It's the clearest memory I have of her. So real if I reached out, I could touch her. Almost. It was the first time my grandmother visited my college, well, any college for that matter. She oohed and ahhed over the library and aging buildings around campus. She picked flowers and stuck them in her hair. She smiled in the bright California sun. By the time we reached my dorm room, she was ready to see the good stuff…to see how Yoo crazing kids lief like dis in collesh. Her accent made almost any sentence funny.
When she first saw the room, she was quiet. Inspecting the bunk beds–lightly touching the bright blue bedspread with her pink fingernails–and admiring the computer. Once she walked through the small room, she smiled with approval and sighed. As we walked out of the bedroom and into the dorm lounge, she looked to see if anyone was around and when the the room was clear, she started to dance salsa to a beat heard only lightly under her breath. She held her left hand high–allowing her tattered brown purse to fall hard on her shoulder–and her right hand at three o'clock, and danced with an invisible partner. She was so incredibly proud the only thing she could do was dance.
My grandmother left her small town in Puerto Rico as a teenager, and made her way to California by way of New York City. After years of working in sweatshops assembling basketballs and bikinis, commuting three hours a day by bus, nursing my mentally handicapped uncle, and having dinner on the table by 5pm, she retired in Las Vegas, Nevada. In a random act of grace, 15 years later she sold her trailerhome and moved to California to live with my parents until she found a home closer to our family. One month later, she died.
The blow of her passing hit me so hard. Hits me so hard. But I'm a silent griever. The type of prefers to lock the pain deep down where so one can see, and smile past the ache of loss. If I was being honest, I never dealt properly with the loss of my grandmother…because she wasn't that to me. A grandmother. She was one of my best friends. We talked on the phone, we wrote cards, we got pedicures together. I wasn't ready to bury a friend, so her ashes remained in my father's office until the family could come to grips that she was no longer with us.
Yesterday, almost five years later, my family was able to make peace and let go. We traveled to her small hometown of Cialis, Puerto Rico and allowed her to sleep next to my grandfather, where she always dreamed of resting. Letting go was so hard and somewhere between the sobs, I felt peace. I felt the silent grief I carried deep in my soul lift a bit and I found hope. Hope in knowing if she saw her family letting go, she'd be proud. So proud the only thing she might do is dance.
