I don't have enough words to talk about my grandmother. Perhaps because my grandmother was small, but accurate, like the words themselves. Her work was discreet, because silence is eloquent, but constant and generous. That is why her life does not fit in a silence either, that is why this handful of words.
From what little I know, since I only went to memory to rescue the light, my grandmother's childhood was the childhood of this island: a partly orphaned and almost always inhospitable childhood. But, far from justifying herself in the past, my grandmother gave us a universal lesson in humanity that women will understand very well: she installed her meaning in the future.
She worried about making life habitable for those of us who came after, under the shelter of her generosity. She prepared the space for the existence of others. And she prepared it with care. Everything in her was a gift. Her life was all gratuity.
What remains of the child I was appreciates her work: in her, a different form of tenderness was declined. A precious form, because she knew well what each centimeter conquered from the pure inertia of life was worth. She knew well, without even needing to state it, the elementary form of love. She chose not to ask, not to claim. She knew there was nothing there worth it. She took charge of her life. She did nothing but give. And she left still thanking us.
That's how my grandmother was. Like the few flowers that grow on the stone, she needed very little—almost nothing—to cover our gaze with joy, to give us the discretion of her abundance.
