The title is ripped from the eulogy that my mom wrote for my grandma. Mom wrote it in a moment of silence. Just me and her, lying in a hide-a-bed, she with her hands behind her head, staring at the ceiling, me sitting next to her with a notebook in my lap writing every word she said.
I was opposed to my mother giving her own mother's eulogy.
Too hard, I said. Too raw.
Not okay for you to stand up there in front of a room full of family and friends, of which there are hundreds, and eulogize your own mother.
She acknowledged my discomfort then summarily dismissed it.
"I have to do this for my mother," she said. "One day you will..."
Her voice trailed off. "This is just something that I have to do. And I need you to help me."
The whole family was at grandma's house yet it still felt incredibly empty.
I wanted everyone to leave. It was like my grandma hadn't died but was just playing a morbid version of hide and seek. I didn't sleep at all. I just kept waiting for everyone to leave, thinking about everything I had to tell her about once she came back.
Then- oh, right, goddamnit. She's not coming back.
And this can't be happening.
But it was, and I could barely document it at all.
Grandma and I had carved out a pretty good life with each other. She was just starting to come out of the withered shell that encapsulated her after grandpa died, and I was just starting to come out of my closet that had been so suffocating.
She didn't like my lifestyle and wanted to change it. No, not the gay thing, the staying up all night drinking, sleeping until the afternoon, eating junk food for a few hours, then going out and starting a new party as soon as I wished her a good night and sweet dreams. "You got your days and nights screwed up, kid," she'd say.
I would be drinking my "morning" coffee while I made her dinner. "I want you to know," I'd tell her, "I do know you've been putting the decaf coffee in the regular coffee can."
She'd scoff. "No I did not."
"Gram, I've got a pounding headache. I get one every hour after I wake up and that's how I know I'm drinking decaf. I have to pound two sodas then take a Tylenol to get rid of it, so whatever health benefits you think I'm getting from this switcheroo is being sabatoged by caffeine withdrawals."
Shrug. "Maybe you should get up in the morning, kid, and have regular coffee with the rest of us?"
Then we'd smile at each other and talk about her day and my night. She never judged me. She knew all of my friends and all of their personalities. She even loved them.
One day after I made dinner she said she was going to go take a nap. I stayed downstairs listening for two things:
A) The wind chimes that hung above my bed. We had put fishing line through the vent in Grandma's bedroom floor and snaked it to the vent above my bed in the basement, where the wind chime hung. When Gram needed something from me, she'd pull on the cord a few times, alerting me to her needs, and I'd go upstairs to see what she needed.
B) The phone to ring. I had a gig to play at a bar downtown and was waiting to be picked up for it.
I was expecting both to happen within the hour, but neither did.
I wish I had a good reason for why neither thing happening didn't make me nervous or curious. It just didn't. I was down in the basement, looking at old pictures, listening to my favorite songs, planning out what I wanted to play that night.
Then there was a pounding at the door and I ran upstairs. It was my ride. "I've been trying to call for an hour," he said. "What the fuck?"
"That's weird. The phone never rang."
He told me to hurry and get my shit together so I did, then told him to hold on so I could tell my grandma goodnight.
I entered her room and the whole world changed. She was gone.
That's just how it happened.
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That was fifteen years ago yesterday.
Fifteen years.
It's hard for me to grasp that it's been that long since I've seen my grandma smile at me. I didn't even realize it has been that long until last night. I was laying in bed watching a movie (Nebraska, which I recommend), doing the math.
It was '99 when she died. It's 2014 now. I actually had to pull out my calculator to make sure I was correct. Fifteen years. And when the calculator confirmed that, I started thinking that maybe I had the year of her death wrong.
Then I remembered my mom and I arguing about Y2K. "She did this on purpose," mom said. "She thought the world was going to end over Y2K and she didn't want to be alive to see it."
"No, she didn't, mom!" I insisted. "She thought Y2K was a scam!"
"That's what she told you. But, trust me. I know my mother. She was scared."
I huffed. "Well, I know my grandmother, and she wasn't scared of it."
I'm sure we were both right in our own little ways. Grandma wasn't easy to pin down. She was everything to everyone, and yet she was always true to herself.
