When I was 7 months old both my parents died in a car crash while traveling in Cuba.

I was never told the actual story from beginning to end. I was left to decipher it from all the clues around me: living with my grandparents, hugging my dead mother’s portrait in a wooden frame every single night before bed, decorating my parents' graves for the New Year, and listening to my family’s endless stories of the past.

Who were my parents? Did they even exist? Why did it happen to them? What could’ve been if they didn’t die? How did they die exactly? What did they think just before they died? Would they be proud of me if they met me? 

My grandmother was the one whose story I lived in. She taught me that my parents are little stars that live in the sky and they watch over me constantly. She showed me my mother’s favourite rose, and taught me how to talk to my parents through the gravestones. She told me that she saw two burial mounds when reading their coffee grounds just before the trip. She also taught me that the pain never leaves you, it does subside, but it will always be there. 

This is how I found myself in the enchanted tale full of symbols, premonitions, pain, and love. 

Do I live in the shadow of my grandmother’s trauma, do I have my own trauma? What is the story I’ve been told? And what is the story I’m telling myself?