The Healing Journey

January 28, 2024

“A grandmother’s love is forever and always.”
—Author unknown

When Leandro’s grandmother died at 86, he took the train back to New Haven, and a flood of memories overwhelmed him. At the funeral home, he knelt beside her casket and saw an old woman, who had come to this country 20 years ago from Colombia to raise him. She was a grandmother, but she had actually been a mother to him.

Now, he saw an old woman, worn by the years who had lived a hard but joyful life.

There was no obituary for her. There was no need to have one because everyone she loved lived in the same neighborhood.

Leandro was a student at the community college and was studying computer science. His grandmother never understood any of it … and neither did his parents. When he showed them what he could do on his laptop, they thought he was a genius. He even put together a digital slideshow of his grandmother’s life for the wake.

When he thought about the sacrifice she had made to leave her friends and family members in Colombia to come to America for him, he felt a bit guilty that he had taken her for granted. He looked at this woman, whose accomplishments were overlooked by the world, and realized that without her, the entire family would have fallen apart. She had held them together for three generations. And now she was gone.

That is what all grandmothers do, he thought. They love, they sacrifice and they bring happiness to others. There were no courses about that in college.

He cried at her Funeral Mass. He said goodbye, and he said thank you. Thank you because this woman of little consequence by society’s standards had been of monumental consequence to him.

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