Listening to my cousins pay tribute to our departed grandma I was struck by the difference in our experiences. Demarcated partially, I think, by gender as I was her sole grandson. They extoled her progressivism, her encouragement of their education and literacy, her caring, reliable nature. These were things that I did not see. To me she was mostly cold and distant. I remember her yelling at me for not putting the toilet seat down when I was 8. Screaming at my child-self that I'd make a little old lady go butt first into the toilet bowl. I remember countless times when she would be holding court with my cousins about gender equality and then order me to cut the grass or move some boxes or rake leaves, sending me off to some physical labor or another. I would ask her questions about my grandpa who I dearly loved who had passed and she would equivocate, deflect, not answer. As a child I feared her and she did nothing to dispel that fear. As an adolescent and adult I was truculent, rebellious, reserved but what other armor did I have? I did not feel love, I felt the weight of obligation.
They say not to speak ill of the dead but they also say speak the truth.
Perhaps I give to much credence to my wounded inner child for there are two sides to every coin, a broader context. My grandpa was an alcoholic and although he eventually got sober, that takes its toll not only on the addict but every member of the family. Strike one. She was my only surviving grandparent and in my mind and heart I wanted her to be something no human could be, some perfect platonic ideal of grandparenthood, so there was that impossible expectation. Strike two. And I was her only grandson, she struggled to relate to me, more comfortable with her granddaughters, more assured. Strike three.
But there was love although it may not have been expressed frequently or healthily. Once when we were visiting my aunt and uncle we went on a hike to a park where golden eagles nested, a species I was obsessed with at the time because of Rescuers Down Under. We hiked up to a cliff and I went to the edge to look out and my grandma yelled "Get back! Get back from the edge!" Why hike up all this way if not to have the thrill of the view, I thought. And I was angry. This was the one thing on our trip I wanted to do and she was trying to take some of the adventure away. After she snapped off a couple more orders I reluctantly came back. She could tell I was upset and said "you have to understand this kind of thing makes grandmothers nervous, we worry, I couldn't stand it if something happened to you. You can do whatever you want when I'm not there but when I'm here you need to do what I say." I could tell she was feeling incredible anxiety, she was shaken, she probably had a fear of heights that I didn't know about, but her worry for my well being was genuine. It is one of the only identifiable moments of concern or care that I can remember from her from my childhood.
Into my teenage years my alcoholism activated with significant zeal. I stole booze from her house a couple times. I had a party at her cabin, which the whole family used, and one of my idiot college friends threw up in the bathroom and we didn't fully clean it up before we left. She went up with one of my cousins later and found this mess invested with maggots. My cousin told me she was down on her knees scrubbing it up and it was heartbreaking. My point is I'm no saint, I'm culpable too, and I would imagine my alcoholism aside from the obvious problems was also particularly triggering for her because of my grandpa.
After I got sober I began to write poetry which she had a passion for. At a family get together she expressed interest in it and as a way to make what amends I could I made her a book of my poems for her birthday, shared with her this fragile and precious thing that I was cultivating. Somewhat to my surprise she loved it and was incredibly gracious. We started exchanging letters and poems and in that connection I had the grandma I always wanted. She was encouraging and guiding, she was kind and playful, and she showed, perhaps for the first time, genuine interest. We were engaged with each other on a personal level. It was wonderful. Around the time of the 2016 election she began to harass me and my cousin about making political videos because the specter of Trump(not incorrectly) terrified her. Hectoring emails, letters, conversations. That interaction was a return to behaviors I knew too well- exacting, cold demands. Our correspondence ended and shortly there after she began her gradual decent into dementia.
My grandma didn't make cookies, she wasn't maternal, at least to me, but she did teach me about poetry and support my pursuit of it. If that's all she was capable of giving me I can accept that, be grateful for it even. But I'm not going to forget her cruelty or pretend like it wasn't there.
That is my truth skewed, I know, by my own perspective. But shouldn't there be an accounting for the dead? Aren't all lives fallible? Prone to mistakes as well as triumphs, don't they equally shape the legacy and the people who are left behind? Didn't all of our families fuck us up to greater or lessor degrees and if so how can we hope to transcend that pain, that damage, if we aren't forced to reckon with it?
