It’s your birthday and the house is already loud before I even get there.

—
We’re using those same festive plates we bought, like, four years ago for some other event and never bothered to throw away. Nobody cares. They’re still cute enough. The table is full anyway: rice with chorizo, steak, a salad, tostones. Everything ready, always ready, like it’s my birthday even though it’s yours. But being my mom’s only child and your favorite grandbaby, every day was kind of my birthday.

—
You never hid it. You played favorites. Loudly. Proudly. You’d tell anyone who would listen that I’m your favorite, that I’m the only nieta who actually comes to see you and stays. You picked me. Out loud. Every time.

—
The house smells clean like always, but also like your perfume, the one I used to tell you smells like an old person even though, somehow, it’s still the smell of comfort.

—
I’m already clearing the table because that’s just what I do, and we’re either pulling out the dominos or, if it’s a really good night, the cards. Of course you’re winning. You’re always winning. You’re counting features, reading hands, telling me the person to my left has no sixes so I should put something down with a six. After you win a couple times we start talking shit about how it’s rigged and you tell us you can’t lose in your house.

—
The cake is probably ice cream cake. This year we switch the candles from 81 to 18 and we sing happy birthday and count up to 18 to make you feel good, but we’re still joking about how you’re turning 100 tomorrow because, damn near. Someone smears cake on your face. You hate it. We’re all crying laughing. And somehow, like you always do, you already have flan in the fridge because you knew that’s what I’d want.

—
On your birthday you’re still feeding everyone else.

—
By now everybody’s got a couple beers in them, but it’s time for coffee. It’s like eight at night and nobody cares. I can smell it before I see it, the aluminum greca breathing it into the air, that bitter sweet smell filling the whole house.

—
You make it exactly how I like it. You heat my milk on the stove. You hand me the sugar because that one part you could never get right. You sit next to me with your Splendas. We’re stirring our coffee, sitting on the red couch or on your side of the table, using one of the mugs I got you, and for a second everything in the world feels exactly where it belongs.

—
In the background there’s Spanish music playing, but my mom is six octaves too loud so it’s basically just noise. Your kids are yelling derogatory things at each other, dramatic as hell, and somehow you still catch a stray, ending it with “your mother,” like you’re not sitting right there in front of us. You’re unfazed. The room is English and Spanish and laughter and arguing and dominoes slamming and spoons hitting mugs. It’s just life.

—
At some point I’m in your room going through your closet, playing dress up for you. Your hair is all salt and pepper, more white than gray now, your house slippers sliding on the floor. You tweak my outfit. Always. You always fix it.

—
Before I leave, you run your hand through your hair and ask me when I’m going to see you again.

—
I always say soon.
Never actually planning the next visit.

—
Until the day I said soon
and I was too late.

—
Now it’s your birthday
and there is no coffee.
No greca breathing into the air.
No table waiting to be cleared.
No excuse to gather.
No house pulling us in.

—
The rooms feel bigger.
Quieter.
Like they’re waiting for you to tell them what to do.

—
Your presence was light.
Your touch was love.
Your coffee was warmth.
Your house was sanctuary.

—
Today you’d be 81.
Or 18, if you felt like lying.

—
I keep expecting you to call my name from the kitchen.

—
Happy birthday, Grandma.
I miss you so much.

—
It hurts that I can’t tell you one more time.
That I can’t burst into the house and say “my grandma.”
That there is no celebratory dinner today.
It hurts that I can’t give you a birthday hug or scramble to find you a gift.

—
In fact, the last gift I got you, you were buried in.

—
What is a house without its light?

—
I can’t see where I’m going in the dark.
I don’t know how to navigate this landscape without light.
I can’t find the things I need to survive
or the things needed to clean up this mess.

—
The broom is in the closet but I can’t locate it.
And the mess is too big for the broom anyway.
The dust just scatters in the dark.
I move my hands along the walls, looking for a switch,
but no light lives here anymore.

—
You were the light that told this house what it was.
Light and love were the same thing with you.
The light that raised me.
The light that guided me.
The light that made chaos feel like family.

—
Now everything still exists,
but nothing works the same.

—
The rooms are bigger.
The silence is louder.
And I am walking through a place
that used to know me.

—
I am walking in the dark.

—
Se fue la luz.
La luz de mi vida.
Cuando te fuiste.

—
And I am still here,
searching.

—
But that light lives in me now.
I carry you everywhere I go.

—
Nunca sin luz. Siempre conmigo.
Te fuiste, pero todavía te siento aquí.

—
You surround me with light and drown me in love.

—
My Luz River, forever in my heart.

—
Happy birthday, Grandma.
The literal light of my life.
Gone, but never forgotten.
And always celebrated.