What Remains

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The Portuguese, or at least some of them, or PARTICULARLY my mom have a tendency to burn most of the belongings/correspondence/papers of the deceased.

This is something that would shock Americans and in fact it is probably a measure of my acculturation that I was somewhere between shocked and upset when mom burned paternal grandma’s decades of correspondence.

You see, grandma was the family’s node point, keeping in touch with relatives and friends from 80 years before, and their outflung pro...