Grandma Sini

Tonight was the one year anniversary of my Grandma Sini’s death. There are no words to describe how much I miss her. She was ninety-one when she passed, but I stil feel as though we were robbed of a good 10 years.


In February of last year, they found cancer in her lungs. In her later years she was not a smoker. In fact, I never knew she smoked at all. But she lived in a time where smoking was the norm. She and my grandfather owned bars, and of course, what else did people do back then besides drink and smoke. So not only was she inhaling her own, she was also receiving a massive amount of second hand smoke each day.

I have written a little bit about my grandma before, but I can’t seem to find the words to do her justice. She was the grandma that everyone dreams to have. She treated me and my sister as though we were the only two important people in the whole world. Nothing was off limits in her home. All the grandkids could sit at her desk and cut and staple and color and stamp. I would play in the sink all day washing her dishes over and over again. We would roll meatballs in the kitchen and throw them back and forth. She always kept a stash of gum in her purse because she knew we would ask for it. We called her Grandma Gum. She was my biggest fan, my biggest complimenter, and my friend. I always knew that whenever I was down I could call her up and she would surely cheer me up. She was loved by everyone. My friends would meet her and instantly want to trade grandmas. She just had a way to make everyone feel comfortable and loved. I could go on for pages and pages about all the reasons she was so important to me.

For her memorial, G made the most beautiful movie of my grandma with pictures of her throughout her life. He spent days and days on this project which meant so much to me. One of the songs he included was I Did It My Way by Frank Sinatra. It was a perfect and most fitting song to portray her life.

The reason I bring this up is that something very strange happened this evening. My family and I went to dinner to remember and honor her. We had gone to the Cheesecake Factory where the average wait time is sixty minutes. To distract Mae, we walked to the courtyard where every weekend they have live bands or DJ’s playing. We had never seen it before, but they had an old time big band playing. As we walked up my sister looked at me and told me to listen closely to the song. It took me a few seconds to figure it out. Can you guess what the song was? None other than I Did It My Way by Frank Sinatra. If that was not a sign that my grandma is still with us, then I don’t know what is.




My grandparents wedding day.





My grandma with my aunt





In Cuba




My grandma and me