My friend's grandfather passed away on Oct 14th. His name was Fernando. He turned one hundred this past summer and wore a magenta bow tie for his birthday party. My friend took a picture of him and posted it on Facebook. She got 45 likes, including one from me. Fernando and my friend Kim are from The Philippines, a country that even though it's practically across the world from Venezuela, they still share many traditions and language. Hell, we even share curse words. Colonization, huh?
The minute Kim heard about her grandfather, she booked a ticket and was home by lunchtime the next day. In the Philippines (similar to Venezuela), it is customary to mourn a loved one for seven days after burying him. The family gets together, prays, celebrates the life of their deceased and finally says goodbye in a ceremony with a family priest. My friend came back exactly a week after, jet lagged but content.
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My grandmother passed away on Nov. 5th, a little over two weeks after Fernando. She was 73 and suffered from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy syndrome, a degenerative disease that little by little killed parts of her brain.
I remember my grandmother being (well, the way I've decided to remember her) a stern, stubborn, independent single mother who raised two kids. She was a stern, stubborn grandmother as well, who adored me, even if I often miss it. Miss Julieta was a middle school teacher who worked for 20 something years until retirement. She divorced my grandfather and never remarried. She followed and threw rocks at my grandfather new wife's car, when she first heard of "that whore" (her words, not mine). She used to cook deliciously and knit like a pro. She was impecable, always cleaning after everyone, to the point of foolishness. She loved gardening: she took care of her plants with the tender only a grandmother could have. A loyal customer to the beauty salon she visited once a week, every week.
Even though we fought constantly, she was the only one willing to pick me up for years every damn day from school to swimming practice. She would stay, sitting down reading the newspaper, knitting or simply thinking, making sure I had a dry towel to warm me after my late night practices. She always hold my changing room, albeit my towel, while I put my clothes on in the common area along with everybody else. I acquired a great sense of balance during those years. As soon as my body started to get awkward, I decided I was old enough to change in the bathrooms and use my towel only for drying purposes, just as the older girls did. That very day, I slipped and hit my forehead with the edge of the toilet. I ran towards her, wet her clothes, and probably permanently stained them as I crawled to her arms, scared from the blood coming from my left eyebrow. I got two stitches from the doctor and a lollipop from her.
She lived in a four bedroom, three bathroom apartment, perfectly sized for her. One of the bedrooms was dedicated for her sewing and knitting. She hand-made my First Communion dress in that very room. It took her no less than three months to finish it. My mom has always been on a budget and my religious grandmother was pleased with the idea of making my dress. It worked out perfectly: my mom saved a few bucks and my grandmother had a project to work on. It all worked out, except for me of course. I remember I hated the dress. It didn't look as pretty as my other friends' dresses. It looked sloppy and unfinished. The love and dedication invested in that dress don't count when I am next to my friends taking pictures - they don't count at all, I muttered, in response to my mom's "be grateful." She would have made my graduation dress if it weren't for my teenage stubbornness. I made my case and persuade her to go to a professional. I turned to a Portuguese lady whom I never trusted. Not that I needed to trust her, but I just never did. The final dress looked sloppy and unfinished as well, only that this time there was no love or dedication to excuse it.
She also baked most of my birthday cakes. It's probably her fault that I only like homemade cakes, cookies and such. Bakery ones taste like plastic and frozen berries. She had recipes for every occasion and she was the one in charge of preparing our typical Venezuelan Christmas food. Our Hallacas are so intricate that there's usually only one member in the family who learns how to make them. The chosen one is in charge of passing on the recipe and skill to the next generation chosen one. The rest, well, we do whatever we are put to do. I usually brushed the end product with an oily orange substance and called it a day. I'm pretty sure now that my grandmother added that last step for my own personal liking.
During the weekends she called to my house constantly - twice, one around 10AM and then another around 6PM. I usually let it rang. I knew it was her, but I didn't want to pick up. She always asked the same questions: how was your day, did you eat well, brush your teeth (that last one was more of a command than a question). She didn't understand I would always have the same three answers: it went well, I ate okay, I did that already. So, she often talked to Guigui, my nanny, my mom's nanny and my grandmother's best friend, and Guigui passed the message along: your grandmother asked how was your day, if you ate well and to brush your teeth.
