Mi abuela
I miss my grandmother. She passed away more than a year ago now. The smell of mate (and the ritual of preparing it) brings me back to her always. It also happens, of course, when I tell the story (often to my high school students, but to anyone) of how she used to prepare mate for me when I was little, how that is why I drink it.
But I missed her when she was living too; she was so far, in Rosario, Argentina, and I'd been here for so long, since I was ten. The few times I got to see her from then until she died always energized that love felt and held but never lost.
What I likely miss the most is the type of love she had for me, her kind of love. The love she gave. That love was a big part in me learning how to love and how to be loved. It isn't that other adults in my life didn't love me, but hers was one that made me feel watched for, so special, cherished. That is the closest language can come to describing it (minimizing it) in words.
bell hooks, in All About Love, talks about how we can never go back to connections gone, urging us to move forward to find other love and more in order to "find that paradise again."
hooks also talks about how she refuses to let death take memory, to continue loving after. And that's how I feel. The love I feel for and felt from my grandmother isn't gone. Death can't do it. And it didn't end or diminish despite geographical distance throughout her life.
To me, love isn't predicated on contact or exchange (those things clearly inform relationships), but love is the intangible force that reaches between two people. It is an invisible bridge through time and space to be crossed whenever and bring you close.
But I missed her when she was living too; she was so far, in Rosario, Argentina, and I'd been here for so long, since I was ten. The few times I got to see her from then until she died always energized that love felt and held but never lost.
What I likely miss the most is the type of love she had for me, her kind of love. The love she gave. That love was a big part in me learning how to love and how to be loved. It isn't that other adults in my life didn't love me, but hers was one that made me feel watched for, so special, cherished. That is the closest language can come to describing it (minimizing it) in words.
bell hooks, in All About Love, talks about how we can never go back to connections gone, urging us to move forward to find other love and more in order to "find that paradise again."
hooks also talks about how she refuses to let death take memory, to continue loving after. And that's how I feel. The love I feel for and felt from my grandmother isn't gone. Death can't do it. And it didn't end or diminish despite geographical distance throughout her life.
To me, love isn't predicated on contact or exchange (those things clearly inform relationships), but love is the intangible force that reaches between two people. It is an invisible bridge through time and space to be crossed whenever and bring you close.
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