Remembering Papi

Three soldiers from The Salvation Army in Puerto Rico reflect on the tragedy that changed their lives.

When sisters Lydmarie, Alondra, and Lyanet Rivera began attending The Salvation Army Kroc Center in Guayama, Puerto Rico, in 2014 with their grandmother Lydmia, their father—their papi—Miguel A. Rivera Rodriguez saw the positive impact on his three daughters.

As a musician himself, he liked that the Army was teaching his girls to play instruments. And even though Miguel had not been a regular churchgoer for most of his own life, he was a believer who loved the Lord and wanted his daughters to have God and The Salvation Army in their lives as much as they had each other.

None of them could have expected how important this would be for their family, years later.

“On Jan. 27, 2022, our father did not come home after work. The next day, we were told that he had been in an off-road accident on his motorcycle and taken to the hospital,” says Lydmarie, now 24. “It was concerning, but not too surprising; he had been in quite a few minor accidents on his bike in the past. It seemed like he was always a victim of unfortunate events that he somehow overcame.”

Weeks before the accident, Miguel had been in and out of the hospital with COVID‑19, eventually making a full recovery. Still, the sisters all felt an uneasiness this time, though none wanted to be the first to say it. The next morning, they learned the truth: The accident had killed Miguel at the scene.

“In our shock and pain, we all thought the same thing: God had been preparing and warning us about this for over a month. Maybe even longer,” says Lydmarie.

Mourning

“We thought that our father’s death would bring us closer together. But at first, the opposite was true,” says Alondra, 21. “We were three sisters suffering a loss of someone we deeply loved. Our pain was the same and different for each of us. We coped, mourned, and even lashed out in our own ways.”

“There was a void left in our home. We didn’t even admit to each other how truly broken we felt until half a year after our father’s passing,” remembers Lyanet, 19.

Lydmarie felt guilt. That January morning, she had borrowed the family van, which made Miguel have to take his motorcycle to work. Lydmarie wondered if he’d still be alive today if she hadn’t taken the van. As the oldest sister, she also felt that it was her responsibility to put on a strong face for her family.

“I remember how everyone always asked how my sisters or our mother were doing during all this. I wasn’t really asked how I was very much,” she recalls.

Alondra was angry. She didn’t understand why this had happened to their family and how they could get past losing the head of their household. “It was an impossible, painful sight to see our mother bravely argue with insurance agencies, fill out paperwork, and gather important documents, all while she mourned him along with us,” she says.

Lyanet felt weary from staying up nights, and she was falling asleep during school hours. “From the first day, there were times when I would see the shadow of a male figure, or hear a voice that reminded me of Papi, and I almost expected him to walk back into all our lives,” says Lyanet. And as she mourned, Lyanet couldn’t help feeling a hint of resentment toward her older sisters—they had gotten to share more years and milestones with their father.

“If we continued down these paths, we would end up unhappy our whole lives,” says Lyanet. “It was up to the three of us to focus on the memories that we did have with our father, and work together to take this unbearable pain, and let it transform us into stronger women.”

Honoring

Two years after Miguel’s death, the sisters have settled into a reluctant, but welcome, inner peace. Holidays and anniversaries come and go with a heaviness inside their hearts and home, and they still wonder how different each of their lives would be if their father were still with them.

“None of us ever want to feel like we’re holding back our own feelings and questions about his absence,” says Alondra. “We also wanted to find ways to keep some sort of normalcy in our schedules and lives as we mourned, and that meant continuing our role as soldiers at the Guayama Corps.”

“The day Papi died, Captains Cristina and Dabiel Valdés, who were our corps officers at the time, left their vacation to come back and give us comfort. The Army helped us financially, knowing that our mother was out of work,” says Lydmarie. “At our father’s service, which the Guayama Corps did for us, there was a beautiful crowd of uniformed soldiers and officers who came to pay their respects. There, we saw faces whom we had only met once or twice, yet they were here to offer their condolences. We don’t know how we would have gone through these two years without the Army by our side.”

Lydmarie received the love and support of Hands On, The Salvation Army’s overseas mission work program for young adults, and CAST, the Eastern Territory’s traveling Creative Arts Service Team. In both of these ministries, she met people who cared about her and her well-being, showing that those who try to be the strongest can still let others help carry their pain.

Alondra, who is studying to be a social worker, says she’s fascinated by what she has studied about trauma and loss, and how death is another part of the gift of life. When people tell her that her attitude and street smarts remind them of her father, it’s humbling and bittersweet.

Despite Lyanet’s initial feelings of bitterness that she didn’t have as much time with their father as her sisters did, she knows that every joy and pain happens through God, and He has a plan for their family. “It can be hard to understand, but that’s where our own faith needs to be the strongest. Our father would be happy to know that our Heavenly Father is still in all our lives, and through both of them, we are growing, succeeding, and living as he would want us to.”

Lydmarie says, “We each have a necklace with a different charm to remind us of our father. Lyanet has a tear, Alondra has four hearts joined together, and I have a tiny motorcycle.”

Sometimes she’s asked why she would wear a symbol of something that could be viewed as a graphic reference to their father’s death; neither Lydmarie nor her sisters see it that way.

“We remember who he was, and what he loved,” says Lydmarie. “This is another way of honoring Papi.”