Mua
Mua. It's the name I gave to my grandma when I was a kid. I used to call her “mamá”, but they corrected me, she was not my mom. Still, being a figure so close to my mom (I used to spend a lot of time with her as a baby), I tried some variants of the word until I settled down on “Mua”. My aunts and uncles seem to have enjoyed the name, and everybody started calling her so. For me, my cousins and the vast majority of people I know, she was Mua.
She died a few years ago.
It's hard and sad, how could it be otherwise? But by the time she clinically died, she had been dead for something like a year. Her mind started to wander more and more, to the horror of everyone around her. She had had hearing problems for quite some time, but then came the invented stories, followed by a slow detachment of reality. For the last months I'd see her and know that I had lost her. Her body may be there, but Mua was gone.
Mua and I were very different. We shared few interests. We had a very different idea of how the world worked and what were important things. We would despise each other's political choices. Despite all of that, we would get along very well. I like to think that, among other things, we shared some kind of authenticity on the way we behaved. We were honest with each other.
I have many scattered memories of the times spent with her. Playing badminton, going to the beach, playing cards, the christmas lunches at her place, her tasty dishes (pimientos rellenos, col con bechamel, pepitos... she was a good cook). Tempted as I am to go down memory lane, I'll refrain, as I'd like to finish this post and get to say something.
I'm going on a cruise with my family in a few weeks. I've never gone on a cruise before, and frankly, it is not my style at all. But in any case, the motivation was that my parents finally sold Mua's house in Valencia, and they wanted to use the money for the family to travel together, to go with my sister, her children and husband, and me. Even if I'm a bit skeptical about the idea, I kind of like it, and expect to enjoy it.
15 May was Mua's birthday. It's still on my calendar. It reminds me of her and I do want that. There's much I still owe her. And this year, when I remembered the date, I realized that writing about her was long time overdue.
I loved her very much. I just wanted a place to say so.