and then I came home...

[thanate]

... and the dishwasher is broken. My grandmother died; my father did not die of seriously infected wasp stings, but only through the timely intervention of strong antibiotics (and he only stayed out of the hospital because he's friends with the world expert on insect & snake bites.) Oh, and my uncle (who had a heart attack shortly before I left) had exciting complications getting in for major surgery, although I think the bypass bit is over with now and they're on to smaller questions like whether he needs a pacemaker.

All in all, I think I did pretty well with not being here. The worst I have is a bunch of bruises (normal) and that horrible sort of sunbleach/tan effect where the fluffy bits of my hair are now several shades lighter than the skin of my face.

My father's parents retired from the Cleveland area to Alpine, TX shortly after my parents were married (thus several years before I was born) and due to a couple things including my grandfather's perpetual bad health and... well, he was quirky in unuseful ways... I didn't see them except when we went out to visit once every year or two. Well, there were two times ever that they came to visit us (and with all three of their children living in the DC area, this made as much sense as the other way round.) Anyway, the point is that I didn't see them that frequently when I was growing up, and when I did, my grandfather spent more and more time napping or just hiding in his room for whatever reason, so I mainly didn't know him that well. Which is ok... he was an excellent person in many ways, but not so good to be related to, or particularly married to. Although my grandmother clung to him desperately right up until he died... which might be where I get that from...

Anyway, my grandmother was a tiny woman (I think she was about 5'2" in her prime, but was shorter than 5' all the time I knew her) and probably more of a lady than anybody I've known-- which is another reason I wish I'd known her better, as some of the gracefulness and tact of what she was are things I never learned. (My mother is an excellent person, but possibly less good at being tactful than I am, which is saying rather a lot, and my father saves his diplomacy for work & non-family.) She had a very dry and sarcastic sense of humor at times (and at others was quite silly, especially with children) but she was invariably considerate, and put a huge amount of effort into being kind to others in general. In Alpine she was the president of the Methodist church association, and ran their yearly book sale fundraiser pretty much single handedly; she tutored the wives of foreign students at Sull Ross university (why hoardes of people from the middle & far east come to school in the middle-of-nowhere, Tx, a three hour drive from the nearest airport, I will never know) in learning english, grew vegetables (I remember pouring dish water down the gopher holes to discourage them), gathered pecans from various public pecan trees in town to make pies & things with, and was generally social, competent, smart, and involved with community stuff of all sorts.

I also remember her as having red-blonde hair, always pinned up neatly in a swirl at the back of her head. (in fact, the times I've tried to do red things to my hair, that's the color I've had in mind, and been disappointed when I come out with pink or red-brown) And because I was a kid, and that was just the way things were, I didn't realize until she stopped dying it when I was half-way through college that this was not just natural. (well, and my mother's mother's hair didn't start going white until well after my mother's did.)

Anyway, she started having health and sanity issues (initally partly caused by an awful medication with side effects of dementia) about four years ago, to the point that my parents got a call from her neighbors saying she'd turned up on their doorstep saying things about being afraid to go home because someone-or-other was trying to kill her. And at that point my grandfather was virtually blind, and not at all helpful or able to cope with this stuff either (as she'd for the most part been taking care of him for the last decade or more) and my parents flew out pretty much immediately, got (through some minor miracle, given that sound mind was not actually the case) someone to ok the signing of power of attorney papers and then they flew my grandmother back here while my uncle & cousin drove my grandfather back with some of the stuff from the house. And for a couple interminable weeks they stayed here with my mother looking after them, before getting into a retirement community in Reston, and there was packing up of the house in Alpine (which got sold to a very nice couple with smallish kids who were delighted both by the house-- which is a lovely little place, complete with walled courtyard and a couple acres of desert scrub that you can hide out in when you're kid-sized-- and by the standard set of tools and garden stuff and all that which they inherited with the house)

All this was in the summer of '02... which I remember because when I totalled my darling corolla, I inherited my grandparents' car as interim transportation until I got the matrix. And honestly, I have no earthly idea how my grandomther managed it-- a large 2-door ford something that moved like a boat, didn't slow down when you turned off the cruise control, and I could barely get the doors open to escape sometimes. Oh, and it looked like it was glaring at you... (this was actually kind of typical of my grandparents' relationship-- my grandfather would go out and get the "best" whatever on the market, and then my grandmother would complain about it, because it didn't actually suit what she wanted out of the appliance or whatever... my father has always been very careful about making large household purchaces a joint decision.)

My grandfather died the next January, much to everyone's relief, as he'd been steadily getting more unpleasant to be around, and wouldn't let my grandmother go off and do anything on her own (which includes getting care like baths and things she wasn't able to do for herself anymore), and except for some... unpleasantness about the funeral (my aunt, who couldn't stand her father, used the cold as an excuse to keep my grandmother away from the funeral)... things got a little better for a little while-- my grandmother was put in the alzhimer's floor, where she got personal care and things, although there weren't too many people around able to provide her with actual conversation, and gradually over the last few years she lost interest in being coherent, then awake, and then she stopped eating earlier in the week and that was it. So while I miss her, she hasn't really *been* her except in brief flashes since I was in college, or recognized me as anything but a friendly face or a hand to cling to (which I guess is fair, given that the pictures of her at my age don't look anything like anyone I know...) for the last four years or so. So the sad happened cumulatively a while ago, and maybe some of us will cry at the funeral (and I hope I won't be the only grandkid there this time) but it's more good that it's over now.

But I feel kind of odd about all this... I mean, it seems horribly selfish to count up how few people would leave a serious hole in my life if they died-- I'd be sad about most of my relatives, but it's only my parents & my brother that I regard as eternal constants, and I don't even talk to my brother above two or three times a year at the moment. And I think of maybe three friends I'd be totally lost without, but while there are a lot of other people I'd be upset about losing, I don't think it would change my world very much, I guess. And then there are several people I care about where I'm pretty sure I'd never know if they died suddenly. I'm... not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Comments

[greta-k.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother. Although you may not have been close to her, and most of her decline occurred prior to her death, it may still leave more of a hole than you currently realize.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I think really the thing is that the hole has already been left, for some time... now I (and my father much more so) have just a little less constant reminder of it, having to go out and visit someone who isn't really there anymore. Peace has been made, and now we can actually let it go.

[fishy1.livejournal.com]

*hugs* and stuff.