Remembering Zulema Bilderbeck

You knew she was different just from her name. On March 7, 1956 Zulema Xenia Bilderbeck Coca de Brathwaite was born on the windy barren plains of the Bolivian altiplano, in the tiny military outpost of Corque, Oruro. By the end of her life she had lived across Bolivia, in Malawi, Africa, and across the United States before settling in Las Cruces, New Mexico as a dedicated mother, daughter, sister, wife, and teacher.

Zulema was the fourth and middle child of seven born to Jose Coca de Zabalaga and Hilda Coca de Brathwaite. Her father was a captain in the cavalry as the military ventured across the Bolivian hinterlands to build new towns in the wilderness. The family moved frequently, from where she was born in the highlands (above 12,000 ft!) to where they eventually settled in the thick jungle lowlands. She would tell us wild stories of how her father could sharpshoot animals from a moving horse or how boats would capsize while trying to cross wild, swolen rivers. Once the family settled in her hometown of Montero, and as she grew up, she would have more stories of her own.

As a child in Montero, she and her brothers and sisters led a rambunctious life. Imagine her scampering onto a moving truck to steal sugarcane, or climbing a guava tree and passing fruit down to her brothers. The kids would play epic games of hide and seek in the town plaza and tell stories in the streets until nightfall.

Throughout it all, Zulema Coca was a marimacho, a tomboy to the core. She always played soccer with the boys, and was the first pick on her brother’s team every time. She eventually went on to organize a girl’s soccer team in high school, and even the local boys came out to cheer for them. While in many respects she had an idyllic childhood, at the same time she took on adult responsibilities at a very early age.

At the age of eleven, she resolved to live financially independent from her father. After school she would work various jobs like selling popsicles and sweets to the neighborhood kids or helping her mom bake bread. In her early teens she held secretarial or accounting jobs with real responsibilities. Her brother still remembers her practicing typing drills at lightning speed on the typewriter at home. Over time she earned enough to support herself and more. She would help with expenses around the house and paid to put her little sister through private school. This was when she was sixteen. Later in her teens she stood out at her high school. She served officially as class president, but more significantly she was a passionate activist for her community. Whenever school funding was in jeopardy, she took to the streets and went so far as to organize several angry roadblocks in protest to make sure the authorities didn’t mess with her school.

A few years later, at one of her accounting jobs, she met John Noble Bilderbeck at the agricultural cooperative where she worked. After a long courtship, they married in Bolivia in 1975. Soon after, she gave birth to their first child, Jose Hermann Bilderbeck. She was several months pregnant with their second child, John Arthur, when the family moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he was born. This move marked the first time Zulema had been out of her country and away from her extensive supportive family. She felt this burden at the same time she was learning a new language, new customs, and learning whom she could trust in the United States. After more than 31 years of living away from her family, the pain of leaving her home in Bolivia never left her.

Although she always missed her home, Zulema Bilderbeck was not one to look back in regret. As a wife and mother, her stories continued on. In Malawi, Africa, she taught the local women how to fry plantains like they did in Bolivia, which opened up an entirely new source of income for the community. With the family, she experienced countless adventures in the wilds of that country, mudbogging in an old Toyota Landcruiser, evading elephant charges, or fishing her kids out of rivers and lakes that they probably shouldn’t have been swimming in.

When the family returned to the United States, they settled in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where she continued to raise her growing sons and started to pursue a degree in Accounting. Her university studies repeatedly stalled, however, for the sake of always being there for her children. It was in Arkansas that she discovered her love and talent for teaching young children at the local Montessori school. Eventually, the family moved yet again to Las Cruces, New Mexico, where she saw her two children graduate from high school and move away from home.

She was fiercely proud of her two boys, and in the years since they left home, she was with them for their proudest moments. On a trip to Alaska to visit John, she took on the outdoors like she did anything else: absolutely fearlessly. She walked Jose down the aisle for his wedding to Erica Bilderbeck, and together with Erica’s mother she united the two of them with a traditional matrimonial lasso. Her children lived far from home, but she always held them close in her heart.

For all the time in Las Cruces, however, Zulema had many other children to take care of: her students. “Mrs. Bilderbeck” taught for many years at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic School, and later, at Sunrise Elementary, Desert Hills Elementary, and University Hills Elementary. In every classroom, she always put her entire being into her teaching, mixing respect and character with love and laughter for each of “her kids.” There must be hundreds of children and parents in Las Cruces who appreciate the love that Mrs. Bilderbeck put into her work as an educator and mentor. Her family, including her mother from Bolivia, was so immensely proud of her when she crossed the stage to receive her degree, with honors, in Education, with a Dual Language endorsement, in December of 2007.

In the summer of 2009, Zulema Xenia Bilderbeck went home to Bolivia to visit her family. She desperately needed a vacation and time near her mother and family. On this last visit home, she visited old friends, and laughed with her family about old times. She attended her little sister’s wedding, and spent many days and nights in the kitchen helping her mother cook like she used to do. When she fell ill, her family was with her for every day and night. Her two sons were able to see her before she passed away, and when she passed, the same family was there for the two of them. As all of us mourn our immeasurably profound loss, we must remember that Zulema Bilderbeck lives on through the force of her spirit and strength, which runs through her family and all of the children, colleagues, and friends that knew and loved her. We hope you will always keep her alive in your heart with your own stories and special memories.

Rumi was a 13th-century Islamic poet and mystic who had amazing insights on life that still resonate today. I have been reading this poem every day. I hope it will bring some comfort to others who loved her. AEL

At every instant and from every side, resounds the call of Love:
We are going to sky, who wants to come with us?
We have gone to heaven, we have been the friends of the angels,
And now we will go back there, for there is our country.
We are higher than heaven, more noble than the angels:
Why not go beyond them? Our goal is the Supreme Majesty.
What has the fine pearl to do with the world of dust?
Why have you come down here? Take your baggage back. What is this place?
Luck is with us, to us is the sacrifice!...
Like the birds of the sea, men come from the ocean--the ocean of the soul.
Like the birds of the sea, men come from the ocean--the ocean of the soul.
How could this bird, born from that sea, make her dwelling here?
No, we are the pearls from the bosom of the sea, it is there that we dwell:
Otherwise how could the wave succeed to the wave that comes from the soul?
The wave named 'Am I not your Lord' has come, it has broken the vessel of the body;
And when the vessel is broken, the vision comes back, and the union with Him.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

From Kim Bartlett

Zulema´s Life

Sunday, August 9, 2009

From The Mystic Odes of Rumi

Saturday, August 8, 2009

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