Pauline is another one of the awesome people I’ve met through Twitter. She is also a stay-at-home-mom/writer. You can read her blog here and follow her on Twitter here and here.
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I never referred to them as Grandma and Grandpa. I didn’t even remember them.
Using those words would have made me feel like I was faking affection for my mother’s parents when all I had was a few grainy photos and a gravesite for reference.
I knew the story. They had been on the way home from a trip to visit family in Mexico when a trucker fell asleep at the wheel and ran into their vehicle, head on. My mother, who had just turned 20, lost her parents that day. She was supposed to have been on that trip, she tells me, but she just couldn’t bear to leave her 10-month-old daughter for that amount of time.
I know it’s a sad story. But because I have no memory of them I also never allowed myself to feel anything on our yearly treks to the cemetery for birthdays and holidays so my mother could pay her respects.
“Time to go to the cemetery for your parents again?” I’d ask when I’d hear my mom on the phone making arrangements for floral blankets and gravesite tags and all that other business that fell into the category of Stuff I Couldn’t Relate To.
“Yep,” she’d reply. “Can you take me this weekend?”
So we’d get in the car and drive the 30-minutes to Detroit and I’d spend just the right amount of time standing beside my mother as she paid her respects before shuffling off to listen to the car radio or paint my nails and wait for them to dry while Mom lingered. She knew I wasn’t going to rush her. I may not have understood, but I wasn’t heartless, either. So I’d add a second coat of polish if she was taking longer than usual.
I might have wished I was somewhere else. I may have sighed. A lot. But I never rushed her. And I’d talk myself out of feeling guilty for not giving a damn by reminding myself that I couldn’t really be upset about strangers being dead. Because really, that’s what they were, right? Right.
End of discussion.
But now, almost three years after the untimely death of my own father, I wonder if my toddler will be rolling her eyes at me every time I want to make a special trip to the cemetery to pay my respects. We won’t be able to go very often, mind you. He’s buried in Detroit, in the plot right next to my mother’s parents, and a far cry from our home in Arizona.
But there’ll be trips to see family. There’s a moment, each year on his birthday and on the day he passed that we all get melancholy because he’s not here to make us laugh. Or piss us off just so he can make us laugh again.
I wonder if she’ll think I’m crazy for not being able to throw away the last two cans of Miller Lite I found in our recycle bin because I knew they were his. Or if she’ll ever ask me about him and what he was like.
I wonder if she’ll even care.
She won’t remember him, after all. She was only six months old when he died. I was 29.
She won’t know his face. She won’t know his voice. She won’t know the devilish twinkle in his eye or how his ears would turn red when he was trying to pull one over on someone. She won’t know that he didn’t say he loved you. Or that you knew he did, anyway.
I can tell her all of these stories, of course. And she’ll be a good daughter and try to understand. Maybe even empathize. But she won’t really know.
I know this because it wasn’t until the moment my father was pronounced dead, just six months into his 50th year and on my mother’s 49th birthday that I finally understood what my mother had been dealing with all those years that I was pretending to care.
And it wasn’t until that first trip to the cemetery to visit my father’s grave, right next to that of my grandparents, that I knew what it was to stand on the very earth that had swallowed my heart.
But then I have moments where I think maybe Mom was on to something. Maybe I’ll follow her lead and just let my daughter be. There’s no need to force memories upon her that aren’t really hers, after all.
I can’t expect her to feel something for someone she never knew. Or understand the constant ache that’s always there, just under the surface. Or the guilt that comes with living when you know that you just left flowers for someone who’s supposed to still be alive, too.
And because I have my own driver’s license, there’s really no need to force her to tag along when I’m in town and can make a stop at the cemetery with my mother, who’s smarter and stronger than I ever gave her credit for. Because she knew that I didn’t understand and was glad for it. And she was so very devastated when I finally did.
I don’t want my daughter to know what that feels like. So I won’t say anything when she refers to her grandfather as “your dad.”
My mother’s father and my father’s mother both died years before I was born. I don’t call them “Grandma” or “Grandpa,” but I do refer to them as my grandmother and my grandfather in conversation. I’ve seen my grandfather’s grave, but not my grandmother’s, but it was never an obligatory trip.
Still, from stories I have heard from my parents and family members, I often feel as if I did know them. Sometimes, I feel like they’re watching me from “the other side.” I have a lot in common with my grandmother, even though I never knew her. I guess I feel like, just because I didn’t know them doesn’t make them any less my family. But I guess I can see how someone would feel that way.
Last year, I was sound asleep when I felt something tap my ankles and I woke up feeling as if someone were standing over the bed looking at me. No one was there. I posted about it on Facebook and my mother saw it and told me that’s how my grandfather used to wake her up in the morning.
I hope you can someday feel that connection to these people who are responsible for your very life, though. It’s a comforting feeling.
Oh this was fun, cute and very neat-o! Amazing how all of our past “mistakes” lead us to the path we are on now. God is good!!
Thank you for reading and commenting. Somehow, the whole thing is a lot more powerful to me after seeing it here, alondside so many other wonderfully written Clicks.
My father did let me know he was there after he passed away. And he was there for my daughter. I know he was.
And thank you, Leslee, for the chance to share my story on your site. I truly appreciate it.
Love it. I’m lucky enough to still have both of my parents, and I am thankful for that.