This is my first diary on dKos. This is not what I imagined I would write my first diary about, but this is what I needed to say today. So here goes.
My grandfather died today. It was last night for us here, but today already in the faraway country where he lived. My parents didn't call my sister and me--my father sent an email with "Sad news" as the subject. They didn't want to wake us up if we were asleep already. I checked my email before bed, but my sister didn't know until this morning.
We, none of us, were close to my grandfather. In truth, he was not a great man. And for most of his life he was not even a fair man. He had a favorite child, and made no bones about it. He demanded a lot from my father, and showed little love. What love he had went to my father's older sister.
To be fair, it was a complicated family dynamic. My grandmother was a WWII widow with a small child when they met. She had given birth to twins, but the boy didn't make it, and both her and her daughter survived only through untiring work of a dedicated doctor. In the USSR in the winter of 1942 it took a lot to save them--a tiny preemie and a very sick mother. My aunt saw her father once, when she was very young, and then one day she said that daddy died. They didn't get the death notice until later, but she was right.
My grandfather was divorced, and had a son. I never knew about that uncle until about two years ago, I think. My grandfather adopted my oldest aunt, and then my grandparents had a daughter together--my grandfather's favorite kid. My father was unplanned, an oops baby. I think for most of his life that is how my grandfather saw him.
My sister had a bad case of asthma when she was little. We didn't know anything about inhalers then, and she was too sick for preschool. So every Sunday night we took public transportation across town (took us about an hour) to take her to our grandparent's apartment, and every Friday night we picked her up. I can't really remember how long that went on for, but it was a while. What I remember about my grandfather from that time (and most of the rest of the time) is that he nitpicked a lot. He found fault with a lot of what we did, kids and adults both. I remember thinking how unfair it was because he was very different with our aunt and her family.
It's not that he didn't love us. But his way of showing affection was to pinch his grandkids. We all hated it, all of us. And my grandmother would always tell him to leave us alone, and always in Yiddish. I understand now that he could never say that he loved us--he just couldn't.
For all the differences, my father is his father's son. Showing emotion is hard for him. Hence, the email last night. And not telling us he thought his father was dying all last week, even though he knew. And we are very much our father's daughters. Which makes us my grandfather's granddaughters, I guess.
I haven't cried. I don't know if I will. My mom just called. She left this morning on a business trip. She said she cried on the plane. My sister just stopped by my office. She wrote her piece this morning in her LiveJournal. But I don't think she cried either.
When my husband met my grandfather, he said it was scary how much he looked like my dad. It's true, and the older my dad gets, the more profound the likeness. I look like my dad a lot, and so does my daughter.
My daughter. She doesn't know my grandfather died. But she didn't really know he existed either. She is too young, and he lived half way across the world. My husband was there again last year, and he was struck by the little room where my grandfather lived. And by the fact that it was full of pictures of my daughter. She was his light. But he never got to meet her. He had a great-grandson right there, my cousin's kid, but for some reason it was my daughter he concentrated on.
The change in my grandfather started happening a little bit before my daughter was born. He started calling my parents and he wanted to know about us. When my daughter was born, my maternal grandmother was the one who called him. She told him that we named the baby after her husband (my maternal grandfather) and his wife (my paternal grandmother). I think something snapped in him. He called a lot, he asked for pictures. He asked us to buy a doll for my daughter from him. I think this is the only thing we now have of him--the doll he never touched, never saw, except in pictures. I have my grandmother's teaspoons, and my daughter has this doll.
Then he started going deaf, and refused to get a hearing aid. He was very stubborn. Another family trait, it seems. So it became next to impossible to talk to him on the phone. My sister says she is most sad because she never got to make new memories with him. Me too. And also because he never got to try again with my daughter.
How did he get there? How come his favorite daughter barely spoke to him, and doesn't willingly speak to us? I don't know the answer. But the truth is, life was pretty easy for her while my grandparents were taking care of her. Somehow, when it was her turn to take care of them, she didn't show much kindness. Or that is what it looked like from here.
My dad wanted to take his parents with us when we left the USSR (his oldest sister had been in the States since '78), but at the last minute my grandfather decided he wanted to stay with his favorite daughter. My father hasn't forgiven his sister for not insisting that they leave with us because he believes that that decision cost my grandmother years of life--she died of cancer that wasn't found until it was way too late. And now my grandfather is gone. He died at the age of 86, on my grandmother's birthday, 13+ years after she died.
I am suddenly struck by the fact that we don't really have any reason to talk to my aunt and her family ever again. The tie that bound us so uncomfortably for the last many years is gone. All we now have is our memories of my grandparents. I wonder if our memories are even shared. I am sure that my aunt's view of the last three years of my grandfather's life is very different from ours.
My parents are now the oldest generation on that side of the family. And we are suddenly "the parents," the middle generation. I hope my grandfather is at peace. I hope he can see my daughter more clearly now. I don't know what else to say. Except maybe that I am my father's daughter. And that means I am my grandfather's granddaughter. I hope when all is said and done about me, this will count as a good thing.
I have tears in my eyes now, and a lump in my throat. It seems I am also my mother's daughter.