Thank you, everyone, for your kindness recently with my grandmother’s passing. I’m certainly not through mourning her (arguably, are you ever?) but I’m doing a lot of pretending that I’m doing the day-to-day stuff with nothing wrong. I’m not sure if that’s the right reaction. Sometimes I let my guard down and apparently it shows on my face, because Esteban asks me what’s wrong and it’s only then that I realize that I’m dwelling. I can’t even bring myself to say what’s wrong, so I just say “The same thing that’s always wrong.”
The worst part, I think, is that it will never stop being wrong.
It hasn’t helped that my aunt Drusilla has been relying on me to help coordinate the estate stuff. It’s awful business, the packing of memories, the knowledge that if you don’t take something, it’s just going to Goodwill, where strangers will paw over it and never realize that was my great grandmother’s Easter egg dish or my great-great grandmother’s vase. There are stupid family fights, of course, and drama. Aunt Brunhilda broke the honor system and started claiming things for her children, which is something that wasn’t supposed to happen, and then my mother got involved and it all culminated over a fight about a dresser. Not even an antique dresser: just a relatively newish, mid-quality dresser. It should be pointed out that there are nine other dressers in that house, but no, everyone wants this particular dresser.
I am so sick of the word “dresser”.
(Off subject: I know that the period in the above sentence should go in front of the quotes, and I have to do it for work but it just feels WRONG to me. There’s no reason for it! I know those of us who are OCD about words get worked up about serial commas but holy shit, I’ll give up all the serial comma arguments if I can just have this one thing: put the punctuation outside of quotes when the punctuation isn’t actually a part of what is being quoted. I beg this of you! And also, this is my blog so I do what I want, even though I know that it is wrong. In fact, I frequently break grammar rules on purpose because this whole thing exists because I’m trying to silence my inner critic while in the first draft stage, but I do worry pissing off the writers and editors who read this page with my runon sentences and nested parentheticals and rampant misuse of clauses (Not enough to stop doing it though) but I will not suffer one ounce of guilt about putting the period where it rightfully belongs!)
True fact: I am usually not clumsy. I don’t drop stuff. I rarely fall (probably self-preservation, as when I do, it’s really really horribly painful and damaging somehow) and typically in my family, people will usually hand me stuff that shouldn’t be dropped rather than giving it to my sister or cousins. However, in the physical process of moving all of the knickknacks, dishes, clocks and physical elements of a life, I have broken more things than I can count. Off the top of my head: two dishes, a bowl the handle off a dresser, some super old and cool Pyrex baking dishes, a musical glass Hummel thing that was easily 70 years old, and in one really spectacular event, an entire box of my great-grandmother’s Christmas punch glasses with the matching relish tray.
That one was particularly painful. As I was picking up the pieces and putting them back in the box, I noticed that the box was covered with my great-grandmother’s handwritten notes that said “Will break” and “Take it easy”. Sorry, Great-Grandma, I took it easy by dumping them over the side of the backstairs and smashing them to pieces on concrete! And you were right, they sure did break!
Aunt Drusilla tried to make light of it, saying that I was saving everyone time because now we wouldn’t have to wrap them up and carry things out. Esteban’s theory is that being in the house makes me nervous. My theory is that I just want to get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible, which is exactly what I was doing when the Christmas punch glasses took the triple gainer over the railing: pulling a Racheal Ray and carrying more things than I should have been so that the job would be done faster. And then I have guilt. And then I break more things. More guilt. Later rinse repeat.
Every time I’d think I was done going through her house, my aunt would call me back and have another reason for me to come back and spend another four hours there. And every time I go back, I have sad dreams for several days after, sadder still that I remember them in crystal detail in the morning. Esteban thinks I should start saying no to Aunt Drusilla when she invents these reasons for me to come back, but I get the feeling that she’s lost right now herself, that this is the only thing that she can cling to and that maybe I was someone who was strong for her in my grandmother’s last weeks, so this is how she is searching for closure. Or maybe she associates my presence in that house with the last moments of my grandmother’s life and is trying to get a piece of that back.
I don’t know. I just can’t tell her no. So I take it easy. Too many things have broken already.
7 Comments
You won’t ever stop mourning her, but the weight of the grief will get lighter. It’s going on 4 years now since my Grandmother died and while I don’t have the daily ache, I still get the occasional reminder that will make me start crying “out of the blue”. Not too long ago I was trying to get a stain out of a tablecloth and had the quick thought to phone her and ask (she could get stains out of anything!), then remembered I couldn’t call her and oh boy, that was a moment. But you know, its those very things that let me know she’s still tucked closely inside my heart and that brings me some comfort.
I’m sorry you’re having to be the strong one right now. We’re here for you when you need to be the one supported.
You might be on to something though. IF you just break everything, then there’s nothing left to fight over.
Not a great idea, I guess.
Give yourself time. t least you’re feeling SOMETHING, which is so much better than trying to wall off the grief and pretend everything is OK. That almost never works.
Yeah…it gets easier. My grandfather died a year ago and I still find moments, but its easier.
Breaking things? Oy…its scary what happens when things aren’t right. I know that feeling well.
Now, as for punctuation – AMEN SISTA – there are so definitely times when it goes OUTSIDE. I know the ‘right’ way, but I, like you, refuse when its just ‘wrong’. hehehe
The two things that really caught me off-guard about my Grandma Bonnie’s death was the deep, wracking sobbing that I could not stop the night before the funeral while I lay in a king size bed with my sister at our second cousin’s house and how long I had the daily ache. I didn’t think it would ever go away, but it did. Now I think of her often, but without that pain. When my Grandma Carol died last summer I think that most shocking thing was how bad I felt. I was much closer to my other grandma and her death was more sudden. Grandma Carol’s death was a relief to her, but it still was sad. Mind you, I also did a little yelling and finally told her how much it hurt me for her to always point out that my sister was thinner than I was and to tell me to take calcium so I wasn’t hungry all the time.
Death is hard, messy and sad. Take your time.
My grandmother for one didn’t leave a will, so going to probate court was a nightmare for her children. Secondly, I sadly only saw her home once after her death. It was a place of such warmth to me and I can’t believe that hurried stop-in before (or after, I can’t remember) going to the funeral home was the last time (thanks to her hermit-like son who lived with her and is estranged from us all). I feel for you having to look through all those belongings and dealing with family fallout. Almost four years in, I still do feel “cheated,” for lack of a better word and I’m still trying to figure out what my grandma would want of me.
The fact that you can write about these painful feelings at such an early stage seems to point to the capacity for greater healing and understanding. All the best to you.
Hugging you. My basement is still full of my mom’s stuff; most of it is useless but pretty. A little bit of it is remarkable (like my great-grandmother’s wedding shoes from 1880) and some of it is simply junk. I still have a hard time sorting through it, but it’s getting easier. As Gertie said, the weight of the grief does get lighter.
I’m so sorry, Wendy, that I can’t do anything to help you. However, I can tell you why periods are inside quotation marks — it’s a remnant from lead type, when the period and comma slugs were so thin that it made sense to sandwich them inside a wider slug, like a quotation mark. I didn’t make that up.
Again, sympathies for your loss. Next time you’re in Boston let’s have a drink in her honor.
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