When life is transformed into a powerful expression.

There is no more untimely, direct way to perceive the concepts and priorities of your life when you experience an absence from a loved one.

Grief gives you a new dimension of things.

New meanings appear new values in something that, in the past was so normal. Or at least, not so important.

I suppose it’s something that only death can do: Give us the time to contemplate the meanings contained in a life that is now in silent rest.

Some people think of life as one extreme and death as another of the same thing. I consider myself one of them.

Some lifelines will be longer, others shorter.

But in the end, they all contain the same beginning and end.

What sets them apart are the things that went between those two points.

The connections.

The teachings.

The experiences.

The characteristics that framed that life.

That process of granting and transforming perspectives to life, TO YOUR LIFE, was the one I experienced with you, Romy Lozano, my grandmother. My last living grandmother.

A simple question they asked me provoked that maelstrom of unspliced memories and teachings that culminated in what can now be read:

What was the most legendary thing your grandmother did in her life?

After having talked to many people about your life you discover very subtle depths, facets, and human layers that can very easily go unnoticed, but for my fortune and the people who loved you in life, it was not like that.

Because maybe IT WASN’T LEGENDARY that:

• You’ve had to get over your mother’s departure at age 6; that your father has remarried and that your stepmother and her children made your life more painful and humiliating for 2 years in a row.
• You decided to talk to your father about the abuse and to have his side with the woman who was now your stepmother and who, seeing the situation, decided to send you to a boarding school.
• You’ve come to that strange place with women dressed in religious habits, with only a cross and a picture of your mother.
• At the age of 9, you decided to escape from the boarding school and go looking for the only person who would have made you feel loved in your short life experience: An aunt, your mother’s sister, who lived in Guadalajara.
• Hide from your father and stepmother and have asked to change your last name so as not to be found.

· At the age of 18 you became engaged to a man in Guadalajara, however, an invitation to Laredo made you meet the one who was the “love of your life”: my grandfather Mario. That painter who dedicated hours of art to you in recreating yourself on canvas, and with his way of being and seeing life, you decided then to leave everything behind to marry him.

· That YOU KEPT very secret much of what was mentioned above and what is now your family, we have learned through letters and testimonies of other relatives.

· You were an editor, secretary, and contributor to articles on topics and tips for the home in the ’70s. Even though you didn’t finish primary school.

· You made up for this with a voracious habit of reading where I witnessed you finish complete books in 3–6 days.

· We have talked, you and I, about the book of “The Marquis de Sade” and naturally, you told me that it was “incredible”.

· You had with Mario, 3 wonderful children: Sergio, mathematical physicist; Mario, psychologist; and my mother Iris, a writer and dancer.

· You have decided to live with us since 1994. And that since then you delight us with incredible food, with your kind, maternal, and always willing warmth, that characterized you (until you could not get out of bed)

· You have INSPIRED, especially your daughter Iris, the devotion to take care of you for more than 20 years at home and that in expressions such as: “Just as she did with me” I thought that you should never suffer again or repeat the loneliness you came to experience as a child.

· You contracted cancer in 2018 and they would have given you 3 months to live, and you were with us for 3 more years.

· (You haven’t) Had chemo, no doctor visits or pain.

· You lived 97 years, surrounded in the end, by people who will always love you.

· You managed to live as few will: that your final rest was quiet, while you slept, in your house, surrounded by that love that you lacked in your childhood, but that life rewarded you after all.

· In your farewell, there were no tears, but solemnity, respect, affection, and much admiration.

Yes, maybe the above is nothing epic or legendary but for your family be sure that, by far, IT WAS.

That’s Romy, your life was epic.

This is how death transforms life into a powerful expression.