Mi persona favorita en el mundo

A eulogy for my grandmother

My grandmother as a young woman in Cuba

I have not written here, not done anything in a while, really, because my grandmother — Josefina (Fifi) Arias Giralt — died recently. She was in her late 80s; she had dementia. It wasn’t a surprise. Yet … it has been hard. My abuela, as I told my (rather jealous!!!) mother, was my favorite person in the world — tied with my abuelo.

The day before her funeral, we went to my aunt’s house, on Long Island. People from Pittsburgh and New Jersey, Miami and South Carolina had come for Fifi’s funeral. Some of us hadn’t seen one another in over a decade. Of course, one of my Miami cousins, Javier, said, Fifi would be the one to bring us together. She was always the instigator, the matriarch, the glue of the family.

This was true despite the fact that Fifi (or Ma, or Madam, or Yaya, as different people called her) was — for a long time anyway — not the oldest person in our family, not the conventional matriarch. What was it about her that drew people to her? That made them not want to let her down or disappoint her? That made them want to please her?

Part of this was her sheer force. My grandmother was not like the genteel gray-haired grannies my friends had. (For one, she dyed her short ‘fro well into her 80s — until the pandemic put a stop to her weekly salon appointments.) She had a naughty streak. Family lore had it that she once got coal in her Christmas stocking! (Or was it in her shoes for Three Kings Day?) As a child in Santiago de Cuba, she rode a horse bareback and terrorized the cattle on the family farm on a tractor. As an adult, living in Queens, she encouraged her daughters to deface the doors of the apartments that did not hand out candy on Halloween. (They used chalk, so it was washable.)

She howled like a wolf or roared like a seal out in public. One time, while on vacation in Montauk, she picked up a discarded fish bone from Gosman’s Dock — about as long as my torso — and chased us grandchildren around with it, to our horror and delight. My cousin, Billy, called her “bruja,” and she liked being a “witch.”

Sometimes, when I was a kid, I wondered why I had such a crazy grandmother. But as I got older, I realized that “Ma” (as my generation called her) wasn’t really crazy. She was just fearless — absolutely fearless.

My aunt (Ma’s daughter) told me a story that I had never heard before the other day. She said that before her wedding, my grandmother held a bridal shower at their house in Queen, and at some time during the boisterous festivities, a thief had tried to break through their window. My grandmother started barking like some big, mean dog, until the would-be burglar ran away, petrified, sure that he was going to be gobbled up by some fearsome creature. I thought how this story just perfectly captured my grandmother — her wild nature, but also her absolutely fearlessness when it came to protecting her family. It was this fearlessness that led her to come to the United States from Cuba, a young mother with two little girls. That led her to bark at strangers — men! — who threatened her children or her grandchildren. That led her to take care of all of us, from her elderly aunts who followed her from Cuba to Queens, to her grandchildren whom she disciplined and fed and cared for.

(I will never forget how, when I got married, she made my grandfather buy challah bread in New York to bring to Pittsburgh so I could have that and café con leche for my last breakfast as a soltera!)

This fearlessness, this devotion, this loyalty extended beyond our nuclear family. It expanded to include the friends of their children, the family members of their in-laws, the people in their community.

On Friday, a few days before her funeral, my sisters and I went with our husbands and children’s to Victor’s Cafe, one of my grandparents’ favorite Cuban restaurants in Manhattan. My husband had a photo of my grandparents on his iPad and he displayed it at our table, and so many servers stopped to pay their condolences and offer their memories. They talked about how my grandfather was the warmest, most generous person on the face of the planet, and how Fifi was “la más elegante,” “la reina.” They all said how they felt so emotional seeing their pictures, knowing that they had died, but then Armando — who I feel like has been at Victor’s since I was born! — said that no, they were not gone, that they would always be here, their souls forever in this restaurant, dining on lechón and drinking sangria.

I cried as I said (some approximation of) these words during her eulogy, but really, I felt happy and grateful and blessed. Because I knew that Armando was right. Because I can still feel my grandmother in all the places where we went together — to Lord & Taylor (RIP) and Bloomingdale’s, to Victor’s and Shish Kabob (in Port Washington), to Montauk and Pittsburgh (where she spent her last two years, with my parents and her wonderful compañeras). And I can see her face in all the people she loved — and who I in turn love — so fiercely.

This is a more polished, written-out version of what I said during my grandmother’s eulogy for her funeral. You can read two other pieces I wrote about her here (she was my muse!). Memorial contributions may be made to the Washington County Humane Society (she adored animals, especially cats) or the Alzheimer’s Association.