News

Dark in my office. The sunlight won’t hit my windows for hours yet this time of year. Alright cloudy, but it feels dark. By now, if you read this blog, and if you don’t why are you reading this, you know that my grandmother is dead. In the normal course of this blog I would have shared the information about when it happened instead of waiting a few days. But we waited because I was not certain what that small group of over zealous fans might do with the information. We waited until we were safely back from her funeral before we posted it, so that if anyone decided to do anything odd, the event would not be marred by it.
I know that most of you who posted the message on my board a week or so ago, were sincere in your effort to help me. I thank you for it. But a few were not, or they were sincere but sincere in their obsession. Yet another stalker has been added to the list. Sigh.
I am doing well, better than expected by some. I was not aware of being sad. She had been hurting so long, sad so long, ready to go so long. To mourn her passing seemed wrong. She wasn’t hurting anymore, and none of us could wish for it to be different. All tears cried were for our missing her, not for her, not really. It was Trinity’s first funeral ever, and that helped me focus. I tried to be there to answer her questions, deal with her grief. For she had more regrets than I did. I lived with Granny for over twenty years, most of that time just her and me. Trinity never got to know her nearly as well. Also by the time Trin could know her, Granny wasn’t Granny anymore. I wish Trin could have known her when Granny could still garden, and sit out on the porch of an evening. So much of what made her who she was had been stripped away by time and illness by the time Trin got up old enough to remember her.
When I was seventeen and my grandmother was sixty-seven she could still work me into the ground. Walk further, plow, plant, hoe, long after I was exhausted. She was this tiny concentrated force of nature. As my Aunt Bev said once, “My mother-in-law has only two speeds, fast and very fast.” Truer words.
But now she’s gone. Gone where she can rest for awhile. Gone where she can have answers to all her whys, and why mes. I know she is feeling better than she’d felt in decades. She has not been a big part of my life in almost twenty years. We were too much alike in some ways, both strong, both stubborn, both quick tempered. We both learned to control those tempers in everyday life, but the fire was still there below that surface of steel, and when it blew it was pretty spectacular. Two strong, independent women in one house was one too many when I got older. She’d raised me too well. Then there were the parts of me she didn’t understand at all, and that was a lot.
She apologized years later for not wanting me to play Dungeons and Dragons. “Who knew it would be important to you, ” she said. I did. “I’m sorry I didn’t want you to read so much, I didn’t think it was good for you. Who knew it would be so important to you?” I did. Those two apologies meant a great deal to me, because she rarely if ever apologized for anything big. She had pride, my grandmother, and pride is a strength. And God knows she was strong.
I gave her the summer I turned seventeen. I gave it to her as a gift. I stayed with her, socialized with almost no one else. We picked berries that year in the summer heat, thorns pricking at us. I got up at dawn a few times to drink coffee and watch the sunrise with her. She loved it. It just flat did it for her, that I would do something she knew I didn’t want to do because I knew it made her happy. Besides you should see a few sunrises in your life voluntarily. They are pretty.
After that summer I began to try and plan a life as a grown-up. As the independent person she’d raised me to be. But she hadn’t meant independent from her. No, that she had not meant.
I went to college at the only one that was close enough for me to drive back and forth, so I could stay at home with her. I met my first husband there. Something she hadn’t planned either. Years later I realize I could have brought Prince Charming home and she’d have hated him, because he was going to take her princess away and that was not allowed. I ended up wanting to marry at the same age that my mother married my father. That lasted I think less than two years, definitely less than three, because by the time I was six months old the divorce was final. It was a pretty disastrous marriage, and I realized years later that Granny wasn’t fighting to keep me from marrying, but I believe, still trying to save my mother from her fate. My marriage lasted for sixteen years. It was not disastrous. My first husband and I had some good years together, and we had a great kid. I do not regret it, though I suspect that he is probably as puzzled by me, as I am by him. Married for sixteen years, but don’t know each other in total. Seems odd.
My mother died when I was six, in a car accident. She was younger than I am now by many years. My grandmother never recovered from the loss. Many of the family talked about that at her viewing and funeral. That she was never happy again, not really, after my mother died. Granny had two great loves in her life. The first, my grandfather, beat his love out of her for about twenty years. The second, my mother, died young and suddenly. Then all she had left was me. She was determined not to loose me like she had my mother. Determined to do it right this time. I spent a life time of being called by my mother’s name periodically. It took me years of coming home for Christmas, after I lived out of state, to convince her that, no, black-eyed peas are not my favorite vegetable. In fact, I hate peas of all kinds. The smell of black-eyed peas makes me vaguely sick. But she would meet us at the door, proudly smiling, saying, “I’ve fixed your favorite vegetable.” And I would say, “No, Granny, that was Susie’s favorite, not mine.” And she would argue with me.
I was my mother’s ghost to her. But as I sit here today, I would give a great deal to have my grandmother well enough to fix me black-eyed peas and argue with me that it was my favorite vegetable. She wasn’t in pain then, or frail, not like at the end. She could still argue with me, and tell me I was wrong about everything from my favorite color to my favorite food. I no longer remember what color she kept telling me was my favorite, but it was probably my mother’s favorite. I’d give a great deal to be able to have that fight again. And at the same time I glad the fight is over.
A woman who was a contemperary of my mothers, and hadn’t seen me since I was quite young, grasped by hand at the funeral, and called me, Susie. Not once, but four times. I was debating what to do, when she recovered herself, and said, “Of course you’re not Susie, you couldn’t be. Of course you’re not her.” I’ve had reactions similar to that over the years, which means, I suppose, that I must look strikingly like my mother. I’ve seen the pictures, and I don’t see it, not to that degree, like someone is greeting a memory come to life again. Maybe if I hadn’t looked so much like her, my grandmother would have had less problems confusing the two of us. Maybe.
I am tired. Tired and sad, and didn’t expect to be sad. I do not mourn for her, but for me. I know she is better off, but I will miss her, damnit. Apparently, more than I thought. My rage is beginning to fall away, leaving tears behind. I was so angry yesterday I could not think. Rage to hide whatever lies underneath. Anger as a shield to keep from looking at the pain. But I’ve had too much therapy, am too grown-up, to stay in my rage. Damnit, damnit.