My grandmother's legal name is Zoila Lucia Larenas Abarca. She only likes to be called Lucia, and hates when people use her real name. She has always thought it was ugly and unappealing. When I was little, I would tease her and call her Zoila. She would get pissed off at me when I did that, yet she was never aggressive like the generic TV grandmother. She never pulled out a wooden spoon or a belt, and she never threw one of her shoes at me. I always knew that there was something wrong with her though, I couldn't explain what it was. I just felt it. She had reactions that didn't make sense, and she was extremely sensitive. As a young child, I had no idea what these sudden mood swings meant, and I wouldn’t until much later.

She was born in San Vicente de Tagua Tagua, an extremely rural town in the outskirts of Santiago, Chile. When she was born in 1925, there wasn't electricity, TV, radio, phones, or any of the luxuries that we have today, not even a bathroom in the house. At this time, Chile was at least 40 years behind the United States in technology, and she lived in a very poor and simple town to begin with. Her father was an agriculturist, and her mother a housewife. She was the fourth of eight children. Her older sister, Estela was the favorite, and her younger sister, Adriana was "daddy and mommy's little girl," but Lucia fell far from that. She never got a shot at being close to the favorite. Her sister Estela had blonde hair, which made her the most delicate and beautiful, and Adriana was that simply because she was the youngest. I always grew up hearing how beneficial it was for my grandmother to not be cared for as much as her siblings.

She always told me how happy she was that they didn't pay any attention to her, because she could live her own life. It made her independent, much more like a man, and while her sisters were inside cooking with their mother, she was outside chopping wood with her brothers and father. I wanted to be just like her, I wanted no one to care for me, because it sounded awesome. She could do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted and she didn't have to listen to anyone but herself. I wanted that feeling. I didn't want to worry about what my mom would say. She wouldn't say, "Albertito! Get down from that tree!" or, "Alberto, put a coat on before you go outside!" 

I now understand that she was lying. I no longer want that.

In 1970, she was diagnosed with depression, and began seeing a psychiatrist often. She was given medication, but being from the countryside, she didn’t believe in it much. She didn’t understand that pills were meant to be taken even after one starts seeing improvement. Once she felt better, she'd stop the treatment, and she was right back where she started. She never believed in diagnoses either, so she didn’t accept that she was also bipolar.

When I asked my mom questions about what critical things happened between 1970 and 1997, the year I was born, she shook her head. Nothing drastic happened. After I was born, Lucia was very involved in my life. She would often drive in her little red van from Santiago to Viña del Mar, where we lived, just to see me. Right outside of my house in Chile were two thin trees, parallel to each other, forming the perfect goal posts for a soccer goal. Often, I took a ball and shot there by myself. One day Lucia joined me. She was seventy-nine years old. She'd be the keeper and I'd be the kicker. There she was, not representing her age at all, making it difficult for me to score. When I was little I didn't realize how big of a deal this was, but now I know that most people her age would've been inside on the couch not wanting to be bothered.

When I was about five or six years old, I started going to her "parcela" (property) where her house was. After retiring, she decided to go back to her roots. She began working the land again like she had always loved to. I helped her collect the nuts that grew on the trees, and at night, we made bonfires. There was a small "sequia" (canal) that sliced the property into two pieces, and on some days she'd help me construct a small raft out of string, some plastic, leaves and sticks, which we later sailed it in. Those are some of the best memories of my childhood. I was exposed to the outdoors, and could play outside for as much as I wanted, that is until my grandmother told me it was time to come in. 

Lucia has lived in Chile her whole life, and continues to live there. My mom, sister, and I lived there too until 2007 when we decided to move to the United States.

In 2010, my mom reunited with her best childhood friend on Facebook. It turned out she lived in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY, and had become a psychiatrist. She began treating my grandmother, and said that her case was "something to write a book about, just because of its' extremities." When Lucia visited us in 2010, it was evident that her condition was at its' worst. She would cry every night at the dinner table, claiming that no one ever listened to her, even though no one else's voice was heard due to her constant tantrums. On many occasions during that summer, she'd wake up at 5:00 a.m. and walk to my room. She'd quietly sit on the edge of my bed and start trying to have a conversation with me. When I would tell her that I was trying to sleep, or simply didn't wake up, she'd weep.

