And finally it happened. I had been waiting for it. Rocio Cevallos He comes to a white room and there he was, Matthewhis son, all dressed in white, handsome, 9 years old. There were other people next to him, including Nayiahis 10-year-old daughter.
Mathew hugs her and whispers in her ear: “Mom, don’t worry, everything will be fine for you.”
Rocío tells him: “I don’t want you to let me go, I want you to keep hugging me, just hug me.”
“Mom, I have to tell you that everything is going to be fine for you, don’t worry,” Mathew answers. Then he walks away and adds: “You know very well, mom. Do you remember when I had to do my homework, when I had to do my jobs and you were always there supporting me? That’s how I’m going to be that day. You don’t worry about anything and we’re all going to be there with you, all of us.”
The conversation ends. Rocío opens her eyes and finds herself asleep in bed. He realizes that it was a dream. The most beautiful he has ever had in his life.
She begins to cry and at the same time feels very happy because Mathew and Nayia, her children, ages 13 and 10, died in the 2016 earthquakeEven if it was in dreams, they came to visit her, to give her a message.
It was in 2024. At that time, Rocío had a tumor in her neck and had to have surgery. That day, when he woke up from sleep, he went to work. Halfway there she receives a call from the doctor: “Rocío, you have surgery on Sunday morning, April 8.”
There he understood everything. Mathew came to tell her that everything was going to be okay and she believed him. She went to the surgery calm, serene, as if she were on vacation, she says. And, sure enough, everything went well.
“That dream was wonderful, it was wonderful,” he says.
Life after April 16
Rocio Cevallos lives in Blanketcenter of Manabi. She is a private employee, a wife and ten years ago she lost her only two children in the earthquake of April 16, 2016. The epicenter was in Pedernales, but it affected Manabí and Esmeraldas.
A year later she underwent fertility treatment to have a baby. It was a long and difficult process, he says. She became pregnant with not one, but two: twins, a boy and a girl.
And there is more. They were due to be born in May 2018, but they went ahead and were born in April, the same month their first two children died.
“As my process was somewhat in vitro, It was known that I had to give birth at the end of May, but not in April. Thank God, even though it wasn’t their turn yet, they didn’t need a thermal crib, they automatically went into my arms. I told God: ‘You are the one who knows everything, please, I don’t want them to be born in April’, but I said, inside me, I know that they are going to be born in April. Something told me that they were going to be born in April, but I never imagined that it would be like this, on April 28, imagine,” he says.
A home rebuilt from scratch
Rocío is sitting in a small chair in the patio of her house, in the neighborhood Saint Peter. It is a large place, where a golden retriever 10 years old, he moves his tail slowly and gives affection to every visitor who arrives there.
He is 46 years old. She is a selfless mother, grateful to God, because Misael and Nayaritahis twins, have become his reason for being and existing, his driving force every day.
10 years after the Pedernales earthquake: the couple that survived 36 hours and heard others die
—How have these ten years been for you?
“What can I tell you?” he says. “For me, these ten years have been a constant struggle with reality and what I have experienced. The reality is that my children are no longer here and what I have experienced is that I have my twins, so I have to move on,” he adds.
Rocío is a strong woman. Try to have a fluid conversation, a hard testimony without falling into tears, but it is difficult. The memories hurt and, in the middle of the story, there comes a moment when his voice begins to break.
“It was something very hard for me, because, even though they have been gone for ten years, it seems that they have never left me, because it is basically closing my eyes and seeing them. But the reality, when I open my eyes, is that they are no longer there and I just have to live off their memories,” he says, already with traces of tears behind his glasses.
Then he continues: “Every April 16 for me is nostalgic. The simple fact that the month of April arrives for me is a very hard month, with many emotions, because that will never go away and it is there. This is my reality. This pain never goes away. Talking about them and remembering them is painful, my voice closes and that will happen to me all my life.”
The day everything fell apart
That April 16his two children were alone in an apartment on the third floor of a building, located in the center of Blanket. Rocío was working and her husband had gone to the workshop with the vehicle.
“Before leaving, around six in the afternoon, my husband asked them if they wanted to go with him and they told him no, that they were just waiting for him at home. He didn’t want to go out, he said: ‘I’m going, I’m not going, I’m going, I’m not going’, he was in doubt. If he had stayed, he would have died too,” she says.
At 6:45 p.m. the earthquake occurs. The five-story building was left like a bunch of cards. Seven people died there.
Rocío arrived and saw the fallen building, the destruction of the earthquake, and she just wanted her children to be taken out. The rescuers told him that they could not bring in machinery because there were people alive and they had to wait.
Already on Monday, when it was found that everyone had died, she went to a meeting of the COE and asked that they send him a machine to remove the bodies of his children.
“I remember that the mayor (Jorge Zambrano) was in a meeting and I told him there, in front of everyone: ‘I am a mother and you are a father. My children are buried there. I need them to send me machinery right now, because I am not going to allow my children to be buried there. So, at this moment, if you don’t send me machinery, I’m not going to move here.’ Within a few hours they were already working on the site,” he says.
The bodies were removed on the night of Monday, April 18. Rocío and her husband went through the worst moments of their lives.
Believe again, start again
“I never expected that, because I already had a life made up and that life vanished from me, nothing was done to me in a matter of seconds. But, within everything, I have always felt chosen by God. I faithfully believe in him. Despite everything that has happened to me, I always believe in him, because he has never let me go from his hand. I never renounced God. What I did was cling to him. That is why that was his reward and, even though my babies have one condition, they are two wonderful angels,” he says.
Nayarita has down syndrome and Misael was diagnosed with autism. Rocío says that theirs is a different, pure love, something authentic, beautiful.
“I have always believed in a home with children. And I always had the dream of having a family. And by having my children, they were everything to me. And when I lost them, I was left alone. I was left empty-handed. Only with my uniform, because I lost everything. I lost family, I lost my house, I lost everything. And I had to start again from scratch. And I wanted to try, even though I didn’t succeed in the process. And thank God, he has always been with me and helped me,” he adds.
Two worlds, one love
Rocío says that sometimes she sees something of her deceased children in the twins. They have a lot of their brothers. The girl, due to her condition, is very different physically, because she is “chinita”. But the boy looks a lot like his sister: physically he is the same. In addition, he is affectionate like Mathew, eats very well like him and is very attached like Nayia.
“The child seems to be both in one, because my girl is a world apart. She is a wonderful world, she is tender. On the other hand, he comes in another way, I don’t know. They are two different worlds that I am learning to know and they are wonderful. They are so cute. My girl is very attached to her father, she sleeps with her father, she doesn’t speak yet. On the other hand, my son is all with me, when sleeping, all his mother, like my Mathew, that’s how he was,” expresses.
Rocío is silent and the silence in the patio of her house is filled with the panting of the golden retriever.
She knows that April will always be a double-edged month: the month where the earth opened to take her life and the month where destiny returned it to her in duplicate.
It is a divine chance that Rocio Cevallos does not question; he just lives it. At 46 years old, she has understood that motherhood, for her, is a bridge that does not break: an invisible thread that unites the children who stayed in the dream with those she hugs and fills her with love. (YO)
