This is my story, too.
And if it is ugly, well then…it is ugly.
I remember the death of my grandfather in stages of my own loneliness. I remember the first phone call as I sat in my cubicle, my step mother telling me that it wouldn’t be long before he passed.
In the moments after the call it felt like I was underwater but somehow, annoyingly, still present. In the ladies’ room. On the third floor. I was mewling at my own image in the smudgy bathroom mirror and dabbing at my face with 1-ply and watching my phone light up with texts as co-workers streamed in and out. They spared me quick and confused glances as I sobbed in our shared reflection under the fluorescent lights before heading to their stalls.
I mimed “I’m so sorry!” and “I am ridiculous!” with my eyebrows at them all.
My job was stressful enough that I gradually lost forty pounds over the first year working there and started a round of anti-anxiety medication. My hair was falling out but I had a good job with insurance, and so I stayed.
I remember fighting with my then-fiance to convince him to take the day off to stay with our baby so I could go to the funeral. It never even occurred to me that he should come with me.
I remember Grammie being disappointed that I didn’t bring baby Ben to the service and I remember the deep shame of letting her down in some impossible-to-predict way at her husband’s funeral.
She said, “Oh. You didn’t bring the baby?”
I said, “Oh! No, no I didn’t think I should…”
And then she was swallowed by the crowd or she patted my hand and turned around in the pew or she disappeared in some final way that left me standing there wondering if I’d imagined the conversation. I don’t remember, exactly. I just know she was gone in an instant and I was left standing there hating that I didn’t have an armful of chubby blonde baby for her to kiss and tickle and forget for a moment that her husband was gone.
I remember checking my fiance’s phone a week after the funeral, intending to gather real proof of his cheating, and instead seeing a text that he had sent to his boss claiming to take the day of my grandfather’s funeral off for bereavement and thanking his co-workers for their condolences. He asked for an extra day off after the funeral to be there for me and to take care of “family stuff”. They said “Yes of course, take all the time you need.” and he replied “Thank you, we really appreciate it.” Truthfully this man, who I had chosen to spend my life with, had stayed home and played video games and angrily texted me throughout the wake and funeral wondering when I’d be back to unburden him of our child.
I remember singing “Black Sheep” to my younger sister while we waited in the receiving line at Papa’s wake. Trying to make her and my brother laugh. Trying to bring the dark humor.Trying to acknowledge how I knew I didn’t belong. It’s me, guys. I’m the black sheep. Get it?
I remember hugging my older cousin who I had never, not even once, hugged before that day. We didn’t know what else to do.
I remember watching my family go up, in pairs, to kneel at my grandfather’s casket and say their goodbyes.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I remember walking shakily up to his casket and kneeling by myself. All alone. Always so alone. I cried more for myself than for him. I cried and told him that I was so sorry for not being better. For not being more. And for being a person that’s left to kneel at his funeral by myself when everyone else had someone.
I remember watching Grammie go up for her turn, and maybe it was my dad, maybe his brothers, maybe all of them at once, holding her tiny body up against the weight of her grief. I couldn’t watch. I turned away. Her goodbye was too tender. It was a moment not meant for me to see.
It was a moment not meant for any of us.
On Friday we will lay her to rest in the same burial plot. We’ll go to the same funeral home. It will be the same kind of Too Hard. My dad will have a broken heart.
My son said tonight, “Poor Papa doesn’t have anymore parents!” and it took more than a one-two count to compose myself.
I remember Grammie had the softest face in the world. If you kissed her cheek it was like velvet.
I remember Grammie and Papa had a wild strawberry patch in their back yard.
I remember the upstairs bedrooms unchanged from the days their children played there. Sharon’s scary baby doll still in the bassinet at the end of the bed. The way light filtered in through the windows; green and hazy.
I remember watching The Wizard of Oz every single time we visited, even though I know that can’t be true. Sometimes it was Escape to Witch Mountain.
I remember a framed needlepoint on the living room wall, a little stepladder with plants spilling off of it. At Christmas there would be bowls of weird hard candies and huge gum drops in little crystal bowls on the stereo cabinet beneath the needlepoint.
I remember Grammie showing me how to crack walnuts in the little dish that she always had on the coffee table. I’d sit there on the floor cracking the shells and scraping the bits of flesh out with the pick.
I remember creeping between the dining room chairs to try and win the affections of Sophie, Grammie’s demon cat who liked to nap under the safety of the tablecloth in between sessions of hissing at me and warning me to stay away. Grammie looked so deeply sad when she told me that Sophie’s first family was unkind to her that I promised myself that I would always try to make Sophie know that I loved her and that I was a safe person. Sophie hated me, and everyone else, for her whole life. Everyone else but Grammie.
I remember the shortbread cookies with the sharp sugary crystals that she kept in the fat Friar cookie jar.
I remember the grape soda and diet cola that had expired years prior but still held a place in their basement.
I remember at my baby shower, which I knew I didn’t deserve, where I feared she might be ashamed of me or upset with me like my other grandmother, for having a baby too young and having a baby out of wedlock. Instead she walked up to me and took my hands and looked into my eyes and said, “My first great grandchild!” and hugged me, hard.
I remember one Christmas when my tiny son was afraid of her, her soft white hair and translucent skin. I remember my own mortal fear, that I, too, might live long enough to grow to an age where toddlers would fear me.
A woman who had raised six children of her own, a woman who had been the center of her home. She’d been the heart.
Now we’re left behind to reconcile with ourselves just who the hell we actually are.
Am I the heart, now? For my family?
That can’t possibly be the answer.
When my children lay me to rest it will not be a tearful and tender goodbye. They will not call me gentle and sweet, the way they did Grammie.
Who will I be in their memories?
That's Not What I Mean 