I was told to choose a person who has influenced me and why. Please tell me if I go a little too much off topic and how I can improve.
My grandma once told me that guests sense that you are practicing hospitality because you are sharing your home and your heart, not just your house. I have always looked up to my grandmother for she had the best qualities of hospitality I have ever seen in a person. Although she had passed away, I remember her as an influential person who was one of my caregivers growing up. She acquired the never ending traits of selflessness and hospitality and remained strong in all the hardships that came along in her life. I see her as one of my heroes, not only because of her eternal strength, but for her hospitality.
According to my father, my grandmother knew everything. To her family, she was a teacher, a doctor, a mathematician, and a leader. My father was one of six children. My grandmother had a lot on her plate with raising her children and keeping order in the household. It was even harder since they lived in a poverty stricken country as the Philippines. She did what she could to support her husband and her children.
In 1976, she immigrated to the United States in hopes to have a better life than she did in the Philippines. Although, she never let go of her love of the Philippines, and kept in contact with everyone still living there. Her children migrated along with her. Once she became accommodated with living in the States, she welcomed anyone who migrated, just like her, into her home. To her, there was no such thing as an unwelcomed guest or a bad time to visit. She gave the new immigrants a chance to start their lives in the new country. Anyone who was invited into her home she claimed as her own children. Her hospitality is what makes her so influential to me and many others.
When I was younger, I would wake up and walk over to my grandparent's house where I would spend the whole day with them. My parents were always working during the week so my grandparents would baby sit until they came home. At the time, my grandfather was ill with a severe condition of diabetes. My grandmother would make him a meal and carry it up the stairs from the kitchen to his room every breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This hospitality was unconditional. As a child watching from a far, I saw the kindness in her heart and decided that I wanted to be just like her.
Although she put so much effort into comforting her husband and trying her best to keep him healthy, he unexpectedly died on Christmas of 1996. She had suffered a great loss of the death of the love of her life. She still carried on as the leader of the family. She thought about comforting her family before comforting herself.
Not long after my grandfather's death, my grandmother began to feel the signs of old age. She had a hard time walking and getting up the stairs. It came to a point where she was the one who needed to be accommodated. Because of everyone's busy schedule, no one could stay at home to take care of her, so she was put into a nursing home. My grandma absolutely loathed the whole concept of confinement in a room and the only time she can come out was to play bingo. I hated to see her there but we did our best to visit her. I volunteered in the same nursing home many times I could to just be with her for more than just a visit of about thirty minutes. I wanted her to know that I would be there for her as much as she was always there for me.
A year and a half after being admitted into the nursing home, she had sadly passed away. I believed that she knew her fate and wanted to see the whole family before passing. She died two days after the whole family-sons, daughters, grandchildren, great grandchildren, came to visit. I can say that she had died with satisfaction of seeing her loved ones and those she had taken care of throughout her life. She spent her whole life providing hospitality and unconditional love to her family and friends that she didn't want to leave without seeing them all.
She had taught me the true meaning of hospitality. She welcomed anyone who was in need, to her home, and offered all the help she could provide. Her enormous heart was felt by all those around her. Hospitality became her lifestyle and it came naturally to her. I feel like I have inherited the trait. Hospitality will most definitely be beneficial in becoming a nurse. Responding to the needs of others is an uplifting feeling that I thrive for. It will give me a chance to meet new people and maybe become well liked in college with my peers and professors and in the future with my colleagues and patients.
I will continue to carry on the hospitality that my grandmother had given all of us. Despite the fact that my grandmother is no longer physically alive, the warmth of her heart will still remain with me and my family. Her generosity will live on within me and the rest of those whose lives she had im
