A couple days ago, I woke up from a dream. One of those that overcome your heart with emotion, erasing the line that divides one's desires from reality. I felt joyful and sad at the same time: I was so thankful I cried.
This dream was about my grandmother. In it, I reviewed details I had long forgotten about her: her frequent travels to either Bogotá or Venezuela, leaving us for what felt like an eternity; the fact that I found her severe in my early years, fearing her before finding her softer side. These memories are simple but bittersweet and they felt foreign because they are kind of sad when all I can associate her with now is happiness.
In real life, I sometimes talk about her in past. "She was", I say, not because she died (thanks God) but because she has Alzheimer's. And as most people know, this illness not only takes away your memory, but also some features of your personality. As in today, my grandma is a baby. She is, hands, down, the center of my family's attention and affection. She can no longer pronounce coherent words too often and she has long forgotten our names, but we shower her with love, and, in magical days, she reciprocates.
When Alzheimer's shade cast over her, she was still very young (doctors trace back the beginning of her illness to her mid 40's). When the sickness became evident, I was already 17 years old and the possibility of her forgetting who I was frightened me to the core.
Today, I can't help but remember that, it seems like forever ago, she was my confidante. She was one of my best friends. When I was a teenager, arguments with my mom and dad plagued my days and with her I always found a safe harbor. I don’t know if she understood me completely, but it certainly felt that way. She would listen to me and empathize with my problems. In return, she would tell me personal anecdotes, some as amazing that I silently doubted her, only to confirm, years later that they had indeed happened.
She was as sensitive and emotional as I was. We would talk for hours about the depths of our hearts, where she’d always squeeze in a piece of advise and then we’d change subjects and talk about beauty pageants and celebrities. She had an acute eye for aesthetics, having an ability to determine early on who the next Miss Colombia would be. No doubt hers were the only “you look beautiful”-s I believed in my most self-doubting years.
She was always elegant, classy. She wouldn’t be caught dead without makeup or a with a broken nail. She loved shopping and if she liked something, she’d buy one in every color available. In her iconic blue vault, she would store what I thought were secrets, but what was actually a collection of accessories: scarves, earrings, rings and necklaces in each color, to match her infinite bags and shoes. The latter were, unfortunately, so small that no one in the family could borrow them.
One of my favorite pictures of my grandma
Her house was pristine. For years, she lived in her own at a house where she was both the master and the slave. She would wake up early and spend her days making sure there was no dull tile, no dusty tchotchke, no slightly crooked frame. One day, to the castle a princess arrived: a dog she had rescued and whom she actually named “Princesa”. Like many times in her life, she had to love her freely, for after being used to the streets, she came and left at her desire. Going to visit my grandma meant having warm pineapple bread, playing hide and seek and having the most delightful conversations, which would be interrupted by neighbors that would pop in to say hello.
Grandma and me when I was 15 years old and her "you're beautiful"-s meant the world
She was and, still is, magical realism. It is said that she “fixed” the noses of every lady that came to her, simply by teaching them an easy exercise that she also imposed on us. She cured my cousin’s “strange” head by putting a sock on it and moving her hand in circles around it. Eloped, married at 12, pregnant for the first time at 13, she never finished school, but she is one of the smartest people I’ve known. She had an irrational fear of pools and the sea, for which she blamed the bruises she got in her legs early on, after becoming a young housewife.
She was, to us, an enchanted being. Somewhere between her unicorn porcelain, her glass dining room and the beautiful pictures she hid below her mattress, we came to see her as a heavenly person. But beneath it all lied the true essence of her nature: the purity of a heart strengthened by loss, discrimination, sacrifice and the unconditional love she gave away many times, without receiving it in return. Her life was profoundly impacted by the love of my grandfather, so passionate that it made her feel as elated and as sorrowful as one could be. They had many ups and downs but in his last days, he kept asking for her forgiveness, one that she could no longer give due to her idle state. Their relationship was the one we never believed she would forget, until her brain decided otherwise.
My precious grandparents when they got married for the second time
These are only some of the details I came to love and remember about my grandma. It is my memories and the testimonials of all the people that met her that continue to reconstruct the story of her life, backwards, in my eyes. The once-compared to Liz Taylor continues to live inside my family’s baby and in my recurrent dreams, in an alternate reality where she has a moment of lucidity and comforts me saying that somehow, she remembers us and loves us.
Her name is Ena Cielo, the latter meaning “sky” or “Heaven” in Spanish. And she is, indeed the Heaven that protected me, that cherished me, that guided me… the one to which I aspire to go to one day, just to sit on her bed, ask for her advice and laugh at her jokes again.
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