The Song I Never Sang - Letter to my Grandmother

I didn’t expect a cartoon to undo me. But there I was, watching Vivo, and suddenly I was back in 2012.

Back in the silence between me and my grandmother. Back in the days when I thought there would be more time. Back in the moment I walked out of school to learn she was gone.

In the film, it was a song that never reached its destination. For me, it was words I never spoke. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I thought tomorrow would always arrive.

When Vivo carried that melody through the streets, desperate to deliver it, I saw myself carrying a memory — heavy, unfinished, yet sacred. The kind of love that doesn’t vanish with the person. It lingers in the pauses, in the ache, in the quiet spaces of your chest.

And so I cried. Harder than I expected. Because grief doesn’t leave. It waits for art, for music, for stories, to tap us on the shoulder and whisper: You loved. And that love still exists.

My grandmother never got my last words, but she has every one of my memories. And tonight, through an animated song, I got to feel her presence again.