In the summer of 1987 I was 9 years old. My grandmother was 60. My grandfather had gone to bed hours ago. Every night that I’m aware of before he went to the back room, he grasped my grandmother’s hand by her thumb and asked her if she wanted to go with him… She declined every night that I can remember.
After he went to bed she often called her cousin, she would sit and smoke cigarettes and do that laugh she does. It sounded like a high pitched inhale over and over.
I can hear it now.
I can also hear the way she sneezed. When she sneezed she would pretty much move her whole upper body and grip her nose or cover her mouth with the nearest kleenex or folded up paper towel that was under her perspiring glass of iced tea moments before and I would hear:
“Ish shoo!!!! ISH SHOO!!!! IIIISSSSSHHH SHOOOOO!!!”
I laughed every time. I don’t think she ever sneezed just once. it was always in at least 3’s.
So when she was 60 I can remember saying “Hey Mom, I bet you can’t stand on your head anymore. You’re old.”
She responded with a slow deep convicted voice and a half smile and folded up her crossword puzzle.
“Oh Timmy, I’m 99 years old and I can do lots of things you wouldn’t think. One of them is stand on my head, the other is I can knock your block off”
She then walked to the front door which had a diamond shaped window in it, centered in the room with a mirrored wall on the side and the rest wrapped in dark wood paneling which all rested on red carpet.
And then she stood on her head.
She didn’t even struggle when saying while upside down, “Ya see that, Kid? I’m 99 years old and can still stand on my head!”
She sent me off to the beach like everyday almost. If I wasn’t at the beach, she took me to Roses where she bought yarn. When she sent me to the beach, she gave me a single dollar bill or 4 quarters and said “You get a dollar a day. If you want more, you’ll have to work for it.” So I ended up washing the owner of the surfshop’s dog. I sweet talked fries from the corner spot and conned free ice cream and shaved ice. I used the dollar to hustle older kids in pool or Street Fighter 2… and I learned how to get in trouble.
Around 10 years later I was still a con man.
I was still talking my way through life and she was a target.
I used to give her sob stories about this and that and she would almost always bail me out. She loved me and she was just trying to do her best. She let me live in her house. She let me live in her rental house as well. She often paid my rent so I wouldn’t be homeless. She looked at me as her own child.
She once told me that when I was young I would wake up screaming for my mother and the only thing that would calm me down is if she came in while I was screaming and crying and pretended to be my mother so I would go back to sleep.
I stole her medicine.
I used her car to get drugs. I used her money to get drugs. I used her.
Over
and
over
again.
This is how someone like me treats the people that love me.
I know for a fact that I caused her more time worrying than any of the 3 boys she raised.
I will live with that until the day I die.
I don’t get to escape the hurt I caused.
Last week I came home, took my kids to the mall and received some information that my mom mom was being taken to a hospice center by ambulance.
My father told me the name of the nurse attending to her and a phone number to call. He did so with a choked up voice in between moments of long silence while he tried to collect himself.
An hour later I was on my way.
When I walked into the hospice I could hear her voice and rushed right to her and knelt down besides her.
Out of respect for my family I will refrain from going into detail about what happened there. But I stayed in the room with her, I slept in my car for a bit, I tried to just be there for her.
I pulled her hair back for her.
I held her hand.
I once promised to her that all the harm I caused her I would try my best to rectify, to make right out of all the wrong. This was the only way I knew how.
The next day I had to leave. I was a mess. A family member approached me privately and told me how proud my grandmother was of me and how she always bragged about my art accomplishments and my parenting and how bright and beautiful my children were and how I turned my life around.
I lost my shit.
The room emptied so I could be alone with her.
I sat down next to her and gripped her hand by her thumb like my grandfather always did.
She tightened her grip.
By this point she wasn’t doing much talking and when she was, well… she just wasn’t herself.
“Mom, I love you.”
Her eyes opened and locked on mine. My eyes filled with tears.
“I love you too, Honey… a bushel and a peck.”
“Mom, I gotta go now. I have to pick up Canaan.”
“Where is he? With some family?”
“Yeah mom.”
“That’s good”
“Yeah. Hey Mom, guess what Canaan got on his report card?
“What?” she said.
“Mom, he got straight A’s. He got an A in every single class.” At this point it literally took everything I had not to collapse on top of her and just cry but she filled up with life for a split second to say…
“You’re kidding me!?!”
“No Mom, straight A’s. I’m so proud of him.”
She then closed her eyes and said “Oh bless his little heart.”
I had to pull my shit together for a minute or so and I grabbed her hand a little tighter and said, “Mom, I want you to go to sleep now. I gotta go get Canaan. I want you to sleep and go find Pop. He’s waiting for you. He’s been waiting. Go find him and I’ll see you later.”
Then I told her I loved her for the last time and kissed her head.
She was an absolute angel of a woman to me. She left this earth but there will come a time when I will hear that laugh again. When I will hear her voice and see her smile. I truly believe this isn’t the end.
And I truly believe that she is in a better place and in a better position than she was here on earth.