In 1941, my grandfather Salomón, my father’s father, wrote a letter to my grandmother Cala, my father’s mother.
Recently, my uncle Marcelo found that letter. It was intact, kept on paper all these years. He digitized it and showed it to us. And when we read it, we couldn’t contain the emotion.
Because there he was.
So loving.
So in love.
So vulnerable.
Without fear of telling her how he felt. Without fear of showing how much she meant to him. He spoke to her with respect, with loyalty, with total devotion. He showed her, in a sense, that she was the most important thing in his life.
I have a very present memory of my grandparents: always together, hand in hand.
They say that beginnings anticipate endings. And perhaps they had already started to write, in those early years, the story of that love that would accompany them to the end.
But there was something in that letter that moved me especially. My grandfather says that he even felt guilty for feeling almost happy when he was with my grandmother.
Because while he lived that love, his family—his parents and his siblings—were living the Nazi Hell, enduring cruel and inhuman ordeals.
And I thought about that. How so much light can coexist with so much darkness. How, even in the deepest pain, something can appear that gives us a little air. For my grandfather, that love was a kind of salvation.
He didn’t erase what was happening.
He didn’t make the pain disappear.
But it gave him light in the midst of darkness.
It helped him get out of the mud and to germinate. And then I thought of them. Of that letter. Of those sweet words. Of that enormous love.
And I also thought: Where does all that love go when the people we love leave?
Where do those kisses, those caresses, those gazes remain?
Where does all they built together go?
Perhaps it stays in us.
In the memories we inherit.
In the stories we keep telling.
In the way we learned to love.
And perhaps there is something more: a learning this letter left me: we are all fighting battles that many times no one sees. We all have internal pains, worries, voids, fears, and wounds.
We all move through life a little broken. That’s why I believe it’s so important to find what saves us.
That band-aid that doesn’t necessarily heal the wound forever, but eases it. That which allows us to breathe a bit deeper.
That which pulls us out, even if only for a while, from the well and returns our air. It can be a love, just like my grandparents’.
A friendship. A pet. A child. A relative. A job. A project. A hobby. A conversation.
Sometimes it can simply be someone who listens to us and makes us feel we are not alone.
Finding that in the midst of chaos is also a virtue.
So today I ask you:
What saves you in the middle of your battles?
Who lightens your load a little?
Who lifts your head from the well and gives you air back?
Who manages to make you smile from the heart even when it seems impossible?
Because we all need a lifeline at some point.
A letter.
A love.
A memory.
A hand writing with total honesty that we can still feel, even though it’s no longer here.
And a learning that runs through generations: life is a contrast.
There is light and there is darkness.
There are losses and there are encounters.
There is pain, and there is also love.
And nothing lasts forever. So perhaps, in the end, what truly remains isn’t how much we had, how much we accomplished, or how long it lasted.
What remains is the love we could give.
And the love we were lucky to receive.
Source: Valeria Diament is a speaker and trainer in Argentina and Latin America, specializing in essential topics for personal and professional development. More info: @valeriadiament /www.valeriadiament.com
