One can argue that summer is the most awaited season in a college student’s life. In my case, summer is the time where I go back home, to the paradisiacal Puerto Rico, where I reconnect with my friends and family, as well as travel all over the island to watch my favorite basketball team play. I get to rest and renew myself, but most of all I get to be happy. Like I said, summer is possibly the most awaited season in a college student’s life.
Well, at least it was for me, until this year…
A few days after arriving at Puerto Rico after my Spring 2016 semester finals, my aunt called my mom to let her know that my grandmother, who was currently living in Barcelona, was sick. Avia, as I called her, had developed a very rare metastasis with a progonosis of two to three months—with treatment—called meningeal carcinomatosis, which occurs when a tumor spreads to the meninges (membranes) that surround the brain and the spinal cord. Symptoms include: vertigo, incontinence, impaired vision, hearing loss, sensory problems, among others.
My mother, who has worked at the Comprehensive Cancer Control Center for more than twenty years knew what was coming—even before my aunt could even explain it. So we decided to board on the next flight to Barcelona in order to take care of her. I remember my mother saying, through tears, that my grandfather was taking her with him, and I don’t think she understood how right she was…
Just a few months before, on September 13, my grandfather, who was ninety, passed away. My grandmother was eighty at the time and they had been married for sixty-one years. Incredible isn’t it? Their relationship was the epitome of love, of sacrifice, of pure selflessness. No one could take his place, and my grandmother knew it.
When we arrived at Barcelona she was full of life and a part of me genuinely thought that she was going to survive this because she was a warrior, a fighter—she always had been. Days pass and she begins to worsen, even after ten sessions of radiotherapy. She was then hospitalized for nine days and a few days after she was back in her home, she passed away.
She took her last breath in front of me and I became a child all over again. I did not understand what was going on… and at first, I didn’t even shed a tear because my brain could not process the fact that she had struggled to take her last breath. After that it was all a blur—all I could remember was crying into the hospice nurse’s shoulder… And she was gone. There was no bringing her back, no matter how hard I cried, how hard I prayed, or how I promised to give anything from my life in order to give her life. She was gone and there was nothing I could do.
She looked so peaceful, so angelic—and that is exactly what she was—an angel. A woman who devoted her life to give us a life she believed we deserved, even if it were beyond her possibilities. She was strong and courageous, she was brilliant and compassionate, she was perseverant and supportive, she was protective and faithful to God—even in the hardest of times. She was an irreplaceable woman who touched everyone’s lives in an incomparable way. But she was gone…
As I look through the pictures that we have taken throughout my life, there is one common factor in all of them—love. My grandmother gave the purest love a person could ever feel. Her hugs and kisses made you realize that in the end, everything was going to be alright. Her voice could calm a thousand storms. Her smile could tame even the angriest of people. Her laugh could cheer even the saddest. And how she fought her adversities could motivate even those who believed they couldn’t continue anymore. No woman could ever take her place. And as I look through our pictures and relieve our moments together, I become a child again. I become happy again because those memories bring my grandmother back to life.
Whoever is reading this I only ask you for one thing—enjoy your grandparents. Enjoy every single moment you spend with. Enjoy the tears, the laughter, the food, the jokes, the sadness, the joy—enjoy every single time that you are with them. Create memories that when they pass, they become eternal. Do everything in their honor so that what they have sacrificed to get you to where you are, becomes eternal. Grandparents aren’t eternal, but how you decide to remember them, does make them eternal….
I choose to remember Avia as a fighter, as a woman whose love knew no boundaries. I choose to remember her for who she was… and that is what makes her eternal.
