IN MEMORY OF JOE PALOMERA. Mexico & New York City

Please feel free to google;  Joe Palomera,  Hart Island,  and check out the site there. 

Joe Palomera, born June 13, 1928 in Mexico. Joe was my husband for five years when we were both living in New York City. When we separated, we remained friends but lost touch in the last few years before his death on June 14th 2012, in New York City.

Joe was kind, loving and generous. Life wasn't always easy for him. All I knew was both from the years that I shared with him and from what he told me about the other years. Joe knew alot about poverty, homelessness and very hard times in so many other ways. I got pregnant in 1992, our first year together, and unfortunately I lost the baby by an ectopic pregnancy on May 18th 1992, when I was rushed into theater in Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. It was so hard for us both and we were also homeless at that time too, sleeping between a building on Columbus Circle to later sleeping just inside Central Park with other homeless whom Joe knew and respected. Everyone looked out for each other. We spent the next five years, struggling through homelessness on and off and traveling and hitching around the United States trying to see if we could get a better life but something always drew Joe back to New York City. We eventually separated in 1997 after just being too different and partly because I had got into bad health and decided to go back to Ireland to stay with my mum for a while. Joe and I remained good friends and spoke on the phone most weeks. I went back to the states for a visit in 2003 and we traveled around from NYC to Florida to Arizona to Tennessee and finally back to NYC. Joe cried the day that I went to the airport saying that he knew he'd never see me again. It broke my heart but I honestly thought that we would meet again. Sadly, we never did.

Joe is buried on Hart Island in New York City.  You can check out the website using his name for it.

I am in the process of writing a novel about my years in the states and my years with Joe.

En mi corazon para siempre. Hasta que nos volvamos a encontrar en cielo...............

Helen Kiely-O'Regan