The Day I Almost Lost My Mother in the Seville Train Station

Behind the Scenes explores “life, the universe and everything.” Today, it is a personal story of travel, grief, and roses.

It had been a long few days. Panama to Madrid. Madrid to Seville. I was jet lagged and excited. Spain!

The Seville train station was noisy and crowded with holiday passengers. Loud speakers announced arriving and departing trains.  We were looking for the taxi stand when I realized I only had two of the three items I was responsible for—my shoulder bag, my roller bag and fuck! Where was my backpack? OMG. I spun around, frantic.

“My backpack!” I yelled at Dianne. “I left it on the train!”

I hobbled as rapidly as I could, still recovering from a sprained ankle. I pushed my way through the stream of people coming into the station, desperate to get back to the train, car number 9 on platform 4. My backpack contained the usual toiletries and one irreplaceable item. I had to get it back. I had to.

I limped onto the platform just in time to see the train pulling away, gathering speed.

“No!”

My stomach clenched and my breath caught.

I pushed back through the now thinning crowd searching the posted signs for something, anything, that might help. If I could notify the train personnel, have someone meet the train at the next stop, wherever that might be, then maybe, just maybe I could get it back.

There! Customer Assistance (though it actually read Asistencia al Cliente, because, you know. Spain).

I stumbled into the brightly lit office and there, there at the end of the counter, in the middle of the counter, a uniformed woman was unzipping—my backpack. Oh! thank you, Jesus!

“That’s mine,” I blurted. “I left it on the train! Here’s my passport!”

She looked at me, looked at the backpack, hesitated. I could almost hear her thinking. “Is this woman a terrorist? A drug smuggler? A thief?”

Then she smiled, rezipped the bag, and slid it across the counter.

Relief flooded me. I thought, for an instant, that I might collapse. I stuttered words of gratitude as I slung the pack over my shoulder. Muchissima gracias! Gracias mil!

I thought about trying to explain why it was so important to get the bag back, but my Spanish wasn’t up to explaining that my mother was in that bag.

My mother, Virginia Johnson Worley, passed away last fall at the age of 96.

She lived a rich, well-travelled life. She taught kindergarten for almost thirty years and each summer she would take herself off to visit other countries. She would check into university short courses to study culture, languages, architecture.  She had once studied art history in Spain and had often talked about the magic of the Alhambra, the Moorish palace in Granada. She had always wanted to return there, but it hadn’t happened.

I knew already, at her memorial service, that I was going to go to Spain in the Spring. I resolved to take her with me. I carefully spooned a tablespoon or so of her ashes out of the simple polished wooden box given to us by the funeral home. I put her carefully into a small ivory jar I had had for decades and took her home to Panama.

I had been guarding it—her— for months. She had held the place of honor at the feet of the Buddha on our terrace. I spoke to her regularly. Lit incense. Toasted her with decent wine. Remembered her.

I promised her I would get her back to the Alhambra. Promised. And then, in a moment of distracted fatigue, I almost lost her. Again.

Grief is sneaky.

I thought I was done after the first waves ebbed. Her death was inevitable, she was 96, she was ready to go and I was ready, I thought, to let her go. But, then like sneaker waves that appear out of nowhere, the feelings would flood back, overwhelming me. Feelings of regret. Of guilt.  Of recognizing the lost moments. Of “Why didn’t I say thank you with more enthusiasm when you bought me the deep green pottery quiche dish that matched my kitchen counter perfectly?”

Moments when she gave advice in the name of motherly devotion, like “…you should leave that man!” and I only heard criticism, not care and concern.

I can only imagine how devastated I would have felt had I not recovered the backpack!

Dianne (my partner in life, travel, and questionable adventures) and I made our way from Seville to the Alhambra.

It was a glorious, warm, sunny day. We had made our reservations early, so avoided the long line of people waiting to buy tickets. I had a plan—and I had Mom securely in my handbag.

Mom had a beautiful, trained mezzo soprano voice. I have a memory of her, when I was a young girl, singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” an old timey ballad.  The lyrics end with something like we never more will part. Mom loved roses and yellow roses were her favorites.

We wandered through the garden paths appreciating the rainbows of flowers, the neatly trimmed shrubs. We admired the elaborate, lacelike plaster carvings adorning the soaring golden towers of the palace. We rounded a corner and there it was: the rose garden. Meticulously manicured beds of red, pink, white, and yellow roses. Color segregated and each bed caged by a short-wrought iron fence. The yellow roses, dozens and dozens of them in full bloom, were cheerful and beckoning. The sign on the fence was clear: Entrada Prohibida.

So here I was, at the Alhambra, standing by an exuberant garden of yellow roses. Dianne scouted around. No one in sight. We stepped over the fence. I unscrewed the lid to the little box, said a prayer, and sprinkled the last of her, my mother, onto a fabulous yellow rose bush.

At that moment, a security guard in neatly pressed grey trousers and a starched white shirt, strode down the path. He motioned strongly for us to get out. “¡Prohibida!”

We stepped back over the fence. We left. Mom stayed.

Mission accomplished. We did not look back.