started.

It seemed a light earthquake at the beginning, but it became violent soon. 
It felt like if an enormous worm crawled rapidly, moving everything at its. 

We left the office and just stopped in a security area, with other researchers and students. 
As the movement increased in intensity, a wall fall to the ground and then a window broke.
Women screamed and they put me nervous. I thought the building was about to collapse. 

I thought of my wife and cats.
They were also inside a building, but in the 5th floor. 

When it finished, I left the University.
My cellphone didn't work, so I couldn't communicate to my wife. 
The street was chaotic. People walked across the avenues. 
Traffic was at its highest. No public transport, no taxis were available. 

I had to walk for miles. 
As I walked I felt worst. I didn't know how my family was. 
All I knew came from the radio. News said that several buildings had collapsed. 

Nearly three hours after the earthquake, I got home. 
The building was OK, so my wife and cats. 

Today, I went back to the University.   
One of my colleagues, asked me to accompany him.
I've been so scared -I developed a nervous cough- and I haven't slept well. 

The building of the University in which I have worked for the last three years, it's so damaged that authorities have declared it is uninhabitable. 
Today a couple of colleagues and myself, fed the animals. 
I was so scared. I couldn't stop thinking what if another earthquake started precisely when we were inside the building. It was so extreme. 
The building is so damaged, that most of the researchers who worked in there just decided to sacrifice their animals. 
I was so nervous and scared, but I remained inside the building for almost two hours. 
Everything changed for us in a couple of minutes. 
I don't know when I'm going back to normal. 

Cuando Pase El Temblor