Losing abuela
A new initiation in death
My heart aches. There is a tightness in my chest, an urgent pull to try to grasp something beyond my reach, to halt what I know cannot be stopped. It has been a long time since I faced the loss of a loved one, and now that time has come again it will be my mother’s mother. I find it challenging to write about things so close to home. But I need the catharsis, and I think the lessons in this rite of passage are worth sharing.
So we shall begin here.
I am in the temple of death.
I light the candles.
I pour the cups of tea.
Each small act becomes a ritual, a prayer offered in silence.
I am on call.
I am a therapist.
I am a counsellor of the liminal.
The veil is thin.
I am showing up, fully present, in ways that stretch me beyond the limits I once believed defined me.
In each moment, I am reminded of the weight and the gift of this work, the responsibility to hold others’ pain while navigating my own. And in doing so, I discover resilience I did not know I possessed, and a capacity for care and presence that continues to grow, quietly, insistently, within me.
I walk upon sacred ground, waiting, watching, listening for the shift that will come.
Every breath carries anticipation, every moment holds the weight of what is near.
The moment my Spanish grandmother will cross over.
The moment the air itself will change.
The moment that will mark a before and an after, the instant in which both my mother’s life and my own will be altered forever.
The Earth feels unbearably heavy beneath my feet, as if it presses down on me, anchoring me to a gravity I cannot escape. Every step is felt, every inhale carried by its weight, and I am both grounded and burdened, caught between the vastness above and the pull below.
This year has been incredibly challenging as my abuela has gradually decayed. It is not easy to watch someone you love slowly wither, like a rose in the frost. Mortality is confronting. It is gut-wrenchingly raw and real, and there is nothing that prepares you for that type of realness. My mum has been her sole carer for the last 3 years, looking after her in a way not many people would sign up for. And there has been pain, sharp, unexpected, around certain events with extended family, especially in the behaviours and actions tied to money. It is disheartening to witness what can surface, the darker shadows of how people relate to wealth and inheritance. I will not dwell on the details, only to say that such things have cast their own heaviness over an already tender time. It is another layer of sorrow placed upon the slow, inevitable disintegration of an Elder we love. And this story I know is not unique to myself. It is a dark code manifesting for many in similar situations.
But what I want now is to return to my own connection with my grandmother—to let go of what has been heavy or wounding, and to turn toward what remains alive, luminous, and true in this moment.
They say that when a person dies, their life flashes before their eyes. I believe something similar happens for those who love them. As I sit with her memory in these final weeks, it is as though my own memories are illuminated, one after another, the moments of laughter, tenderness, and quiet presence. My life with her begins to pass before me, not as a single story, but as a constellation of living memories that remind me of the bond we share and the love that endures even now.
When I was a little girl, my parents divorced before I was 2 years old. My grandparents, with open arms, welcomed their daughter back into the family home, wrapping us in love and protection. I was raised by my grandparents and my mother as a little girl, and it was my grandmother with whom I spent the most time. She was my constant companion when my mother had to go to work, my guide, my special abuela.
She would take me to the Spanish club, ride buses with me to go shopping, sing Spanish songs, and insist I try foods I found… less than appealing, like fish eyeballs. I was unaware, anyway, of what it truly was that I was consuming! Yet now in reflection, I understand why she offered them: she had lived through a period of war in Spain, and every morsel of food had been precious. I remember this story she shared with me of being gifted an orange for Christmas and feeling immense gratitude. Her childhood was hard; she became a mother figure quite early on in the piece, caring for her brothers and sisters while her father was off gathering food and her mother was working. There have been many lessons from her past that have humbled me in my own existence.
When I was a niña, we were inseparable. I was her first grandchild, and our bond was deep and unwavering. Eventually, my mother remarried, and we moved away, while my grandmother returned to Spain. It was hard, oh, how we missed her, but it was what she needed: to be back in the motherland, in the home she loved.
When I was 18, she flew me over to Spain as a graduation present. I spent several months with her, which was incredibly formative for me. I connected with my ancestry in the motherland and shared Christmas and New Year’s with abuela. I came to learn more about her family, and she showed me the streets and countryside of Spain, bustling with an aliveness, a richness that gifted me the remembrance of the fire in my veins. I have a mixed ancestry, but being raised in a Spanish household and sharing these rich cultural experiences with my kin, I feel most connected to this part of my ancestry. I have my grandmother’s fire. I, an egg once within her, carry parts of her within me. And I feel fear now…I feel afraid of the severance that is about to take place in the physical realm. I hold fear towards the deep pain from this loss, and the pain my mother is going to experience and the ripples, the deep ripples I shall feel, testing thresholds. Nothing prepares you for death, no matter how resilient you believe you have become; it is the ultimate undressing, the ultimate undoing.
My process of coming to terms with my grandmother’s slow decline has been markedly different from my mother’s. She is unable to face it, whereas for much of this journey, I have felt anchored in a quiet, almost steady acceptance, an understanding that death is woven into the fabric of life, and that each of us must eventually meet it. This perspective has given me a kind of peace, allowing me to sit with her fading without collapsing under its weight. But it has also presented challenges in communicating with my mother. I have had to learn deep patience for her differences in processing this life event.
Yet as we draw closer to the moment itself, something within me is shifting. That acceptance, though still present, is no longer enough to hold back the rising tide. Each day, almost from one breath to the next, I feel waves of emotion breaking over me — unexpected, fierce, unrelenting. The wild edge of sorrow keeps rearing its head, reminding me that love, when faced with loss, cannot be contained by reason alone.
It is as though I am standing at a shoreline where two truths meet: the deep knowing that death is natural and inevitable, and the raw ache of having to let go of someone I love. Both are real. Both demand to be felt.
I feel fear.
I feel resentment.
I feel anger toward my extended family for the ways they have behaved.
I feel robbed of time that can never be returned.
I feel torn in too many directions, pulled apart by conflict within and without.
And yet, alongside this storm, I feel an overwhelming love, vast, consuming, and undeniable. Grief has arrived like a presence of its own, not gentle but fierce: a wild, uncharted spirit, unyielding, unstoppable, ready to break me open and carry me into depths I cannot yet see. I have to cast an anchor. I am choosing to ground myself in the truth that death is not only an ending but a transformation—life-giving, cyclical, inevitable. It is part of the great turning of things, the rhythm that holds us all.
Through this pain, I am reminded of the depth of my love. Grief does not come to erase it, but to reveal it more fully. My sorrow is proof of how profoundly she has touched my life. I know now, with unshakable certainty, that my love for her is not bound by time, nor will it end with her passing. It is something I will carry, always. She is the blood in my veins. She is my abuela, Angeles is her name, the Spanish word for “angels”. And soon, she shall be.
Capturing this moment feels profoundly important. In the Western world, we are often trained to experience death in silence. We shy away from it, struggle to speak its name, and hesitate to lean fully into its presence. We avoid feeling it, as if confronting it might overwhelm us or break the rhythm of daily life.
But I am choosing something different. I am choosing to face it, to meet it with open eyes and an open heart, in full awareness of what is passing. I do this in honour of my grandmother—for the life she has lived, for the love she has given, and for the truth of our shared existence. By acknowledging death, I am also embracing the depth of life itself and bearing witness to the bond that will endure beyond this moment.
Thank you for being here with me, in the rawness of mortality. And I hope for anyone out there also traversing death, you can find some comfort or wisdom in my share, which may help you on your journey.
❤️ Three generations. We used to take abuela to this little pink cafe all the time near my mama’s house, and she loved it. I will miss her terribly.