Saying When in San Miguel
Elsmarie Norby, a local legend in historic San Miguel de Allende, passed on August 6, 2024, surrounded by her family. The news came in the wake of returning from my latest trip to Central Mexico. Only a week prior I had visited the pioneering founder of Ojalá Niños and was surprised to see how close she was to the end. But I chose not to acknowledge it, wearing a mask of good cheer instead so that she, and I, would feel more comfortable.
I remember experiencing the same feeling when I took my turn next to my dying grandmother’s bed, but I was only a teenager then. How was it that after so much life and writing—as a professional communicator, no less—I could be at a loss for words?
In hindsight, knowing Elsa as I did, I believe she would have preferred a more frank conversation about the inevitability she faced. She was never one to ignore the reality of life’s harsher side for the sake of social convention. Her deep conviction for caring for the children and mothers of indigenous San Miguel Viejo, and society’s most vulnerable people in general, was a gift I appreciated as both her friend and editor of her memoir, “The Open Gate,” which one reviewer called “the bible on how to be a good expatriate.”
Beyond our poignant reminiscence about her life and legacy in San Miguel, what I recall most about our final meeting was her look of sorrow. She was grateful for the support of her family and caregivers, but grief-stricken by her loss of independence.
“I can no longer do anything for myself.”
Her mournful expression in that moment was her way of saying goodbye without uttering the word.
Every Life Story Will End but the Love Lives On
Words often fail us in moments of overwhelm. There may be plenty to say, but we don’t trust our ability to say it, so we rely on social etiquette to skirt the truth and stay at the surface level. Unfortunately, what we give up for the sake of comfort amidst suffering is the chance to dig deep enough to reach the space where mutual healing can happen.
Speaking of social etiquette, I am reminded of “say when,” a phrase rooted in dining etiquette of the 1500s to avoid over-pouring beverages or serving too much food. The courtesy of asking recipients to say when they’ve had enough gradually became an idiom in the 19th century, symbolizing the act of seeking direction. More recently, “say when” has been popularized in films such as Tombstone, when Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday dryly used it to challenge his nemesis. Thirty years later, his brilliant delivery of that line, emblazoned on t-shirts and coffee mugs, still conveys the ultimate show of strength beneath a calm demeanor.
How Elsa calmly yet fearlessly faced life and death reminds me of another founder, Barry Annino. When I first met these energetic, larger-than-life personalities, whose friendship with each other now makes so much sense to me, I did not foresee editing their legacy stories. While these editorial projects led to some of the most significant experiences of my writing life, they each seemed to happen by accident.
Capturing life stories found me at a time of searching for sustainability work in a market that had yet to materialize. I remember back in 2016, on my first visit to San Miguel, how much I wanted the uncertainty to stop. I was ready to say “when” to an independent consulting career that had become a professional purgatory. Exhausted by working alone, but yet to discover what would come next, I gladly shared my spare writing time with my friends, Debora and Barry, after his shocking terminal diagnosis. The story I helped capture during hospital visits with Barry eventually became a memoir “Little Things Matter: A Story of Suffering, Survival and Legacy,” co-authored by Debora, who carries on their work as the leader of the Little Things Matter Foundation.
As cliché as it may be, life happened while I was making other plans. Eventually, the clouds parted and I was able to join a company in a role that would put me back on my chosen path in corporate sustainability. Along the way, a fortuitous offer from an investor prompted me to launch Heirloom Digital. At times, I’ve regarded this service to capture life stories as a step already completed along my professional path—but it’s also a door that remains open, like Elsa’s gate was, to a journey of deeper connectedness to others.
Words still fail me sometimes, but the words I managed to capture in writing with Elsa, Barry, and others serve as memorials to cherished relationships and lives well lived. Their final chapters may have closed, but the love lives on.
The lesson I’ve learned from talking with pioneers at the end of their lives is they dwell far less on whatever problems they encountered in creating their ventures, and more on the impact they had on people, often focusing on specific relationships. Elsa used to glow as she shared stories of the difference that certain people in San Miguel Viejo made in her life—just as my grandmother, who was also an educator, used to as she showed me the bracelet her students gave her, remembering each by name.
As we wrestle with what it means to succeed in this frenetic and rapidly changing world, we would do well to realize that the successes we’ll appreciate most, in the end, are not our professional wins, but the triumphs we achieved for ourselves and others in those personal moments when we wanted to say “when” but kept going instead.
“ The Open Gate: The Story of Ojalá Niños, a Creative Community for Otomí Families in San Miguel Viejo, Mexico” is a bilingual memoir by Elsmarie Norby, with a foreword by Debora Annino and a history of the region by José Arturo Tirado Morales, is available for purchase at Amazon. All proceeds benefit the learning programs of Ojalá Niños, whose work continues with support from the Little Things Matter Foundation.
