grandma.
I wish I could say that I remember clearly the last time I saw you, what I said to you, what you said to me. I was nine then, and you were supposed to turn 100 the next month, fifteen days before I was supposed to turn ten. We were both born in the sign of Aries, though it suited you far better than it suits me. Still, for some reason they say that if you had died before I was born that I am so like you that I would have been thought to be your reincarnation. They say it - my mother, and her aunt, your youngest (now only) daughter, other nondescript relatives - each time they see me so of course I don't forget it, but they only ever needed to say it once.
I could be sad that I never got to say goodbye to you, my great grandmother, but who ever fully expects to get that chance, who ever does with it what should be done. I remember visiting you in the nursing home after they put you in there, how you would stare at the wall as we spoke to you, the same way I catch myself doing now occasionally. You used to play bingo and give me what you would win. You gave me metal bracelets, a stuffed animal of a black cat with green eyes like mine, a pillbox, because you were old and you had no use for such things. I was a child, after all, and could at least pretend that each relic was priceless. Maybe that was you exerting some power over me, as if you didn't know what you would surely come to signify to me. I don’t know why these things matter so much to me now, since I don’t have you anymore. I do this with everyone I’ve ever known who’s passed away. I hold on as tightly as possible to all I still have of them, the physical things. I guess that’s so when I start to forget things little by little it won’t seem as horrible to me.
I remember visiting your house. They used to get the box of blocks down for me, and you taught me how to play War. I used to go downstairs because they all told me not to, curl up beneath the pool table, hiding from distant cousins. I would pass the time odd Sundays in your room, lay on your bed, or wander out into your yard to the shed and try to remember your husband who had died thirty years before my birth. You’d get mad when I wouldn’t eat using your silverware. I had a strange OCD habit about that, it stays with me today - using other people’s cutlery is distasteful to me. I guess I’ve always been a little strange, but then, so has the whole family.
When I dreamt about you last July, it’s kind of silly but I think of that as you trying to let me know you’re still around. Even if I woke up sobbing, retreated immediately to the shower and buried my face in my knees and in the water, terrified someone would hear me. It was you who put that fear in me, Grandma, you and your kind, and still I told myself that you probably allowed this strange cartharsis to make up some for all the times I didn’t cry all my life. For all the times I wanted to but couldn't, because of that fear. Maybe you were just trying to let me feel a little, to let me know it was okay. But that wouldn’t be like you, you were always so serious, so short-tempered, so straight-laced. My mother told me that was the German in us, that it was why she always associated herself with the 75% of her that is Irish. But then, she seems so like you sometimes, a little worse, because I’ve had to grow up under her thumb. I was nine when you died. I hardly had time to know you.
In that dream I was so happy to see you, Grandma. So happy. I embraced you, rested my head on your shoulder, but you turned away. You walked away, you left me in that room, alone. I woke up scarcely able to breathe for my tears.
And that's not like me, Grandma. You made sure of it.
You outlived three out of five children. My grandmother, and two adult sons. They say you were with Uncle Billy when he died. That he had a heart attack in that chair in that house and you swore you didn't know but what you probably didn't know is that the whole family thought that you just didn't get help. They say that's the family attitude - unless someone is bleeding to death or missing a limb, nothing is done. So you ignored it. So you let it go. You let him go.
Grandma, I did that to my own son. Me, who was so terrified of all of you that even though I never could quite understand you I promised myself I wouldn't let myself be like the rest of you, this identical life and attitude set forward into a new body. Were you watching? Did you finally approve of me? This was my firstborn. Billy was your third son, so I guess I won't ever know if you would have tried harder to keep James alive. He was your first child, but you blinded him in one eye due to your carelessness, a childhood accident you set into motion. Did you figure in your ninety years that you'd be with Billy and James and Therese soon, so that the injury surely wouldn't be so bad? Did it let you leave him there, let you sleep, desensitised by your daughter's death, your oldest son's? I thought that too, Grandma. I waited for it, I wanted it so badly and here I am, four years later. You lived another eight years. I'm not ninety, Grandma, I don't have the luxury of knowing the separation won't be long. I was only fifteen.
I imagine genetic markers and likewise inherited ways of thinking must die hard. You had a brother who died, didn't you, Grandma? You had two. One adult, one child.
They had cards when you died, with your name and the dates. (I don't remember if I took one but I doubt that I did, since for years I didn't know your days. When my mother told me you had died I merely frowned because I didn't know what else to do. Do you see how much like you all I was then?) The room smelled of lilies. People crossed themselves over you. That's how I learned. You'd be embarrassed to know this but I cried for you, Grandma. I didn't and still don't know why but I cried for you as they read the words, "our sister Carrie," then continued in some vein praying for the salvation of your soul, and when I looked around, do you know? No one was crying, Grandma. No one but me, and I knew then that when I died, no one would cry at my funeral either. Because I'm just like you. They all say it every chance they get.
That was the last time I cried, Grandma, for nine years until I let someone break my heart. You would have been disgusted that I let myself be so affected, much less that I ever cried in front of anyone. That was the only time anyone has seen me cry, but I know that doesn't matter to you. It happened. Still, I have to ask if it's reciprocal. Do you ever cry for me? Because you ache for me, or because you are ashamed? I have to settle for knowing you'd be indifferent. You never ached for anything. You were never ashamed.
You are the only person I've lost I have ever cried for, and I love you, Grandma. I don’t think you ever loved me, that it was something our family thinks to feel, and you can't conjure it even if you want to. Maybe you never had time to love me, or maybe to you I was some anonymous great-grandchild, distinguishable from the others only because I am your youngest. But I visit you, Grandma. It’s me who brushes the cut grass and the leaves from your grave, brings you flowers. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t care for you.
And I know you weren’t a bad person, Grandma. This was bigger than my nine year old psyche, that of my nearly twenty year old self, simply an attitude that had been passed down somehow through each generation for who knows how long. You just ended up the matriarch of all of this, the symbol I associated with all the unmeaning(?) evils my relatives from your side seem to dish out regularly.
I forgive you, Grandma.
Someday it could just as easily be me.
Caroline Rebecca Madigan, née Neitzey
April 3, 1899 - March 4, 1999
(Yes, that's little me.)