I didn't want to tell anyone anything.
If I did, if I actually said it, then that would be acknoweldging an actual event. It would become real.
So it took me four hours to actually admit it. Out loud.
My grandfather died.
He liked to tell little birdie stories before each person opened thier Christmas presents. My dad started doing it too after awhile. I used to hate waiting for the story to be over....
"A little birdie told me that you were looking for....."
The dining room was where most residents were. my grandother was in there too, insisting that she wasn't hungry. My mother cut up her ham and because she went to the trouble, Gramma ate much of it. She's always been a finicky eater, not able to do much once her stomach is feeling the least bit out of wack.
Something I probably inherited from her, I suppose.
When it seemed like she really wasn't going to eat anymore, we got ready to go elsewhere. And for the breifest of seconds, I had this thought......that gee, Grampa could be just taking a nap or sitting around in his room. But then again, he'd never leave Gramma during a meal. Be on his own while she played bingo, yes. But they always ate together.
The Boy and I stood most of the time by her table. Boy insisted that he wanted to stand after being in the car for two hours. I just couldn't bring myself to sit in one of the two chairs pulled up next to my grandmother. Because Grampa would be sitting on that side in his wheelchair and if I sat down that acknoweldged......but it had already been acknowledged.
When we left to head out the door, we made a kind of processional through the hallways, all of us following my grandmother as he went to her room. And my mixed up thoughts wondered, is this a foreshadowing of some kind? A showing of what came later as far as lines go?
And was that feeling, that instant sad feeling before I left on Thanksgiving, that feeling that had me glancing back after I'd said goodbye to Grampa for the second time, glancing back to his bent figure, leaning his head on his hand......was that a foreshadowing?
Was that intuition, that had me glancing back over my shoulder as I left? The last image I have of him, tired and discontent, leaning his head on one hand, staring down.......
I didn't look in his room as we left. His nametag was still on the door......and the rage that I had expected to boil up (because I had figured that they wuld have ripped it off, shoved another person in there already because that's the way the world works)fell into some sort of numbness. They hadn't replaced him.
He once showed me a picture that hung over his desk in their old apartment. It was a big balck and white one of a very pretty dark haired girl. "Who do you think that is?" he asked me.
"Well," I said carefully. "It kinda looks like aunt Dianne.....but her clothes are older so....is that Gramma?"
"Yes it is. Prettiest girl I ever saw."
From the sounds of it, it was love at first sight. She was 18, he was about 25. Three months later they were married. It would have been 70 years next April.
Doppelganger told me that it's ok to let myself be upset. She lost her grandfather about a month and a half ago. She said she knew she tried to hold it in but that didn't work.
That if I'm as much of a Scorpio as she is, I try to keep it all inside, because I feel like crying's a weakness....like I have to be the strong one. Cool and calm, at least when there is sadness.
I knew that. I'd gone along to my great-uncle's funeral mainly to support my mother. She needed me and I couldn't cry then because I had to hold her up.
I was the ice queen all weekend. I showed joy but nothing else. Stayed up late with Boy talking and playing games and watching movies so I would be exhausted and go right to sleep instead of thinking.
And whenever anyone caught me staring off into space, they'd ask, are you ok? And that mask slides over my face. "I'm fine."
He used to call me "Jen dear." And every single time I would go to visit them when they were still living on their own, he would at some point pull me over to the corner wall by the bathroom and have me stand up against the wall. And hten he would mark off my height in pen. The last few times we did that, my height hadn't really changed at all....but he still marked the spot on the wall.
I came home from taking a short walk with The Boy and found my parents discussing headstones. As I slowly put my coat and scarf and sweatshirt in my room, I tried to focus on other things.
And when I came back out, those papers were out of sight.
Out of sight but definitely not out of mind.
My parents were talking to me after we ate dinner one night. The topic was of course my grandparents.
And Dad said, "You may believe it or not but there was never a time where my father didn't ask about you. He was always thinking about you."
I barely remember a time when he wasn't bent over....but I missed the times when he could still walk.
I thought he was strange for many years.......I was such a stupid child.
It was a memorial service. Pictures, flowers, a folded American flag and a small podium to speak from. In that sense, I was tankful that the last vision I have of my grandafather was that tired and melancholy figure in the nursing home. He was still existing, he was still in this realm, though he'd changed from who I'd grown up with.
The funeral home smelled medicinal, like a million bad chemicals that I didn't want to know about.
Gramma came in crying. This continued as people made a line over to her, to hug and say I'm sorry before taking seats behind her.
When I sat down, I looked around me, hardly believing that we were there. But we all were.
The director was wearing shoes that were much too long for him. They made him look like he had long, floppy, troll feet. Why was he wearing such weird shoes?
Why were we here? Why were we laughing at memories and stories even though it hurt? Why was there now a wet drop on the handout they'd given me? Why does Boy keep rubbing my damn shoulder?
When we go back, we won't have to stop in two rooms anymore. No more wet kisses on my forehead or cheek. No singing at random. No more "sacre numdi chrishan rouge." And I never even asked what that meant.
And as I listened to the memories, I realized that there was a hell of alot that I didn't know about my grandfather. I didn't know he was called Senator due to some funny stunt my uncle Dick pulled in Virginia.
And everyone keeps asking, "How are you?" or "How are you doing?" And there's only so many times you can say "Ok" or "I'm fine."
And it's said in an almost bewildered tone. Why wouldn't I be fine? And then you remember.
they mean well......all of them mean well. But the real and cyber hugs, the I-love-you's, the I'm-sorry's, all of them culminate into one giant response after the 30th time someone asks, "How are you doing?"
And instead of saying, "I'm fine" I want to shout, "I've just lost my grandfather, a wonderful man who I didn't appreciate for the first 13 years of my life, a man that I'm beginning to realize I didn't know a whole lot about. And now I don't have the chance to ask him any questions or to hear more stories becuase the timer has run out and I thought there was more sand on his end. How do you really THINK I am doing right now?!"
But that outburst, while probably emotionally valid, would be rude. And quite uncalled for.
Yesterday--The Beatles
Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they're here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly,
I'm not half the man I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.
Why she
Had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say.
I said,
Something wrong, now I long for yesterday.
Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Why she
Had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say.
I said,
Something wrong, now I long for yesterday.
Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
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