She was the one who made my mom and I go to church every other Sunday. Neither of us liked it and both of us got bored during the liturgies of the word. Glory to you, Lord, yeah. I stopped going when my grandmother finally decided to give up (I was 14). Whenever we went to her place, I turned on the TV in her room and turned it off only when we were leaving. Did nothing else, cared about nothing else.
Gosh, I'm a terrible person.
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Her Progressive Supranuclear Palsy syndrome was diagnosed a couple of months before I came to the United States. When I was 15 she was mistakenly diagnosed with Parkinson disease. She had two symptoms: her right hand trembled sometimes and her cervical was remarkably tense. Apparently, that was enough to medicate her with extremely invasive drugs. For two years nobody cared to get a second opinion or anything. I guess she liked the sound of it: "I have Parkinson disease, so excuse me," she would say in order to cut the line in the bank. It was until my mom got us into a new insurance program, that the diagnosis was questioned. But don't panic. According to the new (better qualified) doctor, her body was so damn strong that her nervous system was able to resist most of the invasive treatment. However, the little that got through... got through well.
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I was not able to go home last Christmas, meaning I didn't get to see her for an entire year, during which time her condition took away the sternness, stubbornness and independence she was known for. Last summer I came back and saw her for the first time in 365 days. I felt as if a tiny, invisible-to-everyone-else bomb went off inside me, exactly in between my two lungs. I felt like a volcano about to erupt tears, breakfast, guilt, panic, my entire stomach and digestive system. Have you ever seen Requiem For A Dream? It's one of those movies that make you progressively get into a fetal position and make you rethink life. Humans adapt to a fetal position whenever they want to prevent further trauma. The director carefully filmed the entire movie without showing any type of ceilings, sky or space to look for air. He wanted to make his viewers feel trapped, and oh boy he did. My grandmother looked like the addicted to diet pills version of Sara Goldfarb, right before being forced to go under treatment in a psychiatric facility. Miss Julieta looked fragile and incapable of doing the tiniest things, like smile or hold a glass of water.
Has it been only one year?
My first communion photos were under a layer of dust and oblivion.
The kitchen was barely in use.
The plants were gone.
The sewing, knitting room became an office for my uncle.
The woman that did her hair once week, every week called to the house asking if she had changed salons. Where is Mrs. Julieta?
Where was she, Doris, I don't know.
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During Kim's grandfather funeral, the priest asked everyone to look at Fernando's plaque and find the most significant part. His name? His birth year? The place where the ceremony was taking place?
The priest, Fernando's dear friend, explained that the dash in between the year 1913 and 2013, that little punctuation mark we use to denote a break in a sentence or simply to indicate differentiation, was the most significant part, as it represented his lifetime. What he loved, dreamt, thought, did, laughed, shared during a CENTURY was bundle up in that single little dash.
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My grandmother died in the dawn of November 5th, 2013.
My mom Skype called me that morning, but I was asleep. She sent me a text message, thing that only happens when she gets worried I'm not answering her calls (she then proceeds to call Clark University, my advisor, my students account person, my friend Dominique and my ex boyfriend Diego). I didn't call her after waking up, I wanted to work out. But something about her text, no exclamation point peeking worrisome, no dot hinting anger made me called her... right after my workout of course.
She was cremated the very next day, even though I'm pretty sure she would have hated being cremated. I wasn't able to book a ticket to go say bye; I had no time to plan or money to afford the ticket. I didn't teared down, like Kim did. I didn't feel a tiny invisible-to-everyone-else bomb going off in between my two lungs, as I did months ago. Maybe I was relieved, glad that she's no longer here to witness the decay of her apartment, of herself. Maybe I'm glad she's no longer here for reasons I'm not prepared to discuss, much less admit. Maybe later. Maybe never.
All I know is that, unlike Fernando, Miss Julieta doesn't have a dash to signify her lifetime but a vase sitting in our living room. All I know is that I will have to turn to the Portuguese lady again to make my wedding dress and that there's no one in my family that knows the secret behind her famous Hallacas. All I know is that, unlike Kim, I'm neither jet lagged nor content.
