Benjamín Vicuña remembers Blanca 14 years after her death with an unseen photo: “I lived through the deepest pain”

Benjamín Vicuña marked the 14th anniversary of his daughter Blanca’s death by sharing an unseen photograph of the two of them and a deeply personal message about grief, memory and continuing life.

Blanca, Vicuña’s eldest daughter with Carolina “Pampita” Ardohain, died on Sept. 8, 2012, at age six. She contracted a bacterial infection during a family holiday in Mexico’s Riviera Maya and was hospitalized in Santiago, Chile. Her condition worsened within days, leading to hemorrhagic pneumonia and multisystem organ failure.

“Here we are. Another September waiting for spring. I wake up and my body hurts. They say that is what reminds us we are alive, pain. I lived through the deepest pain and here we are,” Vicuña wrote on Instagram. He described Sept. 8 as “an infinite, tragic and beautiful” repetition, saying Blanca remained present in his thoughts.

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Here we are. Another September waiting for spring. I wake up and my body hurts. They say that is what reminds us we are alive, pain. I lived through the deepest pain and here we are.

He wrote that he brings together Blanca’s siblings, Bautista, Beltrán, Benicio, Magnolia and Amancio, in her name. He tells them repeatedly who she was, recalls her gaze and the way she spoke to horses, and says that the desire to remember and honor her legacy has not faded.

“Blanca, my little girl who wanted to fly, today I keep some photos to make room for the spring flowers that will come and need my light,” he wrote. The message accompanied a tender photograph of father and daughter embracing during a restaurant lunch. In 2023, Vicuña published a book, Blanca, the girl who wanted to fly, reflecting on his mourning.

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You were a small miracle, because you illuminated hearts and awakened consciences, because you taught me that death is an instant, that night passes and life goes on.