This morning I learned that my beautiful Tia Eduarda passed
away in her home of Rhode Island. I didn’t
have an opportunity to see her in the last few years, but my sadness that she has
passed is great. I cried the whole way
into the office today thinking about her, the lessons she leaves me, and how
special she was. For all of you who knew
her, and those of you who did not, here are my lessons from Tia Eduarda.
She was a single mother.
Not just a single mother but a mother who gave up everything that she
knew in her small home in the Azores to take a risk and move to the United
States to give her son the benefit of an education and a better life. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like
to move to a country where she did not speak the language nor have an option at
any kind of work other than whatever she was lucky enough to have come her
way. And she did it all in order to give
someone she loved more than she was able to have. As a single mother myself, I’m blessed with a
good job and an education, I can’t
imagine how hard it would be to do what I have to do without those
benefits. But she did it, and for that
she is one of my hero’s.
Her son was her entire world; we used to laugh and not
understand when she would become completely insane with fear when he was a few minutes late. Today I understand. I have my own sons, and as a single mother I’m
painfully aware that these boys are what I have. They are my life and my legacy and raising
them right, raising them to be strong men is the ultimate goal. I’m not at a point where they are out until all
hours and not letting me know where they are, but I can anticipate that this lies
ahead for me. And now I understand. I understand her fear, it was a mothers fear
based on love, and today I know what I didn't know then, a mothers love is most irrational.
Her son, my cousin Joe, grew into a good man (hi Joe) and
has a beautiful family of his own now; so I guess she did what she had to do to
give him what he has now. And as a
mother, I am certain that she had no regrets for any of
the risks she took moving to a strange country, any of the ranting, any of the
worrying, but most definitely no regrets for all the loving.
I’m going to always picture Tia Eduarda my
favourite way to think of her; screaming out the doorway of her New York Avenue
home at Debbie “Debbie, tell your mother I need a cup of sugar” (hey, Hi
Debbie). I hope tonight Tia is looking
at my own little family and I hope that she’s as proud of my work as a single
mother as I am proud of hers.
