TE DI POR SENTADO

     And I haven't forgotten you. I am not over you. The pain has not passed with time. And I write this knowing that I'm not using the right words, but I'm using the words that come closest to what I feel. Because you don't forget someone who dies, I know, but I've discovered myself thinking that by now, at least, the pain I felt when you left would have eased.

     And instead I find myself trying to organise my life and being surprised at the deep impression that the last few days I spent with you have left on me. I knew I loved you, but in that way where you take it for granted without actually feeling it. You simply know that you love someone because that's the way it has to be and when the time comes, you are struck by the reality of a feeling that you took for granted, but that now if you try to remember, it never had the strength it was supposed to have.

     A granddaughter loves her grandmother, even if she is not particularly affectionate and does not always have a word or gesture of affection ready, you love her because that is the way she is, right? Even if days go by without visiting her, either because of laziness, lack of time, or because the last visit full of reproaches and reproachful looks or surly words make it easy to find an excuse. I search my childhood memories and it is difficult to find images of you smiling, or hugs and kisses outside of special moments. Although it is true that the passage of time, the departure of your grandfather and his almost constant smile and placid expression, and above all, the arrival of loving great-grandchildren who watched in bewilderment as you withered a little more with each visit, turned you into someone different, less ‘grumpy’ so to speak.

     The warnings came and went. You faded in a scandalous way that we did not appreciate, because although your body, always robust and strong, began to shrink, your temper remained the same, and that did not let us see that little by little you were withering away. Visits to the hospital, small and brief admissions from which you always came back, although each time life was taking something away from you. Walking was no longer easy and without the crutch it became almost impossible, that damned lift that never ended up arriving left you locked up at home for the last years of your life. I was hardly aware that I stopped seeing you in the street, sitting on a bench or walking slowly to the door, and when I did, I didn't appreciate the importance of what had happened. I knew about the changes in your life, but I was merely recording that information and stripping it of feelings. When I sat in a chair next to your bed in the hospital the last few days, thinking about it, shame and guilt made me sink into my seat and forced me to lower my eyes, even though there was no one next to me to reproach me for anything. Not even you, who had begun to walk in a world that only belonged to you, in which your realities intermingled and coexisted in a way that escaped the rest of us.

     Now that you're gone I think it's all been for the same reason, and that's because I always took you for granted, you were always going to be there, and even though I knew that at some point you would die, I didn't really know, because that's a reality we don't recognise until it hits us. And seeing you reach for my hand with that need for comfort made me realise, too late, how human you were. If anything has marked me, now I know it will mark me for life, it was seeing that great woman, with a unique character and genius, capable of taking care of 9 grandchildren after a life of constant hard work, that old-fashioned woman who, despite having lived in the city for so many years, was unable to stop regulating her behaviour and that of her family for the sake of her people's opinion, lost, scared and above all vulnerable. That disoriented look, that need for affection and companionship made such an impression on me that it brought my life to a standstill in those days. I completely forgot about arguments or hurtful words and just sat by your side, held your hand and decided to accompany you every minute. My mistake was deciding that from that moment on I would never leave you alone again, that when you left the hospital I would be by your side so that the change of life that going to a nursing home and leaving your home would mean for you would be less hard.I was wrong because I took you for granted again. It was strange to walk into your room and see you smile when you heard my voice. «How are you doing darling?» «My Amaya, my Amaya has come». It was strange to see you smiling.

     You got to know the nursing home and I will always remember the few times I was able to take you for a walk in your wheelchair, see you close your eyes in the sun, take you to church again, hear you say that you had had chocolate with churros for breakfast or that when you got better you were going to buy me one of those beautiful, modern dresses you had seen in a magazine.... The afternoon they told me that you had gone back to the hospital I wasn't surprised, I don't know why, but I wasn't, maybe because deep down, despite all the things I was thinking of doing with you, I knew we didn't have time. Those days were very hard days in which I saw you suffer too much, in which impotence and grief filled everything, but there were moments of strange and comforting peace in which you looked puzzled «Child» «What grandmother» «I don't know...» and you didn't know, there was something in all that that didn't fit, wasn't there grandmother?

     Not even the announcement that there were only hours left made me see the reality. Hours? No, not at all. Of course I'd come and sit next to you and be there when you woke up, and we'd go back to the dorm and I'd hold your hand as many times as you needed. Hours? No.

«Hello darling» «My Amaya» «Are you tired, Grandma...?» «Yes…» «Rest, go to sleep grandma, rest…»

     It was hours, and that was the last time I spoke to you, and I stayed by your side for as long as I could, watching you sleep, watching you fade away, until I realised I didn't want to see you go, I couldn't see you go, I kissed you on the forehead before saying goodbye for the last time and in the early hours of the morning I left you surrounded by your daughters and son. The message came a few hours later, you were gone, and I felt emptier, I still do. I catch myself crying when I see your phone number in the phone book, the windows of your house closed or making extra biscuits to bring you some...

     Why am I writing this? I don't know. Maybe selfishness, maybe the need to empty all the pain I have inside, take it out, or atone for my guilt, reread my words and try to convince myself that those years, once my childhood was over, I wasn't such a bad granddaughter, because in the end I was by your side... How absurd. I can try, but I know in advance that I will never stop feeling that shame for the times I wasn't there, for the times I forgot you. Or maybe, my real motive is to make those who are on time and are like I was before you left, wake up and take nothing for granted. Let's think that's the real one, at least for a moment, and maybe it is, it doesn't really matter that much.

     I said goodbye, or so I thought at least, but I didn't, it's not possible to do that because you haven't left, there's so much of you in me, around me, that you'll never leave completely. I'd like to tell you a couple of things, maybe that didn't come out right, that the right thing to say would be that I have a lot of things to tell you but it wouldn't be true and you'd know it and you wouldn't like it, so here goes.

     I love you grandmother, not in that empty, routine way I had settled into. No, now I know that I love you from the inside, recognising the good and the bad in me and accepting that the past cannot be changed, that you were very hard on everyone around you, but that inside you was also that woman, who every day in that hospital waited impatiently to see me arrive and smiled as she squeezed my hand. I miss looking up and seeing you sitting on your little balcony, looking out onto the street but not really seeing, not really seeing us pass by... I'm sorry I took it for granted that you would always be there.

Rest beautifully.