First Chapter

His last farewell  was a note in the newspaper, that was. A brief note that the father published in the local newspapers and sent me a letter a little later. Because I was overseas and he would not break the rhythm that had begun again. It was the funeral of his grandmother. I’ve always remembered those  twelve years that have passed. Now she’s dead, far away. I cannot hear me. I can listen, not talk. The nostalgia in his voice, cold and warm at the same time, always with me when he came to his apartment, after leaving college when he was not yet fifteen. It was a magical home, is a different place, magnetic and attractive, favoring my good, imagination in the service of my mind as a teenager I wanted to go very far. In some limits moving my life. Daydreaming, creating fantasies about things of everyday life, break with logical patterns that grew.

He wanted, indeed, it was all lies and mystery, fantasy and illusion, other than how I looked before the mirrors. I did not like how it was, certainly, but his company, the silent woman who always had loved me, made me feel good, even those afternoons that I visited her. Short stays on the edge of a table in the room where I did my homework and she was watching me, quietly, without any noise … My grandmother, Mrs. Dolores. It remains in my memory the last cut of her death, an image that is marked in my memory. Among the papers that I brought from Italy, the tiny newspaper clipping. Her death, started my life.

She died shortly after my trip. His housekeeper found her sleeping and could not wake her up anymore. She was gone, as she had lived, quietly, the silence of time. Without illusions because her legs no longer worked as before. And he had kept the silence of my words and my teenage secrets, because I had discovered on many occasions, with the pressure at the warmth of his hand that I shall never forget. I learned through writing that my father sent me to Naples. It was the first letter I got from my parents since I had arrived. The letters were accompanied by my father’s obituary in a sealed red box with half of his ashes. The other half had been thrown into the sea. And forever I left the box on the tables of work I’ve been having, it always had close, very close. And now they are here again, on top of this table, the red box has accompanied me on my final return to Alicante. The box keeps my secrets, from time to time during recent years have opened and made me remember my grandmother’s affection. That sweet smell of green apples have always felt inside, until Mercedes, director of the private school where I worked the last years in Naples, told me that the angels of loved ones has died, smelled of green apple when they approached … Do not know if it’s a fact of keeping the ashes of a dead relative, smell and feel some kind of scent, but this has been my habit since my father sent to me. I wanted the launch from across the sea, from Naples, because Grandma wanted me and they would have liked. They had done so from the port of Alicante, from the exact point where more than fifty years before I had seen my grandmother from her husband, a ship of the Republican army. He did not get any further news of him, just a brief note of the government that warned of the heroic death of her husband four months before the birth of his son. Since he had gone to live in Alicante, Mrs. Dolores had always gone to the port when the sun shone, to see once more the ship that had taken her husband forever. Therefore, we had said that when he died, wanted to return the ashes to the water as he had taken his James, who never knew her son.

I lied, my parents always thought that the port of Naples had been the final destination of those ashes. I left the box on the table where he studied as a child. I imagine she’s here, behind me. She looks at me as I write these words. We see through a mirror that has been all this time on the wall that supports the table. I drew in my mind the couch where he sat on the edge of the window and watched as she did crochet. I got up and watched the old mirror, and look at my eyes, my face, the image she would see if he was behind me. In a magical way, the ashes were flown to the airtight box that I left on the table and have rebuilt his body, his face. My imagination…  An image that I never see again in my visits to my family.

Each year, he returned for Christmas vacation and summer, could only visit my parents, who remained alone after her disappearance. Like me, they were only children. It seems that we are always doomed to have a few young in our family. However, the lack of siblings or cousins did not represent for me a remarkable fact, not even in my childhood. My grandmother was, especially during my adolescence, a constant source of affection which supplied, in many moments, significant differences began to have with my parents. The following years, with university studies, new friendships, new jobs, I was walking away from their everyday activities. The visit, yes, but other people were beginning to be part of my experiences. They were, therefore, the years of high school were times when we had a closer connection. My mother, who worked all day, as my father did, decided to spend the evening at home, to force me to study. He had always been a good student but it seems that the coming of my adolescence was hurting the lady from whom I inherited the name, my mother, Marta. A name that, honestly, I liked more than my grandmother. A name too old and classic for the elderly, Dolores …

Unlike my relationship with my mother, my grandmother was the best friend I had for a long time. And now, after so many years when I finally returned from an extended stay in Italy that separated us, I wanted it back in my memory. Once I have settled into the house where she lived with her memory, I found the excuse to stop writing my memories, the experiences of a handful years that I have been running constantly conflicts. After my parents died, I decided to sell their house: I had never liked. The Grandma always brought our place. Here I will overcome my anxieties, I must be strong, as she was. In the same way that during my teenage problems, with their help, I passed, now, with her memory, do it again. I’ll be brave and resolute and win the game again. The timeless game of life before us. I strongly believe in fate, I have always believed, because I know that behind every problem, every anguish, there is a little evidence to grow in life, our existence. Now I have a new one. A new challenge abroad. I have to keep hope. It is necessary, with the memory, I will retrieve the forces.

A new breath to live.