Twenty years ago, if you’d have told me that it’s possible to miss someone decades after they left, I probably would have been a narcissistic fuck and told you that you only missed a person because you’re stuck in the past.
Actually I probably wouldn’t have done that, I just like to be hard on myself. I’m not the type of person that would spit on someone who is in pain, but for some fucking reason I like to think that I was maybe sorta kinda the person who could do that. Not now, but back then, in all of my anger.
But I never was that person. And every time I’ve tried to be it has weighed on me like a ton of bricks because more than anything else, I hate to see people in pain.
So if twenty years ago you would have told me that my grandma was going to die soon and in twenty years I would still weep at the sight of her on video, I would have told you to fuck off but I would have felt bad about it afterwards.
I don’t know why this is my introduction. I’ll probably regret it later.
My grandma died twenty years ago. It completely wrecked me when she died, but over the course of time I learned how to channel her influence on me in a good way.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
As my favorite aunt (now also deceased) said, of all the fucked up, morbid, and depressed grandchildren she had, it had to be you who found her dead?
I’m just digressing more and more, aren’t I? Maybe I don’t know how to tell this story.
Maybe I should just say what I want to say.
I was equally devastated when my grandpa died. He was an amazing man. Solid, stoic enough to make affection awkward, and usually the smartest man in the room even though he only had a seventh grade education. Y’all would’ve loved him because he was an old school democrat and fierce union man.
Whenever an argument broke out at the plant that grandpa worked at, they’d say “let’s go ask Elvin!” That’s my grandpa. His name was Elvin.
The guys would ask him a question and he’d answer it and that was the law thereafter. But if he didn’t know the answer he’d tell them he didn’t know but would look it up. Grandma told me she knew when this happened because he’d come flying through the door after work and she’d say “Hey babe, I’m glad you’re home!” And he’d holler, while running towards their library “ok, but I need to confirm that JFK was assassinated in ‘63 because the guys at the plant said ‘64..”
My grandpa was an amazing man. I’ll never know anyone as smart or dignified as he was.
And neither would my grandma, who married him and made no bones (no pun intended) about him being the most well-endowed man on the planet and the only guy who knew how to use such a gift. Trust me, I am shriveling as I write this, but I also think it’s fucking awesome that my grandma flew her flag even when she was a grandmother. Her hubbie was smart, funny, handsome, well-endowed, AND knew how to work it, apparently. She had every right to brag about her man, even if it was sometimes inappropriate.
(After writing that last paragraph I’m probably never going to have sex again.)
I’m taking a long time getting to the point, aren’t I?
Well, here it is.
My uncle sent me a DVD of my grandpa’s service. We didn’t know this footage existed until recently. It’s weird seeing my life replayed over 20 years later.
Here’s my sister, so young yet holding her four month old baby, who is her second child.
Here’s my mom, her smile endearing to everyone else but to me, I know it’s insincere and underlined with anger. And OMG, she’s younger than I am now, but the grief etched in her face lies about that.
Here’s my baby brother, still shorter than all of us, head shaved around the sides but a flop up top, wearing one of dad’s dress jackets so that he looks even smaller than he was.
And here’s my dad, standing silently in the corner, holding back tears, awkwardly trying to exist in this space and among this family that he divorced. I remember being the person who told my dad that my grandpa, his former father-in-law, had died. I barely caught the sight of his eyes welling up with tears when he screamed “god damnit” and went into his bedroom and I heard him sob through the door.
Years later when his own father died my dad was sad but never showed emotion.
But there he is in the video, every bit of as much as the man I’ve always wanted him to be. The man who knows he’s not going to be welcomed with open arms, but thinks it’s important to show respect to a man who never welcomed him with open arms.
There’s my dad, dressed in black, trying to stay out of everyone’s way, wiping tears from his eyes. Tall, strong, sad and handsome.
That is my father. That is my dad.
I didn’t see him twenty years ago.
Today, with the shaky camera and unfocused lens, I see him perfectly. I miss him and I love him.
Here my cousin is always getting in front of the camera and that’s hard to watch. Chubby little kid with a bowl haircut popping up on the screen, and at the time none of us could have ever imagined that 9/11 would happen and Lee would follow in the footsteps of his dad and his dad’s dad and sign up with the military. And none of us would have imagined that once he was safely out of the war zone he would be driving home one night as a civilian and lose control of his car and die in a horrific accident that forced my aunt and uncle to bury their child in a closed casket.
