To You, Grandmother, Who Came from Other Lands

Dear Grandmother:

It is almost a year since you left. Yes, since you left to enjoy your heaven, to make your last journey…

To remember you, Grandmother, is to remember a journey. Above all, that first crossing of more than two months that you made, at barely nine years old, which brought you to America on a ship. You left Lebanon because “there was no future there,” and you came with your family to look for new horizons. First you stopped in Santo Domingo, where your beloved father died of the flu. Then the Lebanese community decided that you should marry a good Lebanese man, and at just sixteen you married my grandfather.

In 1945 you made another journey, the one that brought you to Venezuela! And your life was like that of many immigrants who arrived in those years: full of sacrifice and work. I will never forget your stories about the Caracas of long ago, which “was safe, clean and very cold,” or your tales of daily life in the boarding house you set up with my grandfather near Miraflores (between the Llaguno and Bolero corners), where you lodged Lebanese, Syrians and others who left their native lands to begin a new life in a country that welcomed them with open arms.

Good food was essential in your house. The first and best raw kibbeh I have ever eaten was the one you took freshly mixed from the bowl and put straight into my mouth with your fingers. I remember how they made fun of me at school when I took out of my lunch box the delicious falafel you had made for me. I often think, Grandmother, what Venezuelan cooking would have been without the influence of the immigrants who came to this land.

You and my grandfather raised your children with very little money, so sobriety, toughness and fortitude stood out in your home. Words like laziness, pampering and bad manners did not exist there. It was a golden age for education. And so was the life of many immigrants. Many of them had the immense joy of seeing their children graduate from excellent high schools and schools, and from our wonderful universities. Every time I see your happy face in the graduation photo of my uncle and my father, with their medals around their necks, I am deeply moved.

On the day of your funeral, seeing you with that smile on your face, now resting in peace, I thought a great deal about what your life had been. A life of immense faith, a faith so great that it kept you on your feet when your eldest son died. Your devotion to Saint Clare was so remarkable that you died on her feast day.

You were a woman who worked tirelessly all her life, cleaning, cooking, caring for your sick… It was a life of true sacrifice, service, simplicity and humility, and you were always cheerful! You were content with so little, and you were so happy. And you could not see anyone in need without being there to help them.

You worked all your life without earning a penny, and without a penny (in the banks of this earth) you went to Heaven. But you took with you a very large account! that only God, and those of us who knew you, can truly appreciate.

How lovely it is, Grandma, to die having left so many works of love in this world, because in the end that is the only thing you take with you! Thank you for so much love and for so many values that you left us as our inheritance! They are what keep us standing today, to go on fighting to rescue this wonderful country that gave so many opportunities to so many people, without discriminating against anyone.

You, like so many other women, passed through this land hidden from the eyes of the world, but not from the eyes of God. I know He is rewarding you for everything you sowed in your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren and in your beloved Venezuela!

Your granddaughter, María Denisse