My Grandma

I want to tell you about my grandmother.

DAD:  Kev...

My mom's mom.

DAD:  Kev, it's Auntie.

When I was little, she was the one who bought me a movie a week.  Every time I went over her house, I had a new present.  A new treat.  Always a surprise.

DAD:  She...

When I did the History Fair in fifth grade, I knew my mom wasn't going to be able to come because she worked during the day, but she told my Grandma, and you better believe she was there standing over my little Viking diorama as if her grandson had reinvented wheel.

DAD:  She died this morning, Kev.

When I started doing theater, she came to every show.  She watched me play a drug dealer, a wolf, a Nazi, a bereaved son, a fop, and a sheriff among other things.

DAD:  The wake's the day before New Year's Eve.

But this isn't just a story about my grandmother.  It's also about my aunt, who passed away a few days after Christmas.

DAD:  I know you hate wakes, but I hope you come.

I hate wakes.  This is also about that, but not much.

Okay, hate's a strong word.

Getting me to go to a wake is a little bit like what it must be to get a ex-con to go back to prison.

It's not easy.

GRANDMA:  I'm going with you to the wake.

Some things you should know:

- My parents went through an ugly divorce.

- My father was very bad to my mother, both during their marriage and their divorce.

- My father's family was very bad to my mother, with the exception of my father's mother and one of his sister-in-laws.

- My aunt, the deceased, was nasty to my mother during the divorce and the marriage.  My thoughts?  My aunt was never the pretty one, and my mom is a knockout.

- Not convinced that my grandma shouldn't have had to attend the wake of the sister of her ex-son-in-law, a man who nearly destroyed her daughter?  Try this on for size.  My aunt made friends with all my dad's mistresses, knowing full well who they were.

My aunt was the type who treated everybody like her best friend, like family.

I don't like that.

What's so special about family if you treat everybody like family?

Maybe I only feel that way because of what she did to my mother, because nobody does anything to my mother and gets anything but a 'fuck off' from me, but who can say?

Anyway, my grandmother knew the wake would be jam-packed with people she didn't like, people who were bad to her daughter, and if the first two options didn't apply, the rest of them would most likely just be assholes.

And my grandma went anyway, because she didn't want me to go alone.

She walked in with her head held high.  She knelt at the casket, put her hand on the closed coffin, and said 'Be at peace.'  She did this even though it's hard for her to kneel and get back up again.  But when I told her she didn't have to kneel, she said she would, because--

"It's what you have to do."

When she came to my Dad's mom in the receiving line, she gave her a hug and told her how sorry she was, and she didn't break the hug.  I've heard that the best thing you can do for someone in pain is not break the hug.  My grandma knows that instinctively.

Then she got to my Dad.  My Dad, who to this day talks about how much he loves my grandma--who knows why?  Probably because she's a much better mother than his, and he knows it--the man broke down into tears.

And my grandmother was put in a very hard place.

She couldn't be mean to this man; he was in pain.

She couldn't be too nice to him; he had hurt her daughter.

So what do you do?

She took him by the shoulders, and stood him up.  She looked him in the eye and said--

"Be strong.  You can be strong.  You can."

He looked like a little kid.  He nodded, and she rubbed his arms lightly at the sides, which seemed to put him at peace for some reason that only a grandma can know.

Then, my Grandma took me to the back, where we sat, and members of my father's family--and not the nice ones--came up to my grandma and said hello, and she said hello right back, and was cordial without being fake.

It was a work of art.

When we left, I thanked her for coming with me, and she said--

"I wouldn't let you go alone.  I'd go to a thousand wakes with you if you needed me to."

My grandma used to get me toys, then she showed up when nobody else did, once she even got a AAA tow truck to me at two in the morning by claiming she had a heart condition and couldn't survive thinking of me out on the road by myself even though she had already sent my uncle to sit with me until someone got there.

Up until now, she just gave me things--gifts, praise, presence.

Now she's taught me something.

About what you have to do even when you can get out of doing it.

About how you act towards people who've wronged you when they're at their weakest moment.

About what family means.

I lost an aunt, but I discovered my grandma for what seems like the first time.

That's her story.

With love, of course.