That hospital room should have been full of joy. Juanes had come to celebrate the birth of the first grandson of the family. He found his mother and aunt in tears, in the dark.
It was 1992. His older sister, Luz Cecilia Aristizábal, was just 28 years old and had become a mother. After childbirth, however, a severe hemorrhage provoked dramatic complications: the young woman entered a state of very serious compromise of consciousness, from which she no longer recovered.
For the family thus began a story completely different from what he had imagined to live.
As the child grew up, his mother remained there, present but unattainable. Alongside Luz Cecilia, the mother and an aunt remained, who for years took care of her.
Juanes told how much that moment changed the whole family. The birth that should have represented a new beginning coincided with what he defined the hardest blow of their lives.
His mother, in particular, dedicated a huge part of her existence to her daughter. Day after day, year after year, he continued to assist her with the hope and love of those who do not want to abandon a loved one, even when time seems to have stopped.
And time in that story was very long.
Luz Cecilia remained in that condition for 27 years, until his death in 2019.
Almost three decades therefore separate that day of 1992 from his death. In the meantime, her daughter became adult without being able to live with her mother the relationship that they both should have.
For Juanes, behind the success and international career, this family wound remained: the memory of having entered a hospital thinking of participating in a party and discovering, in a few moments, that the life of his family had just changed forever.
A story that also tells another dimension of pain: not only loss, but the long expectation of those who continue to take care of a loved one for years, building their everyday life around its presence.