Lourdes Islas Martinez, I didn’t know you.
I never thought I looked like you.
But I think of you almost every day.

When I was little, I thought of you when I looked down at my thumbs.
“Those skip a generation,” Mom said. “My mother had thumbs like that!”

Is it weird to say I feel connected to you by toe thumbs?

As I approached forty (and Mom had made it to sixty-seven) I wondered if what had taken you early from your family would take me early from mine. Does cancer skip a generation too?

When I lost my pregnancy and someone said something ugly, I cried and cried and cried.
I stopped taking your great-grandbabies on field trips.
On Sundays, I hid between the pews.

Do you remember how your memory snapped me out of my misery when I had a panic attack too?

It was Mom’s memory of you and Aunt Lizzy and the watermelon seeds.
It made me think of something else.
It was another weird connection (kind of like toe thumbs).

‘Cucaracha! Cucaracha!!! CUCARACHA!!!!’
Mom ran into the kitchen screaming while you were on the phone!

You ran into the bathroom, screaming at those little black ovals.
They were floating, creeping, SNEAKING toward Lizzy’s chubby legs.
Mom laughed and teased, “Those are just my watermelon seeds!”

You were too kind to punish her.
You just said, “Wait until your father gets home.”

Do you know Mom ends every story of you the same way?

My mother was the kindest person.
I wish you could have known her.
You are just like her.
You would have loved her.
She was very social.

That day I cried until my heart was in my throat,
I was thinking of you, Mom, and Aunt Lizzy and the watermelon seeds.
I was picturing you in heaven pain free.
Were you whispering to me?
Or was it God with a divine Dad joke?
I don’t know, but this was the thought that came:

Dead people don’t gossip—they have better things to do.
Don’t you?

That snapped me up and made me laugh.
It was true.

I couldn’t picture you fretting over church gossip.
In the presence of God and everything holy and good.

Though I hadn’t been the one spreading it,
I’d been repeating it.
I’d been saying it in my mind and thinking things no one should.

That answer gave me peace that day, but it didn’t stop compulsive thoughts I tried not to think or “bad” feelings I tried not to feel.

If someone at church was unkind.
Or angry.
Or disappointed.
Or they gossiped about me.
It got me every time.

When that happened, I didn’t think of things said and done when I was young to try and make me conform or “believe.”
I just physically felt the same things as if I was again fifteen.

It would be years before other answers came.
Such as not allowing others to mistreat me or my family (even at church).

But that answer that day, thinking of you, turned my thoughts toward God.
It put me in His (and your) light.