Last night I did not expect to snot up a hand towel over my grandfather. I always thought of him as a weak man, someone who let things happen that never should have happened. There are a lot of admirable things I saw in him as an adult but as a child I saw a weak man who refused to protect his own children and his grandchildren. He didn’t want to rock the boat at home. His famous phrase was, “You get to go home. I have to live with her.” I see things a lot differently now. I think to myself, “How tired you must have been, living with her day after day.” Somehow I miss him. Even though I didn’t know him very well I miss him. He seemed to like me though.
When my great-grandmother was ill and everyone congregated at the hospital the grandmother (Nana) told everyone to brace themselves because Grandmamma (her mother) looked really bad. She said, “Don’t go in there crying.” They weren’t going to let the kids go in and see her because they said it would be too devastating for us to see. My Aunt (aka the slut) piped up and said, “It probably wouldn’t bother the Duck she doesn’t really have a heart.” My grandfather piped up and said, “Don’t let her out side fool you; she’s not as hard as you think.” He winked at me and I walked into the room to see Grandmamma. We had a short conversation in her native tongue and then we left. I didn’t drop a tear. The way I found out she died was over the phone when Nana told Mama she was gone. That is when I cried, it’s also when Mama and my sister laughed and asked if I was actually feeling something. Oh, they are such nice people. My great-grandmother (Grandmamma) had leukemia as a child but it went into remission and didn’t reappear until she was 93 years old. It took her fast; it only took 3 months to take her from a thriving woman to small framed, pale, soft spoken shell. According to my mother her death was my fault. Mama said that if my sister and I had written Grandmamma more letters maybe she would have lived longer. (As we know letter writing can cure leukemia.) If we’d gone over to visit more maybe she would have lived longer (because home visits from my sister and me would have kept the leukemia from taking her so soon). I was 15 when Grandmamma died, how would I drive myself out of town to visit her? That is as absurd now as it was then.
My grandfather did not have a sense of humor which to me shows some sort of character flaw. I do not remember him ever laughing. He smiled a devious, up to no good smile when he was about to tease one of the grandkids but he never out right laughed. Sometimes my sister and I would climb on his lap and give him a kiss on the cheek. We’d say, “It’s your turn grand-daddy.” He wouldn’t kiss us so we’d press our cheek up against his hairy mustache lip and make a smacking kissing sound. He’d give a grin and turned a little red but he never pushed us away.
I believe my mother inherited her bad cooking rather honestly. Nana and grand-daddy were horrible cooks. One time my mother had her head in the fridge and yelled, “Daddy, is this meat loaf in here any good?” He said, “What meatloaf?” Come to find out it was actually jello with a bunch of fruit in it. How someone could jack up jello so badly that it looks like meatloaf is beyond me. My mother got her horrible cooking skills honestly. Nobody and I do mean nobody puts bananas in cornbread. It’s unthinkable. It’s sick.
I barely knew my grandfather. What I knew of him early on was not what I came to know as an adult. Yes, I think he should have stepped in. I think he should have made sure that his own kids weren’t abused by their mother. I think he should have stepped in and stopped all 4 of his daughters from abusing their children. I think he should have stepped in when his grandchild started abusing her son. He was silent and that makes him guilty in my book. Somehow though, I find it easier to forgive him for that than I do family members that hurt me and the other kids.
I didn’t even realize I’d forgiven him. I was talking about him to a friend awhile back and I realized there wasn’t fire in my chest. I wasn’t angry or resentful. He is responsible for his silence but for me ….I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Perhaps it’s easier to forgive someone who could see the real you. He knew I had a heart (he still let it be broken), that I felt as other people did (yet he allowed them to hurt me) and he didn’t hesitate to say I was a good person when need be (he should have spoken up when they were hurting me). From that I can only conclude that he didn’t see me as disgusting but he also didn’t see me as worth saving. Maybe the thought he couldn’t, I don’t know. It was a complex situation. I make no excuses for him, I hold no resentment either. Maybe I’m confusing forgiveness with the same kind of apathy that he showed me.
I know that I hold in my heart the hope that one day things will change between me and my family. When my grandfather died I knew there would never be a time when we could get to know each other. I didn’t just lose my grandfather; I lost a bit of hope because things will never be fixed between us two. I hope that I come to a point in my life when I do not fear my desire to have a family. The very thought of it frightens me. I only know it one way.
This is the very first poem that I ever wrote. I was 9 years old.
Shadows
Slowly as my heart stood still
And I drank my fill
The man I loved left me to find a dream he had
Without my burden he’ll find it.
Left alone I sit in the dark,
My lonely heart will stop
For only shadows I speak to now
The dreary things accept me.
How on earth a 9 year old could talk about drinking her sorrows away because she can’t stand being a burden any longer is truly beyond me. Love, abandonment, loneliness and acceptance are things that I still struggle with. Austin’s August
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My Grandfather’s Death Hurts: Part 2 of 2 – I see things a lot differently now, with more complexity than before
Friday, August 18, 2006-10:00AM EST
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This is pretty bitter post and maybe even a display of some borderline behaviors going on with me and the mother situation. I’m clearly having some issues with this. I think the issue is that my mother may die of grief because she lost her father who to her hung the moon.
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