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Tuesday, April 22, 2008 10:53:00 PM
my gram is a tale of falling in love. she died at 52 from various forms of cancer. her illness was diagnosed when i was in third grade. i remember this because i wrote about “the canswer zapper” (like “answer,” by mistake) in a small, white, hard-cover journal mrs. sutherland (i remember the names of all of my teachers) handed out for free-writing. hard-cover books are special to young people, especially the kind with blank pages that beg for important words. i knew the story had to be about my gram. in awkward cursive along vivid pages, i wrote my best rendition of radiation therapy, which i understood to be a highly technical alien-like gun that shot healing lasers and was very expensive. in the story, my gram had earned the right to receive free treatment from the canswer zapper by the obvious nature of her good will and sheer perfection. immediately, she was healed and lived happily ever after, feeding the ducks and eating raspberry jam on toast past bedtime with her favorite (and only) granddaughter.
of course, the real story ended differently. gram’s health declined quickly. her handwriting in her letters became more and more stilted, and soon she stopped sending them at all. she apologized for this in advance, knowing it was coming. i didn’t understand. my mother had her placed in a nursing home (and later, another) and took me to see her often, not because i missed her (and i did, severely), but because she needed me. i remember these visits with my body. the sapid strawberry hard candies at the front counter, which i hated but always accepted kindly when they were offered upon our every arrival. the palpable smell of the hallways, her room, the oatmeal on her collar. the color of her pajamas in mid-day, the plain aprons on the nurses, the dryness of her mouth from refusing to eat. i remember most gravely the piercing feel of her fingernails in my arms when we hugged goodbye. i always needed help removing them. she could not speak, but i knew what she meant.
my mother would cry in the car, always apologizing. she thought she was putting me through something appalling and unfair, but i believed instead that she finally trusted me. i had a role in all of this. and it was scary, but of course that didn’t matter.
my mom doesn’t like me remembering my gram in this way; it seems morbid and dreadful to her i suppose. but these were the moments that i took care of the people i loved the most. they needed me and i understood this. these memories settled deeper in my mind than all the others. i was only ten.
shortly after gram's passing, my mom had once told me while folding clothes in her bedroom that she could hear her mother, her voice, her guidance, and asked if i had this gift too. i remember the shirt i was wearing then; i stared down at it in disgrace and memorized its fibers. i wanted to say yes. i deserved that kind of magic, but i did not have it. later, i did a research report in school about the six types of ghosts. i thought i had to persuade my gram that i was ready. :)
later in my life, my mother painted a different story of gram. she was a bi-polar alcoholic, the mean kind. sometimes violent and hurtful, and well-known by the police and fire department (apparently there were fires). she refused to attend her own daughter’s wedding and could terrify her children. those who loved her learned her patterns, the signs of doom. avoided her, abandon each other to run away. her husband bought an airplane in secret for fear of her brutal disapproval, and crashed it tragically to his death two months before i was born. my mother also lost two others that year, and feared she would miscarry from intense and uncontrollable mourning. my family attributes my “sensitivity” to the depth of emotion i suffered on my mother’s behalf in utero.
i struggle with the memory of my gram. i know that i have romanticized our time together, and that she remains more of a symbol in my life than a complete character. i feel guilty sometimes, as if i have not been honest with myself about who she was. but i suppose i remember the parts that are useful to me, and that honor her goodness and integrity. i remember that she was an amazing artist, an eccentric, stylish and ahead of her time. she was spiritual and beautiful and daring and very funny. and she loved me more than anything. and that’s my favorite part.
