Losing a parent is one of the most traumatic experiences of one’s life. It is a dark eventuality that everyone has to face. The brutal instance always leads to several emotional moments in one’s life that mold them forever. The Czech-American tennis legend Martina Navratilova went through the same thing in 1990 when she lost her father. In an interview in 1990, Navratilova detailed the emotional moment she had after she lost her grandmother and her biological father.

Navratilova lost her native country’s citizenship in 1975 and became an official US citizen in 1981. Her father encouraged her to leave the country and not come back to her home country. She was one of the unfortunate ones who still had some business left in the country. It took a long time for her to find closure.

The emotional goodbye of Martina Navratilova to her grandmother and father

In the interview from ‘Later on Bob Costas’, Navratilova talked about the moment she said a proper goodbye to her father and grandmother. For Navratilova, giving a proper funeral to both was the chapter that was still open. Navratilova had the chance to close the chapter once when she was in Czechoslovakia. However, she couldn’t since the cemetery was closed. Nevertheless, she did not want to break into it.

“Yes, I went to see their graves. I try to do that four years ago but I, I, didn’t want to go during the tournament. So I stayed down to the last day, and then I got there. The cemetery was closed, it just closed, I thought about climbing the fence, but then I thought, no, I better not, I get in trouble,” Navratilova detailed in the interview. 

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After that, she got the chance to do it again in 1990. She went to her native country and saw her grandmother’s and father’s ashes in the middle of a cemetery. She went up to the cemetery and said a tearful goodbye to both and found closure after all the time. Navratilova further said that she was able to talk about her grandmother without breaking down.

“So I went this year, and my grandmother’s and my father’s ashes were scattered on this little long half an acre plot in the middle of a cemetery. So I said a very emotional goodbye, and when I got back now, I can at least talk about it without crying. I mean, I finally you know put it in its proper place where I can think about my grandmother and have a smile on my face.”

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Navratilova gained her Czech citizenship in 2008. She now holds dual citizenship of both the Czech Republic and the USA. Navrat the Brat has gone through many struggles in her lifetime, but she has always prevailed.