My Grandfather’s House

I heard the news on the 3^rd anniversary of my grandfather’s death (today) that the school and orphanage he grew up in is going to close. This is the same orphanage I was taken to year after year as a child and told I’d live there when my mother got tired of me. I think one of the reasons I’m a bit upset about its closing is that I really liked that place. I hoped she’d leave us there.

The building will stand and have military connections but it won’t be the place he grew up in and the place I hoped to be sent. It’s as if a landmark of my life is being knocked down. This is where hope was, this  is where I can sometimes go back to in my mind and think of how different it could have been had I lived there. The significance of losing an orphanage with so much of my grandfather’s history and mine feels … well it feels like his life has been erased and the hope I held  never existed. I know I’ve taken the closing personally but so much took place there that I loved. To see it go really hurts.

Part of me sees myself losing the imaginary grip I had on being able to reach back into my past, change one thing and get a better outcome. I know I can’t go back and force my mother to send me there like she threatened to. I cannot force her to leave me there after each yearly visit but knowing the building is as I left it somehow soothed me. I guess I was holding on to old bricks hoping for a better home in the future.

I liked that place. I liked the circle theater built like ruins. I liked that I could see where the old swimming hole use to be. I liked the old buildings next to the new ones, the dining hall, the arcade and the dance hall. I most of all liked lying by the pond in the night looking at stars larger than anything I could see in the city. I wanted to be there always. It about killed me getting into that dang motor home to drive back to a place I hated with people I hated only to be shown what it truly means to be hated. She should have left me there but I think that would have been too much like mercy.

Today is the third anniversary of my grandfather’s death and the formal announcement that the economy has snatched the place that saved his life from poverty and gave me a little bit of hope. My grandfather must be rolling over in his grave right now.

Despite adulthood good memories of him he really was a weakling son-of-a-bitch who didn’t stick up for his own children or his grandchildren. He may not have abused any of us but he didn’t protect any of us either. It has taken so long to forgive him for standing by while his wife systematically broke his 4 daughters then coached them on how to break their own. I’m not sure how forgiveness came about but it did. Somehow anger and an active desire for justice was replaced by a twinge of sadness and almost pity. After all he’s not from the psychopath, sociopath and sadistic bloodline of his wife. Maybe he too felt in over his head, totally out of his league and scared to death. I don’t know and I don’t care anymore. I prefer to remember the aged man I got to know in my adult years. This is the man I can think of and feel no dread.

This is going to sound horrible but I am pleased that today my mother is hurting over the death of her father. I hope she’s doubled over and drunk with grief, blinded by sadness and yearning. I hope she’s choking on tears, gasping for breath and begging for the return of something she’ll never get. The thought of it is quite pleasing to the sadistic side of me. I am after all from that bloodline.

-M-

Friday, May 22, 2009-11:52PM EST