When an Immigrant Dies

Last week my ninety-five-year-old grandmother died. She was born in Lebanon. At the age of nine she left her hometown (Zgharta) with her mother, while her father stayed behind to arrange everything so the rest of the family could follow. War had plunged Lebanon into great poverty, and they wanted to come to the Americas in search of new horizons. They traveled by ship from Lebanon to France, and from there to the Americas, a crossing of more than two months. They settled in Santo Domingo, and two years later her father arrived alone, having left her brothers and sisters in Lebanon. A year later he died of the flu, leaving her mother a widow with her daughter. The Lebanese community in Santo Domingo decided she should marry a Lebanese man, and at fourteen she married a man of twenty-nine, who was always her beloved husband, my dear grandfather.

In 1945 she arrived at the airport in La Guaira with her husband, her sister, her niece and her two children. Her life was like that of many immigrants who came to Venezuela at that time: a life of great sacrifice and hard work. She would tell her grandchildren about her life in the Caracas of old. A Caracas with cool weather, safe and clean. She described day-to-day life at the boardinghouse she ran with my grandfather near Miraflores (between the Llaguno and Bolero corners), where they lodged many Lebanese, Syrians and others who were leaving their homelands to begin a new life in a country that welcomed them with open arms.

Lebanese food mattered a great deal, because for them (as for the Italians, the Spanish and others) sitting down at the table was something of a ritual. Back then, people in Caracas didn’t even know what kibbeh was. I remember how they made fun of my cousin at school when she opened her lunchbox with a falafel. Now many people love Lebanese food. My grandmother’s youngest daughter (they called her Clarita) became such an expert in it that her recipes appear in Scannone’s famous Blue Book. I often think about how much Venezuelan culinary culture was enriched by the immigrants who came to these lands.

My grandparents raised their children with very little money, so the virtues of sobriety, toughness and fortitude stood out in their home. There, words like laziness, spoiling and bad manners did not exist. It was another era in child-rearing; I think it was a golden age of education. That was the life of many immigrants who came in those years. Many of them had the immense joy of seeing their children graduate from excellent high schools and from our wonderful universities.

On the day of her funeral, seeing her with a smile on her face, now resting in peace, I thought a great deal about what my grandmother’s life had been. A life of immense faith, a faith so great that it kept her standing when her eldest son died young. She was very devoted to Saint Clare of Assisi, and even when she no longer made sense of what she was saying, on the day she was dying she said: “Saint Clare, take me.” And she died on August 11, the feast of Saint Clare.

She was a woman who worked without rest her whole life, cleaning, cooking, caring for the sick (her husband and her mother). It was a life of true sacrifice, service, simplicity and humility, and she was always cheerful. She was content with very little, and she was so happy. She could not see anyone in need without being right there to help.

She worked all her life without earning a cent, and without a cent (in the banks of this earth) she died. But she took with her to Heaven a very large account, one that only God (and those of us who knew her) can appreciate. How wonderful it is to die having left plenty of works of love on this earth, because that is the only thing we take with us! Pope Francis said recently that you never see a dead man take a moving van with him to the grave. The only thing we take with us is Love, the Love we gave to others.

As I drove to the cemetery, I thought a great deal about so many immigrants who came to our country (I knew, and still know, several truly exemplary ones), to whom Venezuela owes so much. Above all, the example of faith and values they gave their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, which it is so important right now to bring back into fashion, all over the world! That example is vital for those of us who are here going through so many problems. The values they left us as an inheritance are what keep us on our feet today, so that we can keep fighting to rescue this wonderful land of grace that gave so many opportunities to so many people, without discriminating against anyone.

Today I honor my grandmother, a woman like any other, who spent her life on this earth hidden from the eyes of the world, but not from the eyes of God. And I take this opportunity to pay tribute to so many immigrants who came to Venezuela and have also left a great legacy of work and values, on which many of us are leaning to build a dignified Venezuela for our children and grandchildren.