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I've written about my grandma hundreds of times, but never in any way that I wanted to share. Then yesterday, while trying to sort through a bunch of crap, I once again stumbled across and envelope with my dad's name and my name written in Grandma's handwriting. Inside the envelope is a list of all of our outstanding monetary debts to her.
This note of debt is hilarious for three reasons:
A) It was one of a dozen that Grandma had written and stored in the fireproof safe that wasn't to be opened until her death, when none of us could ever repay her.
B) Everyone else had their own envelope except for me. My grandma considered all of my debts to truly be the fault of my father, because if he had been a better father she wouldn't have had to bail me out of jail so many times.
C) My dad had actually paid her back for all those times she bailed me out and/or paid my fines.
(As an aside, I owed some fines to the City of Pocatello when I was 17 or 18, and Grandma took me to the courthouse to pay for them. We were a little nervous because I was a couple days late. The man in line in front of us was one day late and the clerk told him that he had a warrant for his arrest for failure to pay, and within a few seconds a few cops were handcuffing him.
Grandma and I watched this scene unfold and we both gulped and looked at each other nervously. Then she nudged me and said in a whisper, "If they try to do that to you, act like you've passed out. When you go to the floor and they go to cuff you, I'll hit them over the head with my cane."
I giggled then looked back at Gram's huge brown eyes and realized she was serious. "Grandma," I whispered, "The last thing we need is for you to get arrested for assaulting an officer. We can't do that!"
Gram shrugged. "I'm a lonely old woman, what are they going to do to me? Besides, I am billing your dad for all of this, anyway.")
December 6th has always been a sort of Memorial Day in my family. My mom and brother and I, none of us really know what to do with it. We weren't prepared; it came out of the blue. Mom was too young to no longer have her own mother. Bro and I were too young to no longer have our grandma.
So we always stumble through the day, not really sure what to do.
Then, the next day, bro and I text each other to say "I love you, hope you're doing OK," and mom calls us to tell us that she loves us tons, and sorry for not calling yesterday, it was just, you know....
When my mom called this morning, I apologized for not calling her yesterday. "I know, honey. I wanted to call you, too, but I know... I mean, you know."
We never can muster the words.
For the first few years my brother used to send me pamphlets on grief. The whole family was worried about me because I was the one who found her. I was the one she was always most fond of, of all of her grandchildren, and everyone knew it.
And I didn't show a whole lot of emotion about it, really. I knew then that if I cried the tears would never stop flowing. I tried so hard not to cry that I ended up in a psych ward for a couple weeks. And I still didn't cry.
But for some reason, this year I want to cry. Because 15 years is a really long time to not have your best fucking friend.
And because everything that has happened between the day I was twenty and found grandma dead to the day I'm thirty-five and doing everything I can to summon her strength unto me, all the milestones that she wasn't there for leave a huge gaping hole in my soul.
Fifteen years. Fifteen goddamn years without the woman who was so strong that she did command the world at her hand; the universe caved to her will. And yet, she still cried every time we watched Dumbo.
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I learned a lot from my grandma. Mostly, I learned that this world is going to do everything it can to kick the shit out of you, but you have to fight back. You have to have a set of values, you have to have a strong inner core and you have to be ready to stand the fuck up when this world is trying to kill you.
My grandma was a single mom at 15 years old in the '50's. She didn't survive by luck. She survived because she was tenacious as fuck and she would accept no less from the people that she loved.
The same woman who would dry my tears, hold me to her chest, and cry with me was the same woman who, after my tears were dry, would say "Now go out there and kick some ass."
She never passed up the opportunity to comfort someone, but she never let them wallow in self-pity, either.
That's why when, less than four months after we lost my grandpa ("How can such a big man be reduced to such a small box?" my grandma asked upon receiving his urn) my grandma invited me for a road trip to Vegas, I couldn't say no.
I suppose most kids would scoff at spending their 18th birthday with their grandma.
Me? It didn't matter. It was the first time I saw a smile on Gram's face since the day grandpa left the world.
And it is what welcomes me home every day.
Grandma is the one with the beautiful eyes and brilliant smile.
I miss that woman. I don't believe in a lot, but I believe she's never left my side.
And yesterday was one of the hardest days of my life.