| Subject: Letters to Samson - 18 |
Author:
Holly
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Date Posted: 20:32:05 06/24/06 Sat
In reply to:
Holly
's message, "Letters to Samson - 1" on 18:59:32 06/04/05 Sat
It's been a rocky couple of weeks. I've been looking, with open eyes now, at what the family knows, really knows, about my paternal grandmother's death. She's like James Dean or Marilyn Monroe oe Kurt Cobain, more personality than person at this point. Everyone who knew her before she got sick is dead. And, before they died, they told stories that were as romantic as they were uninformed. Except my grandfather. He told a tiny bit of his side of the story.
And he felt very let down.
For information, I had the remembrances of Aunt Ruth, not merely the Queen, but the Empress, of Denial. In a la-la-la-la I can't hear you kind of way. I think she's seething in there somewhere. I also think that would be completely inaccessible to her. Nonetheless, her memory of riding the sweeper while dust particles glittered like stars all around her is the remembrance I have latched onto. That one, and her mother, lying tiny on a doublebed when my father was born, cooing, "That's it, Charlie, there you go..."
I could live without her coming home from a hospital, some three years later, saying only, "The baby died, Ruth."
My Dad was three when his mother went away. He remembers nothing of her before things got bad. But he did his research. One telling statement he makes is that my grandmother never told anyone what was troubling her - at least not until it was too late to avoid institutionalization. She didn't tell her sister, who lived with her and my grandfather and helped to take care of Ruth and my Dad. She didn't write home to her family. She didn't tell her doctors.
I don't know whether she told my grandfather. Him, I knew. He was alarmed by a couple of incidents in which Aunt Ruth got away from grandmother. Once, at age two, she stripped naked on the front porch. Another time, she ran into the ocean. My own mother was quite a bit like that (and I don't let her watch you by herself), so I sympathize with my grandfather to a point.
But he was a really tough customer. And Dad got ahold of the effusive and gobsmacked lovestruck letters Granddaddy wrote about my grandmother. He didn't think much of women in general. He was kind of a bastard, tell you the truth. But a bastard who loved his kids and grandkids. He thought she was really something. It must have devastated him for grandmother to turn out to be such a disappointment. I bet it nearly killed him to fail.
It was in the letters, letters from Granddaddy home, letters from my grandmother to Ruth, and a letter from my father to me, that a little bi of something started to click for me.
Granddaddy wrote to his mother that my grandmother was exceptionally quick to sense discomfort or offense and to try to make it right. My grandmother used to not like to ride the bus once she felt better and moved into her own apartment. She felt bad or the passengers wondering about the "sick woman." My father and I both are incredibly sensitive to disapproval and "others' discomfort." So is my cousin Kathy, your Godmother. So are you.
Which is the point of this story, my little man. I hear you change your story in the middle of it when you sense the lecture building, and I have seen you clown your way out of a raised eyebrow. It's not all bad. I've seen you be so loving with little kids who want to share, kids who need an invitation to play. It's heartbreaking.
But, here's the thing: whether we are right or wrong about how others feel, we have a family history of taking it on, suffering from it, and being, somehow, ashamed of it. We don't talk about anything that might creep out our listener. Or generate pity.
I love that you can make me smile, even when I'm mad. But you don't have to. The world isn't going to end. I will get over it. And know this, if you never learn anything else: I promise you can trust me with your heart. I promise I will never disapprove of you. You can always tell me how you feel. And I will help you or find someone who can.
Yeah. Talk is good.
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