As soon as I arrived to my office I felt the difference. My boss invited me to help in a project, an innovation project. We had to create an internal campaign for our people to join in this massive international brainstorming. Everyone could join and add as many ideas as possible to build the future of our company. People could vote, comment or even add to ideas from other colleagues. The best idea would win great prizes.

This was not a contest like any other. This was big (international big), and my office had to make sure that everyone was in. We had to make sure that every person knew about this contest and that everyone helped boost our participation level.

After talking to my boss I started thinking about marketing tools, new channels of communication… and the phone rang.

At the other end of the line, Mary, the woman who took care of my grandmother told me she was sick. I left everything and flew to Monterrey to see her. After my grandpa and my father died, my grandmother was the last bridge to my Sifuentes self (if there’s such a thing). I’m not going to lie. After my grandpa’s death we didn’t have a loving relationship. Part of my young, spoiled and ignorant mind was convinced that she became bitter. Not sad, just bitter.

It took me the whole hour and half flight to recall all the memories, sort them and discard the needless ones. I also thought about my father. I remembered the holydays and the birthday parties, the set of photographs we took in the living room: one with the three of us, one with my grandma and dad, and another one with him and me. A few years before we’d made the same trip on bus. It took us 12 hours to arrive and that night I learned to love the road. It was after my dad’s death that I also learned to love my grandmother, and even to forgive her and ask for her forgiveness.

I arrived to her house and stayed alone with her in the empty room. In front of the hospital-like bed was the TV and on top of it one of the photographs I had remembered, just not the one I was in. She tried to talk to me but there was no strength in her voice, and I reassured her that there was nothing to be said, that everything between us was love and understanding. She opened her eyes, cried and died in my embrace.

The next hours are still a blur in my mind, but the one thing I can clearly remember is the support that was given to me from my office colleagues. My phone kept whispering loving messages and words of comfort. They were with me, as always, in good times and in bad. I felt I needed nothing else. I was relaxed and protected; safe in a city that many times felt like home, a city that looks like the one I see from my window, a city that still smells like my grandmother’s cakes and chocolate cookies, a city that will always pulse in my blood.

See more posts by Emma Sifuentes

Latest posts in the @Office series:

• The last one (not quite)
• In good times and in bad
• Changes. Big changes.
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby! (XI and last)
• Summer half-day Bicentennial Wednesday. Yeah Baby!
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby! (X)
• Germán Dehesa and the secrets of my soul
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby! (IX)
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby! (VIII)
• Meeting request (II)
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby! (VII)
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby! (VI)
• You’re hired!
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby! (V)
• Just walk it
• Wake-up call
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby! (IV)
• Pimpin’ it
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah Baby! (III)
• Contagious
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby! (II)
• Lifting the love
• Rainy days and Mondays
• Summer half-day Fridays. Yeah baby!
• Champions of joy
• Meeting request

@Office