I don’t remember what my grandmother looked like when she
died. To be completely specific, I was not allowed to see what my grandmother
looked like at the time. I know that I was in grade school when she started to
forget things and get angry out of nowhere. She was always short-tempered and
impetuous, the kind of woman who would heat up a Lean Cuisine and then get so
caught up in an episode of St. Elsewhere that she’d end up feeding the whole
thing to Junior, her horrible little black Chihuahua. Normally I rather liked
Chihuahuas; they seemed a little more in control of themselves than the dopey,
galloping mutts that were always in residence at my house. But Junior had a
nervous sort of personality, and he smelled weird. Bubby had a blue shag carpet
all through the house and around the time she started to forget things, she’d
neglect to clean up the messes when Junior pooped or peed on the carpet,
ostensibly because she had also forgotten to take him out for a walk. It was
things like that, that stacked up, one on top of the other, to slowly and
quietly form a distinct problem that none of us saw coming.
In my memory it
feels as though it happened very fast – one day I had a beautiful weird
grandmother, the next day I was not permitted to see her and my mother cried
constantly, and the day after that, I was told to pick out something black for
her funeral. I don’t know how I feel about the fact that when I think about
her, the end flashes before me like fuzzy snapshots and all I’m left with is
the fact that she’s dead. I asked my mother about it and of course, she didn’t
want my brother and I to see her like that. She wanted us to remember her happy
and healthy, and she didn’t want us to know what it felt like to look into her
familiar wrinkly face and realize that she had no idea, none in the world, of
who we were.
I can’t imagine how that must feel. Looking at the person who
raised you, who taught you everything, who punished you and yelled at you and
came to every single school play and hugged you when boys broke up with you
only to have her look back at you like she would the unfriendly grocery store
clerk or crossing guard. I know you’re a person but that’s it. You aren’t
special to me, I have no allegiance to you, now please go away. I think perhaps that might have hurt me worse
than the black empty dent where the last years of her life should be in my
head. I think not knowing might be less awful. But it doesn’t change the thing I
hate most about all of it – I did not get to say goodbye to her.
Even if I had
when she was sick, it wouldn’t have meant anything. I think part of me wishes
that someone had come to our house with a telegram, long before anything
changed. I wish they would have come with a note that said, dear sir or madam,
I’m sorry to inform you that your mother/grandmother/friend is going to start
forgetting things, one by one, very soon, and in a couple of years you will
mean nothing to her and she will be incontinent and unable to chew or swallow
or even digest food. If there is anything you want to say to her before she is
inevitably and very slowly taken away from you, I insist that you do it
now. You’ll be glad you said goodbye
while it still means something to her, because very soon, even the mention of
your name will do nothing to bring her back.
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