Reader’s Digest
78 february 2020
away. It was one of the saddest mo-
ments of his life, Aldo says.M
y grandmother met my
grandfather in college, and
by 1969, she was married
with four children. Her marriage was
happy, but my grandfather’s jealousy
contained her curiosity about the
world. When they ate at restaurants,
she faced the back to avoid other pa-
trons’ wandering eyes.
Shortly after the wedding, they
moved three hours away from São
Paulo to a town in southern Brazil.
My grandfather enjoyed small-town
life, but my grandmother struggled
to adjust. After he died, she started
spending half the year with my
mother in Miami.
Meanwhile, Aldo studied enginee-
ring. For most of his career, he
worked on urban planning for local
communities. In 1959 he met Beatrice
at a party. They married and had
two children.
Beatrice suffered from depression,
and the marriage was hard on Aldo.
Their circle of friends was small, and
they rarely travelled. After his mother
died in 1995, he came across a wed-
ding photo of his beloved Marilena
among her letters. Her grandmother
must have sent it.
“I thought, ‘Where is she? How is her
life?’” he recalls. “The thought that I
would never again hear from the girl
who captured my boyhood heart tor-
mented me.” And so began his search.Aldo tried to reach the wedding
photographer, but he was long dead.
He emailed the mayor’s office of São
Paulo, asking for information on a
Marilena Lerario. “We’re a city of
12 million people,” Aldo was told. “We
can’t help you.”
In 2012, Beatrice was diagnosed
with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
She eventually stopped speaking and
barely recognized her children. She
refused at-home care from nurses and
relied on Aldo for her every need.
Finally, two decades after he
started his search, Aldo contacted
the daughter of a family friend who
worked at the Brazilian tax authority.
She found Marilena, and passed him
her phone number.
When Aldo phoned that afternoon,
he told Marilena, “I never forgot you.”
My grandmother was speechless.T
he next day, Aldo called again.
What did her children do? he
asked. What were her days like?
“I don’t even know what he looks
like, and we talk every day,” my grand-
mother said to me.
“Let’s look him up on Facebook,”
I suggested.
I pulled up Aldo’s photo. He had
white hair but the same sad eyes and
shy smile he had at 17. “He’s hand-
some,” my grandmother said.
I suggested they communicate
by video chat. The following week-
end I went to her house for a family
get-together and messaged Aldo to