María Esther (Mexico City, Mexico / Diagnosed at age 55)

“When your grandma found out, she tried to hide it from all of us.”

With these words, my mother confirmed the impression that I always had of my grandmother as a lonesome warrior. Back in high school, I wrote an essay where I claimed that thanks to grandma I learned to go through a personal hell without letting it show. The reason why I wrote that phrase was because my last memory of her was a chaotic morning at her house. Everyone was crowded around her bed and there was a sense of sheer…