As a current Clevelander, I have had the chance to visit our beautiful All Souls Cemetery, with its many lovely headstones and monuments to dear loved ones no longer with us. I have also attended funeral services at the Hindi temple, and Jewish cemeteries. What has struck me most about these experiences were not the different and equally special rites, but rather the organization and neatness of the actual cemeteries.

Growing up in Nicaragua, finding a tombstone in the main cemetery was an exercise similar to a treasure hunt. The older parts of the main cemetery in Managua were a little more organized, so, if you were lucky, you would find your loved one’s tombstone among a neat path. Nevertheless, you had to know a little more to find the same person’s headstone every time (like whom they were buried next to!).

When my abuelita Carmen died in 2015, a day short of her 96^th birthday, I flew to Nicaragua from Cleveland to say goodbye. The eldest of eight grandchildren, my grandma and I had an incredibly close relationship. I loved everything about her—her soft skin, her melodious voice, and the empanaditas (small empanadas filled with her own special pineapple cinnamon-y confection) and cookies she made. My grandma was a soft embrace, a song when I was sad, someone who viewed me as perfect, no matter my flaws. A strong woman, with strong opinions and no tolerance for fools, my whita (as I called her) was steel and silk. With me, she was all softness and love—she taught me unconditional love at its purest. Losing her was losing one of the biggest champions of my life.

But I was prepared for her funeral—I had years ago written a eulogy for her which I had actually shared with her so that she could read how much she meant to me while she was alive. She had enjoyed reading it, her eyes swelling, her hands in mine, patting my arm and calling me “mi niña” (my girl). I will never forget that moment, and so many more I shared with her.

After her burial in the vault where my grandpa already lay, it was time to go home and share her stories with my sisters, cousins, mom, aunts, and uncles. At my grandparent’s house, we told famous family stories we had been telling for years. Stories about my grandpa’s tale of meeting my grandma as he was being chased by a rogue firecracker on a festival day (which she always denied!); stories about my grandma’s famous cooking. Everyone laughed and cried. When I came back to Cleveland, I felt as if I had left my grandma behind forever, and it hurt.

I spent many months singing her special childhood song to myself and looking at old photos. I felt so far from where my grandparents were buried. However, coincidences started to happen. I walked into a store, picked up this beautiful sweater, tried it on, and felt so warm inside it. I took it off, and the label read “Carmen,” a label I had never encountered at a store before. On another occasion, I drove to a nearby neighborhood to drop off one of my children at a playdate, and the street I passed read “Carmen.” Things like this continued to happen every year. Sometimes it would be weeks before another Carmen sign showed up, but they inevitably did. Most recently, we visited our oldest son who is a freshman at Ohio State University. As we drove around campus, I curiously noticed some doors to one of the stadiums that were marked by words I could not make out due to our car’s position. As my husband turned the corner, I could all of a sudden see, in giant white letters, above each of the doors: CARMEN. I can’t tell you why these doors had that above them (to my knowledge they seemed permanent, not an advertisement for anything). Maybe there is some connection I do not know about to OSU or OSU history. But in my heart, I felt it was for me. My whita Carmen was there too, keeping watch over my son—sending her sign as always, reminding me that she is always with me, loving me, just as I am always with her, loving her back.

Written by: Sydnia DeFranco