And I’m glad my grandparents weren’t alive for that.
Here’s my Uncle Tom! He hasn’t accepted that he’s middle-aged so he’s wearing a track suit that ages him more than anything, but he doesn’t think so and really who cares because he still gets a lot of ladies to come home with him every night. He is sad, too, and his face doesn’t change at all no matter what he’s saying. This is the man who introduced my parents. He’s not technically family at all, but he’s got the same sullen, tired look that we do and besides, he’s always been family.
He died alone in his house about five years later. The last words I said to him were “maybe lay off the cocaine for a bit? We want to keep you around.”
He didn’t lay off and we weren’t able to keep him around.
And then there is my grandma. She is doing her best under the circumstances, but her face is slack even when she smiles. Her sister, (oh, Edna, I miss you so much, too) never leaves her side. She hovers above my grandma, her little sister, and you can almost see the force field that she creates.
Everyone wants a piece of my grandma and not in a bad way, they just want to share how much they loved Elvin. Grandma is hard to read for people who don’t know her. I can see she’s exhausted. She’s not even my grandma. She’s not Kay, the woman who overcame amazing obstacles to become widely respected. She’s not Kay who always said her job was to give her grandchildren everything she never got. She’s not Kay who somehow managed to drive twenty miles in less than ten minutes when one of her grandchildren was in danger.
She’s Kay, wife of Elvin.
And I’m a feminist- and so was gram- but on that day she was first and foremost a wife. Kay, who above all else loved Elvin.
Here is my cousin from my dad’s side of the family. In the video she’s bouncing my nephew on her knee. But I remember her grabbing me and saying “let’s go outside.” When we got outside she started sobbing. She went to the bathroom a few minutes earlier and my grandma and Edna were in there. My grandma collapsed and told Edna that she couldn’t breathe, that it was too hard, that she couldn’t go on without Elvin, that she was trying to hold herself together for her kids but she really just wanted to go with him, to be with him.
Edna begged her to stay while my cousin sneaked out. Two years later, Edna died and the voicemail my grandma left for me about that will never not break my spirit. Steve, my roommate at the time, my ex-boyfriend, one of my best friends, and the father of my third nephew tried to shield me from that voicemail. I was waiting tables at the time and he showed up one night when was I leaving work.
“Let’s go get some beer” he said.
Okay, fine. But why do you have that look on your face? Why are you being so coy? He shook his head. “Let’s just drink, okay?”
So we did. We drank a lot and talked about what we wanted our legacies to be when we died. Then he said “I have something I need to tell you” and he pressed play on our voicemail and my grandma was telling us that Edna had died and she couldn’t get through telling us that without crying.
I was kind of pissed at Steve for not just telling me this, but he told me that as soon as heard my grandma’s voice break, he broke.
A couple of weeks later I had packed and/or sold all of my stuff and headed to grandma’s house. I knew she was in a bad place after losing grandpa and I wanted to be there with her, for her to know I was as steadfast as a granddaughter as she was a grandmother.
It was all going well, grandma really liked having me there. I was always her favorite grandchild so so of course we had a pretty cool routine.
Then one day the phone rang and grandma answered it and I knew something was wrong.
Steve died.
I sat up all night writing, and I regret that now.
Because I went on and on about how when someone dies you start seeing everything clearly. Everything is beautiful because someone you love will never see it again, and I said that the worst part of it was that once you came to terms with that, once you finally get back to how mundane life really is and slip back into that comfort, someone else dies.
And a few weeks later, my grandma died.
All of this is just a memory.
But I watched the video today and I remember being 18 and the worst thing that happened to me up to that point was losing my grandpa. And things just got so much worse from there.
And I can watch the video and see everyone who I’ve lost and get a little sad, but when I watch the video and see my grandma I simply weep. I sobbed today because of the video.
And yeah, it’s been almost twenty years but jesus christ I’d give anything to wrap my arms around that woman again.
Twenty years ago you wouldn’t be able to convince me that missing someone for that long was possible. Twenty years later I’m realizing that missing someone is forever.