I now know that she has a huge desire for attention, because it's something that she never received as a child. She always made it seem like something positive, but deep down she has been crying for help for years. This past Sunday, that was proven once more. My mom, grandmother and I were coming home from a weekend in Boston. I chose to drive the whole five hours, to get my mom some rest. We came to a consensus and stopped at a nearby Wendy's before getting home. As we exited the car, Lucia, my grandmother said, "You guys go ahead and eat, I don't want to go." Being used to this already, we knew that she just wanted attention, but like a child throwing a tantrum in the middle of a mall, we couldn't give it to her. We both said "ok" and began walking towards the building. Then we heard, "You know what? Maybe I'll come. Help me get out of the car."

My mom helped her get out of the car, one leg at a time, taking at least three minutes in the process. As soon as she set foot on the ground, she changed her mind. "Forget it," she said, "you don't want me to come anyways, I'll stay here." We carefully helped her back in the car and made sure she was comfortable, then we raced inside before she could change her mind again. We ate for about 20 minutes, and walked outside. To our surprise, my grandmother was walking circles next to the car, while leaning on her cane. It was evident that she was angry. She told us, in a loud and aggressive voice, "I wanted to come in, and the door wouldn't open." My mom quickly responded, "Here mom, let me show you that the door does in fact open." My grandmother responded, "Since the door obviously wasn't going to open, I walked over to the window and knocked on it for five minutes with my ring, hoping that someone would hear me, or perhaps see me. No one did." I thought back to when I was eating, to try and remember if I had heard the clack! clack! clack! sound that her ring would have made. Nothing. She then proceeded to tell us how a lady had come out of the Wendy's, and slammed the door shut before my grandmother could reach it and get inside. Another tragedy that almost occurred was that she almost froze to death even though it was a comfortable 58 degrees outside. After my mom said that she could've just waited in the car to avoid dying, she had no other response. For the rest of the ride home, she didn't speak. When we tried to make conversation, trying to make the next hour and a half bearable, she simply responded with a quiet sigh, and that was it.

Lucia hasn't had it easy. She was sent to boarding school when she was ten, and had an awful time there. She often describes it as "the worst time of my life" because of how strict and mean the teachers were. The teachers were nuns, and they would often hit their hands with meter sticks if they were caught doing anything other than what they were supposed to be doing. She also hated it because she experienced true hunger there. They were given very small portions of food, and one serving. That was it. No more, no less. Whenever someone's parents sent them food, all the other students would swarm them and take it all. "It was madness, complete chaos," she tells me. Although she has had many obstacles in her life, she has always found a way to overcome them. She became very ill last year around this time. I never really got an exact name for what she had, but it had to do with her intestines. The doctors told my sister that the chances of her surviving were very slim. They told her that she would most likely die. She didn't. She survived. The doctor said she was an outlier, and she had defied the stats.
She taught me to be determined, and through her stories, she taught me to be resourceful and to save money. One anecdote that particularly stands out to me is when she claimed she built her car that she had when I was a child entirely out of parts that had fallen out of a truck. If I ever wanted something, instead of giving me money for it, she'd help me get money for it. This made me feel independent. She gave me startup money for my first business when I was in the fourth grade, —even though I had to pay it back because you know, business is business—it was such a great help.

She is the reason I want to be involved with business when I'm older. While all the other kids my age were out buying candy or the latest copy of Condorito (a famous comic book-like magazine filled with jokes), I was putting everything I found into my piggy bank.

I don’t have many pictures with my grandmother, maybe five or six, and I don't know why. The most recent one I have is deep into my photo album on my iPhone. It's one of me standing with her, I'm on the left side and she's on the right. I'm wearing my favorite quarter zip sweatshirt, the one with the Greens Farms Academy emblem on the left hand side of my chest, and a Nike swoosh on the right. She stands maybe 4'7", because she's reached an age where it's hard for her to even stand up straight. She's smiling cheerfully, standing next to her 6'5" "nietesito" (little grandson).

I tower over her, and it looks like I'm protecting her. She looks genuinely happy. She has her salmon colored blouse, with a light button down sweater on top, black pants, and crocs. It was taken at a clothing store, like TJMaxx, because of the racks of clothes behind us. This was probably the last picture we will take, at least for a while. She always wanted to see me "crecido" (grown) before she died, and in this picture it seems as if her wish came true. There she was, and her nietesito wasn't so little anymore.

On Christmas morning, she had one gift from me under the tree. I had been stressing out about what to get her for weeks before that. I finally decided to go with something simple but meaningful: the picture. When she opened it, she stared at it for a second. That's when tears began running down her wrinkly cheeks, and when I knew I had picked the right gift.

At that moment I realized two things. The best thing that I could do to repay her for everything was to listen to what she wanted to say. To give her my attention. I also realized that I don’t care that she isn't the best, but I'm just happy I got to see her one last time.