This will be the hardest of my lessons to write. I started it in my head tonight, walking east along a slippery and slushy 13th Street, and realized I was adding to the slush as tears started to stream down my face. My relationship with my grandmother was complicated, in some ways tortured, and evolved over the course of our overlapping lives.
As a kid, my grandparents were the absolute best. They always had something fun and thoughtfully planned to do for us when my sister and I visited - magic shows, dinner theater, ice cream parlors with ice cream sundaes so big they were announced with horns and sirens, Donnie and Marie live! It was always so much fun.
Our summer "camp" would be visiting them in DC, the old ladies in all their crazy bathing caps getting a kick out of my sister and me jumping around in the pool for hours like fish, until we were so waterlogged that the little crystal light fixtures that lined the long condominium hallway glowed like rainbows. We played dress up, did our nails, and the puzzles! There was always a puzzle on grandma and grandpa's living room table. And stacks of them in the foyer closet. Stacks!
As we got older, I started to become aware of the things that little kids aren't tuned into. I began to be privy to some difficult family dynamics between my grandmother and her daughters. As I watched them at odds, I would invariably side with my mother and aunts. A slow but steady divide began to grow between my grandmother and me. The older I got, the more clearly I understood the complexities. We continued to drift until we eventually were just maintaining a skeleton of the relationship we once had. Year after year of (ahem) colorful holiday dynamics fortified this expanse between us.
When she got sick, there were things to be done. We all rallied. My family and I spent several draining weekends preparing her place to be sold - clearing out every last reminder from all the nooks and crannies that were replete with vivid but fading childhood memories. We moved her to hospice.
In these final stages, she was as difficult as ever. It made it very challenging to be sympathetic; I was conflicted knowing she was scared and in pain, but dealing with pain of my own. One day, it all came rushing back to me, and I realized I didn't want her to go without knowing it all. I wrote her a letter - a long letter recounting the happy memories, and how important it had all been to my childhood. I was careful to remain true to myself and the situation, and not gush with falsities, but to tell her that she had always been important to me and that I did, in fact, love her. Feeling as though a huge weight had been lifted, I mailed it to her. I should have faxed it, but I flippantly decided there would be enough time. She died the day it arrived. She never read it.
My "consolation" was to read it at the small family memorial service we had for her. It was no consolation. I was heartbroken, sobbing as I waded through it. "Don't worry - she knows!" friends reassured me. No she doesn't. How could she? She died without knowing it and now will never know, which is something I have never gotten over and now live with. It's my biggest regret in life, and was one of the hardest lessons I've ever had to learn: the moment you realize something is important, do it now. Even if someone isn't on her deathbed, anything can happen, so seize the opportunity immediately - don't wait.
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