MIAMI — I first heard about Fidel Castro 's death in a text message from my mother.
I read the short note — "Fidel Castro is dead" — and immediately ran for the door. I had to update the Cuban dictator's obituary that I had written years before. I had to race to Little Havana to document the Cuban-American party that erupted on the streets. I had to write story after story about Castro's death and its effect on the island's politics, economy and international relations.
A few hours later, in my first calm moment during a long night, I sat back and realized just how fitting it was that the first word came from my mother. Of all the repercussions and complicated angles to examine following Castro's death, for me, it all came down to family.
To most Americans, Fidel Castro exists only in the abstract. He's a symbol, the basis for conversations about politics, socialism, universal health care and free education. But for the nearly 2 million Americans with Cuban roots, it's impossible to articulate how much he directly affected our lives.
As I thought about that distinction, memories of my relatives long since dead came flashing back.
I thought of the grandfather I never met because he spent 30 years in Fidel's prisons, dying before he could reunite with his family in Miami.
I thought of my three other grandparents who escaped Fidel's regime, expecting that they would return home soon, but died before they ever could.
I thought about my father, just 15 and alone when he was forced to flee the country, so long ago that he rode a ferry that used to run between Havana and Key West. He, too, died before he could return to his homeland.
I thought about my mother, who could have stayed in Cuba but left in 1965 because she saw the direction Fidel was taking the country and decided she didn't want to raise her infant daughter and son (my older brother) there.
I thought about all my aunts and uncles and cousins and "Cuban cousins" — what you would call friends of the family — who all suffered their own tragedies in Fidel's Cuba, who all had to leave everything behind and start anew in the U.S.
And I thought about my place in all of that. When people ask me about my background, I sometimes joke that I'm a Fidel baby. My mother came from a well-to-do family in the southern Cuban city of Cienfuegos, my father from a military family in the eastern rural city of Las Tunas. They would have never met in Cuba. Fidel forced them into exile in Miami, where they met and eventually had my other brother and me.
In other words, without Fidel, I wouldn't exist. It's always been a strange and troubling thought, but that describes so many of the feelings coursing through the Cuban-American community right now.
Ask any Cubans about their family and they will talk your ear off describing what Fidel put them through. Thousands died fighting him, thousands languished in his prisons, untold numbers drowned trying to flee his country and every single one of them had their lives drastically altered by him.
In the coming days, foreign leaders from around the world will descend on Cuba to pay tribute to the man so many consider a revolutionary icon. They will praise his work to educate his people. They will give thanks for the Cuban doctors who have not only tended to their people but criss-crossed the globe helping others. Some will hail his 50-year battle against the imperialist Yankees to the north.
But when you hear all of that, I only ask that you stop for a second, find a calm moment and think about your own family. Imagine your grandfather whittling away in a prison. Picture your father as a teenager, forced to leave his family behind and start over in a new land. Envision your mother holding her babies as she leaves her home for the last time.
And then picture people around the world praising the man responsible for doing all of that to your family.
Gomez is USA TODAY's Miami-based correspondent.
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