Everyone Has a Crying Child Inside

I can’t pretend I didn’t once wish my Dad’s parents had liked me or spent time getting to know me. I did. In college, I realized how special a grandparent and grandchild relationship could be because I had friends who had such relationships. I’d watch tiny, white-haired spinsters totter around on the arms of my friends, hear them share stories with affection, and see the way a family would dote on such a fragile vessel of history. In particular, my friend Laurie had a great Grandma who would write her letters once a month. Laurie was sweet enough to read her letters aloud to me, since I pestered her and said I wanted to adopt surrogate grandparents.

With time maturity replaced bitterness. Instead of waiting for my grandparents to come around and see what a cool chick I was, I decided to seek them out, see what cool people they had been and had become. On trips home from school, if we went to visit them, I’d talk more. I’d ask my dad’s mother about a knitting project or a cross word she was doing. After watching Saving Private Ryan, I wrote my grandfather a letter to thank him for his service in WWII and to ask if he’d share any stories. He wrote me my first and only letter from him. The next time I went home, my dad gave me some medals and other small things that his dad had asked him to give to me.

All this “bonding” didn’t happen over night. It was a span of 3-4 years. And in my senior year of college, while I was studying abroad in England, my dad’s mother died. My grandmother had diabetes and did not take care of herself. She died from complications. I was sleeping when someone came to wake me up for a phone call. Half asleep, my mom told me Grammy was dead. I asked when it happened, when was the funeral? And it had all already happened. There was an ocean between us, I was in my first relationship with a Brit, 9/11 had just happened, and 5 hour time lap distorted reality to me. I hung up the phone and went back to sleep. I don’t even think I realized she was dead because a week later my mom had to tell me again. My grandfather died about 3 years later. He had a heartache.

I’m ashamed to not clearly remember the dates…is detachment any kind of an excuse? What strikes me as even odder is that I lament their deaths more now then I did at the time of the real events. There are instants like the yarn/knitting one where I feel the loss of these two people, the loss of a potential relationship, so keenly I get tears in my eyes. It is not impossible to miss people I didn’t know because the loss is all wrapped up in hopes, dreams, ideals…

There is no remorse in my heart for not trying harder or blame that they did not try sooner. I’m happy at the end we stopped hiding behind the past and finally saw each other as living people, people with feelings, people that just maybe, we could care about. There are a few things I will miss though – my grandfather was going to teach me how to carve. He was really gifted. The stories – these two people lived in a different era than I did and lived in Manchester their whole lives! They were a warehouse of stories. Their basement – it was walled with stones and seemed like a castle dungeon, but there was a MESS of stuff to look through, including his workshop area that had a MILLION tiny drawers to hold screws, nails, bits, and pieces. My grandmother’s craft stuff – I just bought a 5 pack of double sided knitting needles for $15 dollars!!! (was it because they are bamboo?)

I guess this is just a way for me to acknowledge that I somehow grew to love these two people. Over all the obstacles and in some strange way that was entirely different than the cuddling grandma’s I saw at college, my dad’s parents were my Grandparents after all.

John Edward

February 3, 1928 - 2003

Francis Veronica

August, 1932 - 2001

ps. I had to call my dad to learn the dates and my grandmother's middle name. I didn't know it was Veronica...kind of spicy for the old lady she turned out to be. There's probably a lot I don't know about her and my grandfather.