RIO PIEDRAS, Puerto Rico — Every week for the past months, Raquel Lopez Oliver and her family wonder, “What do we do on Sundays?”
Lopez Oliver remembers a time when most of her family gatherings would take place at the home of her husband's grandmother, known to everyone as Abuela (grandmother) Paulina. On Sundays, that was the place to visit.
That tradition ended exactly one year ago after Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico and took the lives of nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest U.S.-based natural disaster in 100 years, which has come to define a sad turning point in the island's history and for Lopez Oliver’s family.
“She was like the matriarch of our family, the life of the party,” Lopez Oliver said. “My most beautiful memory of her is that she would memorize verses from the bible, because she used to say that if she ever became blind or with Alzheimer's, she wanted to be able to pray and she would make us learn them with her.”
Paulina, 94, had been hospitalized at the Cardiovascular Center on September 19, just before Maria made landfall. During the storm, the glass windows from the hospital’s second floor exploded and patients were relocated to the first floor.
With no power and a generator that only lasted two days, the health conditions of many elderly residents deteriorated quickly.
“She looked at us scared, because she could not breathe,” said Lopez Oliver. A day later, Abuela Paulina passed away.
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Funeral homes were at full capacity. The family had no other option but to cremate her body even though her dying wish was to receive a Christian burial due to her deep religious background. It took the family one month to receive her ashes.
At the same time, Lopez Oliver’s family was living in a shelter after their home in the town of Levittown flooded during the storm. And although they were reeling from material losses and from a loved one’s death, they connected with other organizations, churches and municipal officials to help other Puerto Ricans in need.
"I still remember spending three consecutive days without eating. There was barely any money for food, the supermarkets were empty. It was horrible," said one resident.
And a year after Hurricane Maria, the family is still fixing their damaged home and some of their family members left the island following the devastation and the death of Abuela Paulina.
“We’re getting used to a new normal. And as part of that process, we have to cry and mourn because we’re basically burying our old life in Puerto Rico,” said Lopez Oliver.
Near the light rail line station, known as "Tren Urbano," remnants of that “old life in Puerto Rico” were still visible.
Government offices and businesses are open and classes for students from the University of Puerto Rico and a nearby public school are in session. But mentions of Hurricane Maria jolt people into an event that defined a new normal in Puerto Rico.
“I don’t even want to remember it,” said Porfirio Guerrero, a tailor who has worked at his own shop for three decades near the Calle Roble rail station.
And yet, Guerrero is reminded of Hurricane Maria every time he goes to work at “Sastreria Pachín,” his tailoring shop.
He had to wait more than four months for the island’s electric authority to restore power back in Rio Piedras. It was then that he could afford to reopen his business since he had used all of his savings to pay his home’s rent.
"I still remember spending three consecutive days without eating. There was barely any money for food, the supermarkets were empty. It was horrible," Guerrero said.
A year after the hurricane, he still hasn’t been able to make up for the economic losses from the time he was out of business.
“Right now, I don’t even have enough to fix my car. It broke six months ago and I haven’t been able to do anything about. I’ve been taking public transportation ever since,” Guerrero said.
Mental anguish, slowly healing
Suzanne Roig, the main administrator of Puerto Rico’s Office of Mental Health Services and Addiction Prevention, known by its Spanish acronym as ASSMCA, said emotional recovery could take up to 18 months after a disaster occurs.
According to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration’s (SAMHSA), post-disaster recovery processes take place in six phases. Based on her work at ASSMCA, Roig puts Puerto Rico in the fifth phase known as the disillusionment phase, in which “optimism turns to discouragement.”
“But what we lived was not a disaster, it was a catastrophe. So for the purposes of our work, we’ve extended the [SAMHSA] plan to two years,” Roig said.
As Puerto Rico faces Hurricane Maria’s one year anniversary, Roig said the mental health recovery trends they’ve been seeing in the island are consistent with what science and research suggest, like a spike in suicides five months after Maria.
However, Roig is hopeful that amid difficulties and setbacks, Puerto Ricans are overcoming Hurricane Maria’s havoc how they can.
“Mental health is about our emotions. Sometimes we have our highs and we’re happy, and sometimes not so much. That’s what we’re seeing in our people. However, when we analyze what we’ve seen at a global scale, we can say that more people are now stronger. But others are still in need of support, even though they feel like they’ve recovered,” Roig said.
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