Grandma.
My phone rang at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday night. I was half asleep and did not answer. But it rang again and I grabbed it, seeing that it was my cousin. She was crying. She said my grandmother was in the hospital and please try to come as soon as I could… my grandmother was dying.
I jumped out of bed, scrambled to put on clothes and ran to my car. I got on the highway not even knowing how to get there.
I walked into the ER and saw my family there. I know I had a dazed look. Unable to really grasp this. My father took me within the ER where my mother stood next to her mother. I held my grandmother’s hand and stroked her head and wished that her eyes would open and she would see me, see everyone around her.
My grandmother and I have never had a conversation before. Everything I know about my grandmother has been told to me by someone else, even what she may have said just moments before. We don’t speak a common language. Everything that has been said between the two of us has been through touch and sight.
She would hug me. I would hug her. She would make food for me and I would watch. She would see the look on my face when I tasted how good it was. She would hold my hand and I would hold it back. I would get into trouble and put my arms around her waist while she patted my back. She watched me speak, picked up on my tone, and understood so much of what I said. When I was a child, I would rub her feet because I knew she was tired.
I would have liked to ask her many questions about herself. About her life. About her husband who died so young and my mother as a child. About leaving her country and coming to the U.S. I watched her become a citizen and I remember it so clearly because until then, I had never known her first name.
I sometimes wish I could have had those conversations with my grandmother. But I very, very much appreciate the relationship I had with her. It was always sincere, nothing was hidden, always in the moment, and always without explanation. There were no words to color or shade a feeling. No chance to say that you did not want to talk about it. No need to feel that you had to.
My grandmother did not die. She has recovered consciousness. It has been a very long time since she was well enough to speak. But that has not changed anything in our relationship. Because she knows when I am there, and everything that could be said, she knows – when I hold her hand or touch her face.
In some ways, I’ve never been more clearly understood or felt so obviously loved.
I hope she feels the same.



















Besos spoke with her family tonight. Afterwards, she looked at me and said, “That was my grandmother.”
1. It’s hard to write a blog entry.
Just a random attorney writing about daily life with Little Filthy, my rotten dog.