IrenicEmbers

I talk about my grandfather a lot because good or bad he meant the world to me; if anyone I had ever wanted to please, it would have been him. My grandmother on the other hand, I always had a love/hate relationship with her.

One memory that I had that wasn't so much mine as much as it was everyone else's, was when I was younger, tired of trying to tame my hair, she took me one day and cut it all off. That didn't go down so well with my parents. The other thing she didn't like about me was my weight, it was a constant battle with her. I was never thin enough for her, yet she was the one that fed me my entire life.

Go figure.

I didn't necessarily hate her, I dislike what she did to my father, in that she never allowed him to be a man, to take personal responsibilities for his actions. His 30 year long cheating on my mother was something that my grandmother always knew about and forgave him for. If only once she had admonished him, maybe I wouldn't feel so conflicted now.

She passed away today. It wasn't sudden, it was expected and yet the shock of finality of death ... the harshness of it, makes me angry and makes me more depressed than I normally am. Last week, my aunt made my cousin call me and put my grandmother on the phone. I asked her a few simple questions, she answered, she was weak, she couldn't talk long. There was so much that I wanted to say, so much that I wish I could have said.

In the end, I didn't because who knows, I may see her again one day.