February 2004

My life-partner Jose’s grandmother Minna died in late December of 2003. She is really the one who raised Jose and his sister Rossio because their mother Pochi needed to work two eight-hour shifts at MacDonald’s to support them after they moved to Daly City from Lima, Peru. They came to the US when Jose was 11. Minna would have fresh squeezed lemonade and sliced cheese waiting for Jose and Rossio when they got home from school. The three of them would walk hand-in-hand to greet Jose’s mother Pochi at the bus stop as she arrived home from working 16-hour days.

Pochi eventually got a job as a mail carrier for the post office in Orinda, and moved the family from Daly City to Pleasant Hill. Minna’s health first started declining after Jose and I had lived together five years. When we visited her in the hospital Jose sat on Minna’s bed, holding her hand, the two of them smiling and conversing in Spanish as comfortably as if they had never been apart a day in their lives.

Minna lived three years after being diagnosed with cancer. She was bedridden for three months before she died, and Pochi was her caregiver. Minna left Jose her favorite crucifix along with memories like how she used to pat talcum powder on his feet in the morning to wake him up when he was a little boy. We attended her Catholic mass in early January. Jose wore his new olive dress jacket and read beautifully to us passages from the Bible as if he had rehearsed them.

Jose and I get to share much of what really matters. When my mother died he was here. When his grandmother died I was here. Every night we get to sleep together. After I started Bonds Limited, he worked with me full-time for six years until we paid off the debt. He gets to go to school now. He wants to be a physicist. We have two cats that we spoil. Most mornings I get to make him breakfast. He gets to balance the checkbook and program the VCR. After a decade of faithful memories, pleasures and pains, I find complete comfort in our union.

<< Back To Advice Page