La Guille Makes Her Final Exit, at 78
My grandmother died yesterday at home in Santiago, as promised.
Guillermina Antoneta Erices Fiero died today at her home in Barrio Pudahuel, Santiago de Chile. She was 78. La Guille was my last living grandparent, mi querida abuelita who, at just under five feet tall, was a merchant queen of the subaltern. She sold everything from avocados to alpaca sweaters, name brand appliances and bootleg sports apparel.
Once while I was visiting, la Guille left her house after an early breakfast with 40 kilos of lemons and a dozen-or-so unopened boxes of 9-volt D batteries, all in a rolling suitcase. She returned that evening in a neighbor's truck with twenty piping hot empanadas de pino for dinner, and a literal refrigerator that my cousins and I helped unload from the back and install in her kitchen.
La Guille knew the saints by name, day, focus, and context, and loved teaching her grandchildren to the details of their struggles. A superstitious genius, she waged war against the Devil himself with all the correct plants, prayer cards, and amulets placed strategically above doors and window frames.
In her daily life, la Guille spoke directly to God and His many angels, chatting them up while cooking, cleaning, or gathering another subaltern menagerie of daily merchandise to sell in open air stalls from Patagonia to the Atacama, Mendoza to Valparaiso, Buenos Aires to la Serena, marketplaces that knew her well and respected her hustle.
"Eso viene de mi," she said last year when I showed her my oil painting studio during a video chat. 'You got that from me.' Turns out, la Guille was also a painter. So were her seven sisters. As teenagers, they they decorated table cloths, dresses, and artesanal kitchenware with patterns and figures of birds, plants, landscapes, mountainscapes, Roman Catholic saints, and even futbol logos—whatever sold Santiago, the Erices sisters would paint in Nuevo Imperial, the tiny desert village outside of Temuco where la Guille was born.
La Guille was four when her mother moved the girls to Santiago. There she’d meet Hernan Manríquez, a local orphan newly trained as a cobbler who she dated in secret for three years before her mother gave them permission to marry. Together they’d raise three sons and a daughter. Their eldest, Luis, is my father. I was their first grandchild.
In December, la Guille told me that el agosto would take her this year. "Me veo bien pero no estoy bien," she said with a smile. 'I look okay but I'm not okay.' Moreover, she insisted that she would die at home, not alone in a hospital. El Agosto (literally August, as in, the month of) is a mythic reaper that comes in the dead of Chilean winter to carry off the old and sick.
In the end, la Guille was correct on all counts: she looked great and was in good spirits until the end, when el agosto took her; and she died at home, as promised.
Everywhere la Guille went in life, she prayed the rosary for family and friends; but especially she prayed for her foes and adversaries, a lifelong practice that surely came up during her final pitch yesterday, this one to her old friend and confidant Saint Peter (San Pedro) for full admission through the Pearly Gates where her walk up song was surely a tango by Carlos Gardel, or “Querida” by Juan Gabriel, her favorites.
La Guille’s exit leaves a void where a vibrant spirit once guided us with her knowledge of the saints, protected us from evil with her superstitious defenses, blessed us through our best and worst with rosary beads in-hand, and nurtured us with her wisdom and frankness. Adiós querida Abuela Guille. Abraza a mi abuelo, dale gracias a Pancracio, y salude a Juan Gabriel. Y cuando me toque seguirte al cielo infinito, encuéntrame en las puertas perladas, para ver si San Pedro me regala un precio. Gracias por todo. Que dios la bendiga siempre.
