Strawberry Wafers

Strawberry Wafers

by Michelle Ugarte-Nunez

Entering my grandfather’s bedroom, two things become apparent: an entire wall full of religious figures and the scent of incense. As a kid, I was always afraid to go up to his bedroom, as the stairs going up were squeezed into a relatively small space and, to me, it felt like climbing Everest. Every time I willed myself to make the climb, I was greeted with nothing less than warmth. Warmth and strawberry wafers. “Michelita,” he would exclaim kindly, followed by a hug that engulfed me in his brown sweater vest and the scent of some cologne that I never bothered learning the name of.

His childlike spirit and humor faded slowly—he was well into his 90s—along with his memory. The last time I saw him, he didn’t know who I was. Despite this, he asked for God to bless me, “Que Dios te bendiga, mi hijita,” followed by making the gesture of a cross on my forehead. After our interaction, I ran into my brother’s trembling arms. We were surrounded by our entire family in his bedroom.

Traveling back to Virginia from Peru, I prayed that our goodbye wouldn’t be the last. I held on to this idea until my mom got a call on December 26th, 2013.

On the fifth anniversary of his death, I found myself still grieving—not only the loss of my family’s patriarch, but a loss of self. My idea of being an inherently good person became questionable at best, thereby causing a cycle of helping toxic people, hating myself, becoming numb to everything, and finding comfort in pain. This was my reality for five years, and as dishonest people became more frequent, so did my panic attacks.

I went down the checklist of resources prior to taking a drastic step, exhausting every option. Friends. Parents. Psychologist. Counselor. No one could get through to the neverending screaming in my head. I found myself in my bedroom with the dim light of the computer screen bringing me comfort as I made the second cycle of edits on my suicide note. I figured the last thing I wrote should at least be grammatically correct, and hopefully somewhat profound about the meaning of existence or something.

When I returned to Peru, I stared at his picture behind the glass under the unforgiving Arequipa sun with praying family members filling the silence. I daydreamed of a reality where he was still alive and his reaction to me telling him that I’m graduating high school and becoming a nurse. He would ask me if I was following in my mother’s footsteps. “Vas hacer una enferma? Como tu mamá?” is all he could muster, even in my imagination, but his voice was clear. A voice I had forgotten though I swore I never would. A voice that reminded me of a time I felt safe and made me yearn for that time to return once more.

I cried tears of pain followed by relief as I felt the silence overcome my brain. After five long years, the scream that was a combination of my own self-destructive thoughts and my family’s expectations finally subsided with his voice. The sensation was foreign, but welcomed.

That night, I climbed the Everest-like stairs with my cousin and stared out at the gleaming night sky. My grandfather’s room lacked the scent of incense and the wall of religious figures had become a corner, but the table where he gave me strawberry wafers was still there. I took the room in with a single breath and felt content with myself for the first time in my life. My grandfather was able to revive me from the deep depression I was in by giving me memories of safety.

He will always be the man that showed me how powerfully a small act of kindness can affect a person, even if it’s just a strawberry wafer.

Connectivity | Mixed Media by Michelle Ugarte-Nunez