My grandmother is my biggest role model and has had an enormous impact on my life. She is a strong, independent and caring woman who will do anything for her family. She has been there for every major event in my life. She is the most amazing woman I have ever met, and I couldn’t imagine my life without her. She does not hesitate to put her children and grandchildren’s wants and needs before her own. I have looked to her for help at every difficult moment in my life and on many occasions, asked myself what she would do if she was in the same situation. To date, the hardest day of my life was the day that my mother called me and told me she was missing.

She is the model of strength I strive to live up to. When my father and aunt were young, she left my grandfather and took them to Spain. She had no money and didn’t know anyone. She found an apartment and a job as an elementary school teacher and supported herself and her two children for years by herself. My father and aunt were not the easiest children to raise as they were always in trouble for something or another at school, and they were always fighting at home and giving her hell, but she raised my father to be a pediatrician and my aunt to be a veterinarian.

She gave up her easy life as a doctor’s wife with my grandfather to become a single mother who struggled every day of her life to raise good children. After my father and aunt were married and having children, my grandmother went back to school for her degree and started teaching English to immigrants as a side job. She was working on her nursing dissertation and was on the last few parts of her capstone project when she disappeared. She taught me the importance of working hard and getting an education.

She is one of my best friends. Of course, I have a lot of friends who are my age, but I couldn’t talk to them or my parents the same way I could talk to her. I would tell her everything in my life and she always listened and gave me advice. She never told my parents my secrets, and she seemed to have a hilarious story for every situation you could think of.

She would tell me how she and her sorority sister lived in the upstairs of a pastor’s house for a year and every night, and he would call roll and lock the door so no one would come in or go out. If girls weren’t there, they would cover for them and sneak them into the house without getting caught.

She told me about how one day she spent hours upon hours making lasagna for her, my father and my aunt. She decided to have a glass of wine with dinner and set it down next to the lasagna and told my aunt and father to sit down. They started fighting with each other and accidentally spilled the wine all over the lasagna. She said she had never seen them run so fast out of the apartment.

She taught what being a woman really meant — not because she told me, but because she showed me. She never bragged about how amazing she really was. She was smart, funny, caring and strong. I just hope I can live up to the standard she set for what a strong woman is. She was one of the greatest women I have ever had the honor of knowing, and having her in my life has made such a huge impact. I can’t even imagine who I would be without her to look up to.