The Little Fidel In All Of Us

Oakland, Calif. — THE headline scrolled through the corner of my computer screen sometime after 10 on Friday night. Fidel Castro had died. It was news I’d been waiting to hear my entire life, and yet I hesitated.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe it, but rather, that the event was one we’d rehearsed so many times that now that it had actually happened, many of us — Cubans, both and off the island — were caught off guard.
Then the texts started coming in and I did what I’d done a million times before: give in to the pull of Fidel.
My cousins in Miami texted to say they were headed out to wave the flag and chant for a free Cuba.
In Spain, another cousin sobbed. The tension in her back, she said, had completely disappeared.
Read more at The New York Times.