A Bittersweet Return to Puerto Rico

in the six months since Hurricane Maria pummeled the island in September. Yet many have begun trickling back, though they must come to terms with a place where power outages are still frequent, businesses remain closed and hillsides are pocked with roof tarps.

Older people are especially vulnerable to this instability. More than 23 percent of the population in Puerto Rico is over 60, higher than anywhere else in Latin America. And that number is growing as young people leave.

By returning, Enrique and Emma were trading away access to worldclass medical care in New York City for the unpredictable conditions on the island they yearned for.

Magaly wanted her parents to stay in New York, where their children could tend to them. But José had given in.

“I see it as a safety issue,” Magaly said. “He’s going to fall.” “He falls here,” José answered. “But we’re here to rescue him,” she said.

“They’re sitting in that hotel room crying, wanting to be home,” he said.

Magaly fired back: “So we’re just dumping them in Puerto Rico?”

After the hurricane hit, hospitals on the island lacked power, and the sweltering heat could be deadly to the sick and the elderly. Concerned for her parents’ poor health, Omaira, who lived with them in Puerto Rico, flew with them on one of the many humanitarian flights ferrying Puerto Ricans to the mainland.

During the first few months, En- rique and Emma shuffled between their children’s apartments. In November, Enrique and Emma qualified for a federal program that provides temporary housing at hotels. They moved to one in Queens, but they never really acclimated and soon begged their children to fly them back to Puerto Rico.

Emma, soft-spoken and typically quiet, began complaining about the bitter cold and the endless days she spent staring out the hotel window.

“I don’t want this. I want to leave now,” Emma told Omaira one evening in February.

“When I was little, you protected me,” Omaira told her mother patiently. “Now, I’m protecting you.”

But even in New York, Omaira’s worst nightmares came true. Enrique fell one day, and two strangers had to help him up. In February, he was hospitalized for four days with the flu and later he had a severe brain hemorrhage that left his legs wobbly. Enrique now slurs most of his words.

“I want to die over there, not here,” Enrique said in the hotel. “New York City is for young people.”

José had decided it made no sense to defy his father. “I said, ‘ That’s it. We’re going to buy tickets, go down there, and work it out,’ ” he said.

The couple’s two- story concrete house had been largely spared by the storm, but the wooden front door was split in half. Still, they were home, 148 days after they had left.

Enrique wobbled toward the winding staircase. He grabbed the railing, nearly missing the first step. He caught his breath, then took another. He swayed slightly before regaining his balance.

Emma shrieked and turned to José for help.

“Let him do it alone,” José told his mother. “I’m not going to be here to help him.”

When Enrique built the house two decades ago after retiring, he didn’t foresee that the stairs would become a hazard. His children have begged him to move to the first floor, but he has stubbornly refused.

Enrique inspected his home. Some window screens had holes. The water pump was broken and the stove burner had to be fixed. He flicked on the light switch. At least there was power.

Several days after José had returned to New York, Enrique was treated in an emergency room for several hours. “I got a call from him and he was slurring his words more than usual,” Omaira said.

While unattended, Emma had left a water faucet running, which had left them without water for days. Then, their refrigerator broke down.

Omaira suspected her father had become anxious, complicating his breathing.

“I’ve never seen him cry,” she said. “He was sobbing.”

Still, every day, Enrique insists on climbing the 16 steps to his doorstep.

In failing health, but wanting ‘to die over there.’