José George Thomas was my oldest brother. He was born on December 3, 1937, just eleven months after my parents got married and eleven months before I was born. It is easy to imagine the expectations and hopes that my parents had placed on him. He was the child of an immigrant Asturiano and a first-generation Spanish-Cuban woman. He was the primogenito, the one that was going to carry on not only the last name Marinas, but also the one that was supposed to fulfill their dreams.
He was a very handsome baby: strong, blonde, and with big black eyes. He was called José because of my father, and George Thomas because of his godfather, the administrator of the Central España. I guess that the administrator and his wife were very happy with this godchild because they constructed a new room in my parents’ house just for him. It was a room with a beautiful piso de mosaico (floor of mosaic) of green and red, white and gold. They even bought him a bedroom set with Walt Disney’s flying elephant on the door of the cabinet and on the back and front of the bed.
I was told that he gave my nickname Nena to me. My parents related that when they asked him to take care of me, or pointed at me and called me “la nene”, he always repeated “la Nena,”. Both of my parents proudly told me it, over and over again. I used to watch the photos that my mother had of him alone or him with me and I imagined him and me playing together, holding our hands while we walked around the porch of the house. And I imagined when we accompanied my mother to visit abuela Encarnación in Reglita. I don’t know how or why, but I feel that he has been and still is my buddy in life.
I also have a recurrent image associated with José George Thomas, an image that has been with me always. I see myself standing up in one corner of the porch of my Uncle Baldomero’s house, across the street from my parents’ house. If I close my eyes I see my little hands holding the handrail of the veranda and looking to my home, to the persons and flowers that were entering my house. I was around two and a half years old when he died, and although I didn’t have the age to understand, I knew that something unusual had happened. I feel such a pain inside my heart when I, once again, mentally reproduce the image. We know that every emotionally meaningful experience—whether joyous or painful—is stored in memory and has a lasting impact on a baby’s developing nervous system.. Even more, I learn that we remember every emotion and physical sensation from our earliest days, and although we have no clarity about the events that took place, those memories influence our lives forever. Knowing all those factors, I wonder what effect the death of Jose George Thomas had in my psyche, specially the day after his burial when I returned to my home with my parents.
José George Thomas died at age three and a half as a result of a gastro-intestinal infection. I have listened to the history from my mother’s mouth and from my father’s mouth over and over again. Always the same history. Always with the same tone, with the same emotions. Their words were creating in my imagination, one by one, and the different images that traumatized my poor parents everlastingly. They said, “He was very sick for a few days. Dr. Angulo had tried all the possible remedies. They decided to bring him to Habana, the capital, for a good specialist. They took a rented car, my father in front with the driver and my mother in the backseat with Dr. Angulo and José George Thomas on her lap. When they were near to El Cotorro, a small town in the periphery of Habana, he died.” And my mother came back with her dead son on her lap for nearly three hours while they drove to Central España for his funeral.
The Italian sculptor Michelangelo turned a giant piece of granite into the famous Pieta—the Blessed Mother Mary with her Son on her lap after His crucifixion. Every time that I see that piece of art, I place my mother in her place and José George Thomas in Jesus’ place. The image has such impact on me that during my young adult life I bought a small reproduction of the Pieta. I looked at that piece of art as if it were not Michelangelo’s work but as if were a reproduction of a very important part of my history, of my parents’ history, of my family history. That piece was with me until I left Cuba. I left it in my mother’s house and I have never asked where it went when my sister Yoya left Cuba in 2001.
In 1961, my father decided to retire from his work in the Departamento Comercial of the Central España, and he came to live with us in Habana. One of his last visits to Central España was to bring José George Thomas’ human remains to place him in El Cementerio de Colon, on the Panteón de los Masones. My older brother was in a small box of granite the size of a box of shoes. Since my father came after sunset and the cemetery was closed already, my parents placed the box in the dining room table with a few candles next to it and both of them spent their last night together with him: both of them with their primogenito, with José George Thomas.
When I went to Cuba in 2009 I was able to find in the same mausoleum, near to each other my mother, my father, my grandmother Encarnacion, and José George Thomas. My family of origin was there in Cuba, in El Cementerio de Colon. And my brother, my sister, and I are here, in the exile.
Since I left Cuba, I have had one small altar on a wall shelf of my room. There I have a small sculpture of Our Lady of Charity, the Patroness of Cuba. Next I have the photo of my father dressed up with the attire of the Masonic rite, the last photo of my mother, a photo of my brother José George Thomas and me, and a photo of my other two siblings, José Nestor and Gloria, resembling the same position that José George Thomas and I had. Every week I place fresh flowers on the shelf, and every day I light a candle. They represent my past and my present; they were and are my personal history, then and now.