The day when my maternal grandfather died, besides being a very sad day (obviously), it was also one that left me a great story to tell. But it’s not about sadness what I want to write today, quite the opposite, I want to write about love.
Some of you may ask "but if you start talking about death, how is it possible for love to fit in here?" Well, in this story, it does fit in.
This story is about how two people came to compenetrate with each other so much that, even the famous phrase "Till death do us apart" couldn´t get them.
That day, Thursday, July 19th, 2007, my grandfather was discharged from the hospital because he had successfully overcome pneumonia at his 92 years old. I remember perfectly saying to him "Grandpa, you have better health than all of us!".
During my grandfather's stay in the hospital, my grandmother was also hospitalized. She, affected by a very unfortunate disease, was hospitalized for a couple of weeks but, like my grandfather, she could get better and was able to leave the hospital days before my grandfather.
The day my grandfather arrives home, after those days in the hospital, he told us "Now, I want to die in peace" . Of course, none of us took it so seriously; after all, he had just left the hospital with a very favorable diagnosis and in the doctor´s words: "there is still so much life ahead for this man." We thought maybe he was tired.
The truth is, that day he decided to lie down in his resting chair and closed his eyes not to be open again. “How capricious!” We said, as we thought he was talking nonsense. But that’s the way Juan Escalona was: a man with a strong enough character, stubborn and determined. A kind of a man who will always have the last say.
It took only 10 days (Saturday, July 28th, 2007) for my grandfather to say goodbye to this world. But everything said so far has been a preamble to get to the beauty of this story, although so far it doesn’t seem like it.
That night in my house, my aunts and mother were quite disturbed attending the agony of my grandfather. I was by the corridors of the house, with my nephew in arms, trying to accept what was happening and of course, trying to protect a year and a half baby from the sadness that was breathed at home. In one of those swings that for a long time my body was doing by inertia, I got into the room where my grandmother used to stay.
But before continuing, I must digress to explain that my grandmother was suffering from a disease that at times caused her to wander in her thoughts, in time and space. No, it was not Alzheimer's. It was a kind of momentary dementia caused by a drug-induced liver cirrhosis. So, knowing the state of my grandmother, this is where the story that I bring up here makes sense.
Continuing...
Upon entering my grandmother's room, I see her in the same state in which she was lately but suddenly she sits on the bed and, in a moment of lucidity that we already missed, she says "Darling, Juan just die. He came to me to say goodbye ... My love is gone ".
In fright, surprise and with a mixture of crazy emotions playing their old tricks on me, I ran, with Cristian still in my arms, to the room where my grandfather was dying and there, right in the doorway, my mother says to me "Your grandfather passed away."
How to explain this if my grandmother had no idea what was happening? How to make sense out of it if logic simply tells you that it does not?
For me, this makes a lot of sense. And this is given by love, compenetration, the connection of two people who lasted 70 years together.
After that, my grandmother didn’t come back to herself, that moment of lucidity was the last. Nearly a year went by, just a couple of days of margin, and my grandmother died. Everyone says that my grandfather came after her.
Far from being sad, I think it's a fact of love . I was reading about the death of couples, especially elderly people, who die within days apart, even for hours. Many specialists comment that dependency, loneliness and even a "brain that doesn’t want to keep fighting for living" is what leads them to die after being without their life and stories partner. And yes, this may be the physiological explanation, but I am convinced that there is a spiritual one as well.
I have told this story many times to my friends and I will never get tired of doing it. What this time could sadden me and even scare me, now I see it as a demonstration that love exists and that death cannot nor will it be able to defeat it.
María Martina Escalona and Juan Escalona… My lovely grandparents.
This is a story in tribute to my grandfather whose 11th Anniversary of Death is today. To you grandpa, thanks for everything and especially, for those "God bless you, love you and favor you" that you pronounced me in life and in dreams.
My grandpa and I