Unsung Heroes Part VI: Lita (Mom‪)‬ Victor D. López, Author

This is the final part of my longest free-verse poem. It details the life of my mom who overcame blindness in childhood during the Spanish Civil War and left school at the age of 11 to illegally work on a full-time basis in a cousin's fish cannery to help provide for her eight brothers and sisters after her dad's death after being persecuted by the fascist forces for his anti-fascist non-violent resistance during the war. At 16 she emigrated to join an aunt and uncle in Argentina and worked (by lying about her age) tirelessly to make enough money to reclaim her mom and two youngest brothers in Spain. Hers was a life of incredible hardship and tragedy that would never break her or rob her of her can-do attitude, optimism, humor, and faith in God. She faced and overcame adversity at every turn in times of poverty and plenty through self-reliance, honest hard work, and an unwillingness to view herself as a victim, speaking truth to power long before the phrase became a cliche, and always seizing focusing on the silver lining in every storm cloud. She had the singing voice of an angel and the heart of a lion. As I noted elsewhere, she was always proud of her only son on whom she doted, but " . . . one of her cells was worth ten of me."



The poem was written in the days following her death after a four-year battle with Alzheimer's that robbed her of her eloquence, her prodigious memory, and her quality of life. I miss her every day.