September 3, 2026
I heard my grandfather cry today.
Growing up, I always saw this tough, stubborn, and counterintuitively charismatic figure, whom even the man I feared the most behaved respectfully towards.
We called him Papa Serafin.
He sat at the end of a long dinner table. He walked straight. Chest up. Brought up Coca Cola or Tampico from a room he kept everyone away from. A room he didn’t share with his own wife. Yes, they were still married. No, they didn’t live in the same room because he’d taken up a lot of his space with caretaking tools, which he used to care for his mom in her final days.
One way or another, he was distant.
Like everyone in the family, he still went to church every Sunday. But the picture in my head was that of a veteran who taught my dad ‘how to be a man’.
He was a man of his time. Cold. Traumatized by a fatherless childhood and a story my family still lives to forget.
Served two years in La Paz, as a corporal. Went to the Nancahuazu War. Moved back to Cochabamba only to find work wherever he could in the next 50 years.
He is still hardworking and tough. Only now he can’t climb the stairs without people hearing his pronounced breathing.
He is old. But he is still him. Or was.
I have been visiting him more often. Every time I am home.
I showed him my own treasures from military service.
I showed him what the White House looks like.
I showed him how AI and self-driving cars are part of everyday life here.
I just couldn’t grasp that such a ‘strong man’ could ever open up to someone like me.
In my last visit, he gave me his bayonets as a gift. Two relics. One for an M1 American rifle and the other for a German Mauser.
I don’t want to think that he is slowly starting to say goodbye.
But today, my dad sent a picture of my family at his house.
I could not ‘just call’ my grandpa. My family has never been good at just calling people whenever you needed to borrow an ear.
So, I called my dad.
He gave the phone to my grandpa.
It wasn’t the same man I’d known on the other side of the call.
It hadn’t been just because of me. He had been crying while my relatives were giving their speeches back home.
He told me he was happy. That he’d never thought he’d get to live to be welcomed with such warmth. To be cared for by his family. To receive love.
And, I understand that.
Because it is never easy where we come from. And we live in such a way that we sometimes forget love is not something that’s meant to be earned.
So, yes. My grandpa is tough, stubborn, and counterintuitively charismatic. He has always believed that in order to face life, you need to learn ‘how to be a man’, earning the right to be loved.
Today, though he might never recognize it, I am glad that he is here, that he is loved, and that he has ultimately been proved wrong.
