Mi MAMA
My grandmother lost her battle against Alzheimer’s disease on January 15th, 2023. She’s survived by three children and five grandchildren.
I loved her like a mother.
Mama was born in 1945 and raised in Morovis Puerto Rico.
Her stories about her childhood will stay with me for life. She was the oldest of five siblings and was always a nurturing soul. She grew up poor and lived in a shack with her mother, father, and siblings. Her father was an alcoholic who would abuse her and her siblings as well as her mother my great grandma. Mama would be the first to say she had a hard life and upbringing. She suffered from depression and anxiety and ptsd from childhood trauma she endured. Mama said that her brother loved dogs and had one he always played with outside, one time her father in a drunken rage hung the dog on a tree in front of her brother, and her brother yelled out to him to please stop! and he didn’t and strangled the dog in front of him. She said that’s why her brother still loves dogs till this day because she knows after their father did that he wasn’t the same and it affected him but he still became a good husband and father regardless.
As a child and into her teens she use to clean the homes of people in her village for money to help out her mother and put food on the table.
