Confession by Louis

Last Thursday the world lost writer and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Many years ago one of his books, which I read on my youth-- "One Hundred Years of Solitude"-- was responsible for making me understand better one of the most remarkable woman I never knew.  By that time she was entering her 80's. She was in weak health and shared confusing memories like the main character of the book.  She lived among us with the mixing and hugging, the shouting and laughing so characteristic of Latin families. She was there and we all took care of her but in some ways she was no  any longer there -- just like Ursula Buendia.

After closing Garcia Marquez's book for the last time I started looking at her with much more attention.
I would listen to her histories of war, of poverty, of political arrests and her world,, to me, sounded like something out of a movie.  But that was her life and her history -- her true history.  This woman was born in an age that for us today is totally alien.  There was no electricity, no radio, no cars, no fridges -- none of all the paraphernalia that we take for granted.

She told me of losing a child to a disease that today we can cure with just a few days in bed.  She told me about her husband getting arrested and kept in jail for five years -- just for wanting a fair society where he would not have to be a slave to feed his family.  She told me how she had to sell fish at a market in order to feed her daughters and her son.  She also told me how she had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and had arrived in a totally strange country, just to have some peace and to find a better life.

I would sit beside her for hours and listen to her soft and loving voice.  She had no regrets.  She had no hate in her heart

She left us over 20 years ago but still has been inspiring me since.  Her name was Ana.  She was my grandmother.