On the drive down to Orange from Seattle just after the New Year, I stopped in the Bay Area to visit my family. And I saw my grandmother for what I, and she, knew would be the last time.
She hadn’t left her house for 2 weeks because she wasn’t feeling up to it, but she mustered the energy to come over to my aunt’s to see me. She seemed more interested in talking with my cousins’ other grandmother, but that wasn’t all that surprising. Still, before we left day, we were talking about a job opportunity I was waiting to hear back on and she said to me, “Erin, I don’t know where you’re going to live or what kind of job you’re going to have, but I do know this, I know that you and Adam are going to have a very happy life together.”
I was floored. My grandmother never said things like that to me. I know she was proud my accomplishments and some part of her must’ve loved me, but she never talked to me like that. Ever. Her feelings about me were usually expressed to me through other people, making me question if she actually ever said or felt any of the sentiments my dad or my aunt would relay to me. All I could say in response was, “Wow, thanks grandma that means a lot to me.”
When Adam and I got ready to leave a half hour later, I looked at him before I started the car and said, “I’m pretty sure my grandmother just said goodbye to me.” He asked why I thought that and when I repeated what she said to me, his response was, “YOUR grandmother said that?!” He’s witnessed enough of my conversations with her to know what a shocker it truly was.
Three weeks later, I got the call that she passed away the morning of January 24th. So, on the morning of the 25th, I got in my car and drove 6 hours to be with my family in Castro Valley. I was there for one of the hardest weeks I’ve ever had, but not for any of the expected reasons.
My grandmother and I had a complicated relationship, that’s the only way I can think of to describe it.
I remember being a kid and she would come to visit from the east coast and she’d spend more than half of her time on the patio smoking instead of spending time with us. I resented that. I remember the first time I tried to participate in a grown-up conversation with her. She was talking about “what’s wrong with kids” today when I was a “kid of today”. I tried to share my point of view and she all but laughed at me, telling me I was too young to have any perspective on the issue. Maybe she was right, but thinking back on it I can’t ever imagine myself dismissing a kid like that even though I’m a grown-up now.
Over the years, it got to the point that my mom said I should just leave the room when my grandmother upset me so that we could “have a nice visit with her”. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time leaving the room. Even at 29, when she stayed in a house my parents rented for all of us to stay in near the place where my cousin was getting married, I walked out of several rooms. And I even cried a couple of times as a result; angry, bitter tears—the kind you cry when you understand that things will always be just as they are and you’re mature enough to know just how shitty that truly is. She loved pushing my buttons and out of respect, I never pushed back.
My brother always said that I took the things she said the wrong way, but in hindsight, could I really have taken everything she said to me in 29 years the wrong way? It seems…unlikely.
My grandmother always wanted me to see things her way and I just couldn’t. She was very conservative and I am far from it. I had to smile when both 9/11 and Bill O’Reilly were mentioned in her eulogy. On the other hand, she was incredibly smart and passionate and a hard worker; these are the things that I hope I got from her by way of my dad.
The hardest thing to deal with wasn’t even her death; it was the ubiquitous pain I saw in everyone around me and the knowledge that there was nothing I could do to ease the pain of their loss. My favorite aunt, my dad–seeing two of the strongest, most generous people in my life hurt and exhausted and wrecked was the hardest part.
The whole week, I found myself haunted by the knowledge that while I wasn’t close with my grandmother, the day draws closer when I’ll have to say goodbye to my other grandparents, the ones I am close to and have fond memories of. And it made my mom’s current health problems all the more troubling, because if it was me saying goodbye to my mother, it would be unbearable. The very thought is unbearable.
At the end of it all, I’m amazed at how in death we become the best possible versions of ourselves. Our foibles become fodder for funny stories and shortcomings become endearing. I hope when my time comes that people remember me for who I actually was, not a sanitized version of the person they wanted me to be.
As for my grandmother, I will hold onto what she said the last time I saw her and take the rest of it with a grain of salt.
