2020

My grandmother was not yet thirty years-old when she lost the love of her life. She had three daughters, my mother still a toddler. Through her, I learned about the happiness a true partnership brings, and the pain that is to be overcome when death comes without warning.

When I had one of my first adult heartaches, a romantic breakup bestowed upon me in a particularly harsh way, she gifted me what her grief taught her about loving the living: it is not sad when someone chooses to leave. That, when it happens, is the best. Sorrow is due when the person is forced to go.

I called my grandmother almost every day since I learned how to use those dreadful dial-up telephones of my childhood. I have blatantly lied to her many times during these conversations, appeasing her anxiety for my safety; I used her deafness, which she could only partially compensate with a hearing aid in her left ear, to confuse her and tell her that the noise she heard in the background came from the TV in the living room, and not from impossibly loud bars.

My grandmother was a difficult person, almost impossible, but never for me. We shared the same name and a love for cinema and delicious seafood. Our absence of trauma was a challenge to her personality. I was always honored, for who knows what reason, with her best.

I lost her slowly and steadily, a cruelty offered by dementia to both those who stay and those who leave. She battled her dwindling cognition by relentlessly being away from home, coping with the chronic pains of advanced age by never peacefully standing still, except for the two hours required of audiences at movie theaters. She would go almost daily, with no prejudice or regrets, a commitment I had to skillfully manage, as every Sunday would be ours to go together, and I was always fearful of being stuck with an uninteresting film because she’d watched everything that was great alone.

I don’t believe I realized the obvious fact that I would likely lose her from a distance when I decided to move from Rio de Janeiro to Berlin; nor did I understand how much the final closeness to those we know we are about to lose matters. My grandmother’s joy was stolen by early 2020 COVID confinement measures and the impossibility of cinema and cheap seafood at restaurants. Her mind accelerated its decline, her home of six decades forgotten, her loved ones turned to strangers. The rest of her body, as if deciding life was no longer worth living, failed quickly. I couldn’t catch it. She passed away two days before I finally was able to arrive, and I was left forever with the imagination of her warmth.

I don’t think, however, she really chose to leave. She had to; therefore, by her own standards, I am allowed my sorrow.

We can easily remain a part of our loved ones’ lives remotely, but we can only share their decline and death from up close. To grieve from afar, an inescapable reality for immigrants and even more final for refugees, is an incompleteness, a card we are dealt without even realizing it was a part of the game.