My father-in-law had no pension. I cared for him with all my heart for 12 years. With his last breath, he handed me a torn pillow and said, “For Maria.” When I opened it, I cried nonstop…

By the time I married his son, almost all of Tatay Ramón’s children already had families of their own and rarely visited him. The rest of his life depended almost entirely on my husband and me.

I often heard the neighbors whisper:

“What is that? She’s just a daughter-in-law, but she looks like his servant. Who would take care of a father-in-law for so long?”

But to me, I thought differently. He was a father who sacrificed his entire life for his children. If I turned my back on him, who would take care of him?