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Date: 10/23/2005 1:25:24 AM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 3270 times well, i just got an email from my mom that said that my grandmother had a heart attack on thursday. as it pretty obvious from the (very) late notice, it was very, very mild, and she is completely fine, but it is upsetting all the same.
i am very lucky as far as grandparents go. i have three sets of grandparents because i have a stepmother that is like a parent to me (i also have a stepfather, but i am not close to him at all, so i've never even met his parents). out of my six grandparents, five are still alive. i know i am so, so lucky to have them.
my dad's dad died when i was fourteen. as a child, he was my favorite of all my grandparents. my dad is one of seven kids and i was the first born grandchild. i was so close to my grandfather, and he always made a big fuss over me. since the next grandkids were born three years later, i had some lucky years as the only grandchild of a very family-oriented grandfather. i totally idolized him. he was a surgeon, and was super smart, yet he was always telling racy jokes. he loved sweets and would always sneak me out for ice cream. and in the forties, he led a jazz band, and played all over the country. his big gimmick was that he would play two trumpets at once. he was just an awesome person.
after he died, his wife (my grandmother) became extraordinarily bitter and mean. i haven't spoken to her in six years, i think. i just couldn't take it anymore. all she would say is nasty things to me--nasty things about me, and what a failure i am (in her words "what a waste" my life is, my education is, my talents are, etc.), nasty things about my dad (also a "wasted life" in her opinion), nasty things about everyone. she's racist and horrible (my stepmother and two of my aunts are not white, and it's just excruciating to listen to her talk about how one is "ok for a black woman" or "different, even though she's japanese"), and i just got to the point where i couldn't stand to hear it any more. i told my dad that i would take her calls or answer her emails or letters if she contacted me, but i wasn't going to sign up for the abuse voluntarily. i guess she feels the same way, because she hasn't contacted me. it might sound harsh, but the truth is, i just am not going to volunteer to have someone so toxic in my life. i do have compassion for her, and i know my grandfather's death was awful for her. but i cannot deal with the onslaught of negativity. it would be bad enough if it was just directed at me (though totally baffling), but directed at everyone i love? no. she has proved over and over again that she can't (or won't) say anything nice, so i don't want to hear it at all.
my mom's parents, however, are very different. i did not get along with them at all when i was a child. they were extremely judgmental and were totally flipped out about the fact that we were not growing up christian (this was a problem for my dad's mom as well). i had some extremely unpleasant experiences with them when i was young. but our relationship has totally come around since i've grown up. some time around mid-high school, my grandmother suddenly became my number one fan. my grandmother is a strange and awesome woman. she was born in a tiny town in west virginia in 1917, but she was determined to see the world. she got married, got divorced, and moved to africa to work with the foreign service. she worked in paris, and london, and japan, and that is where she met my grandfather. she's totally eccentric, but in the best possible way. she's independent and funny and fashionable. i think if she was born today there'd be no way she wouldn't be a senator or governor at least. my grandfather was an officer in the airforce during the japanese occupation and had somehow borrowed a rolls royce for the day. my grandmother saw him in it and went up to him that very night. she said it wasn't quite love at first sight--but she does say emphatically that she picked him out, and knew he was the one. they have a bizarre relationship, but they are still together.
anyway, my grandfather is from a farm in georgia, and that's where he belongs. he rose to colonel after WW II and he and my grandmother lived a really fancy life all over europe (my mom went to high school at a swiss boarding school where their classes were scheduled around skiiing). but they came back to alabama to settle down and have lived on a small farm there ever since. my grandfather has alzheimers, but he is still doing pretty well. he hasn't lost a lot of his memory yet, but he has lost a lot of mobility and has lost his eyesight a good bit, and he cannot drive any more. my grandmother refuses to have anyone help her take care of him, but she is totally overwhelmed. everyone is pretty sure that the stress of constantly caring for him (she had to quit her job, which she loved, in order to do so) is what caused the heart attack. they haven't found a single thing wrong with her heart so far.
but it is just really sad. i live so far away from them, and now it is suddenly so clear how little time we have left together, at least in this lifetime. i may go and spend six weeks there, if my grandmother will have me, just so that i can be with them for a while. it makes me sad to think of all i have missed out on with them. they both have such amazing stories to tell, and in the past years, i have tried to get closer to them and to hear their stories. i just hope that we still have some time.
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