My Grandmother

My grandmother was one of the most manipulative and difficult people I have ever met.  People chuckle knowingly when I say this, I think because they picture some kind of Archie Bunker-grumpy-but-full-of-character type.  They think I'm being hyperbolic or humorous.

They do not understand.

My grandmother would offer you condescending praise to your face and then cut your feet out from under you with horrifying criticism a minute later.  She would say vicious things about you behind your back and then deny them vehemently when accused; she would turn the words back around on you as if you were the one who did the offending.

My grandmother was despicably narcissistic.  She dominated conversations and belittled everyone she encountered.  She might ask you questions about yourself, but only as a means to turn back to her own stories, or to gather ammunition with which she would shoot you later.  She only heard what she wanted to hear, and had the memory of an elephant.  She would hold something you said as a fourteen-year-old against you for the rest of your life.  She really didn't care if she hurt you.  She hated children because they were boring.

My grandmother used money to own people.  She would hold out sparkly, shiny things that you needed or wanted very badly, but only in exchange for behavior or time, as dictated by her.  She would give things and then take them back, or criticize how you used them, or berate you if you gave them away.  She created toxic forms of emotional slavery and guilt.

My grandmother was racist, classist, and homophobic.  She used tips to control waiters, and was unconscionably rude to them and other people she considered "help."  Going out with her was a lesson in mortification.  She overpaid for items and handed out one-hundred-dollar bills, but if you got one of those payments, it meant you were indebted to her, and she never forgot a debt.  If you defaulted, it was because you were a stupid asshole/Chinese/a dumb girl/a Jew/naive/retarded.

My grandmother drove away almost everyone who loved her.  She did not know how to show love herself in a way that made any sense.  She scarred most of my family in ways they struggle to overcome.

I feared my grandmother for most of my life.  I was also embarrassed by her.  And she made me angry a lot of the time.  I left Boise right after college because I worried if I became a teacher here she would show up to my classes or be in my boss's office, manipulating and controlling and ruining my life.  I wanted independence more than anything, and so I left.

She hated me for leaving, for a long time.

When we moved back here last May, the grandmother I knew my whole life wasn't there anymore.  In her place was a worn out old lady, slowly dying.  The racism, controlling behavior, and narcissism were still on auto-pilot, for sure.  But there was also a simplicity, a sweetness, a reversion to child-joy that existed alongside that old self.

I would come in her room to find her sleeping, and gently rub her hand until she woke up.  She would smile like there was nothing better in the world than finding me standing there.  She wanted nothing more than company.  She wanted to know about me and my family.  She laughed a lot, at herself and the world, and not in a mean way.  Her mind was going, thank God, and in its place I had a glimpse of who she might have been had she not been angry every day of her life.

Yesterday, my uncle went to check on her and found her on the floor, beside her bed.  She had fallen, and she died there, on the floor.

My grandmother was hilariously funny, a performer, a clown, an actress, a singer of great talent.  She showed up at many of my volleyball and basketball games as a kid, with no warning, and belted out the "Star Spangled Banner."  She had a giant laugh, unmistakable, infectious.  She was magnetic, and you wanted to hear her stories.  She traveled all over the world.  She had incredible adventures.  She sang "Sunrise, Sunset" at my wedding and, on one trip we took to Buffalo when I was an awkward junior high teen, she got into a crowing contest with Howie Mandel at a hotel breakfast buffet.  She won.

My grandmother was generous.  She always gave me money, every time I visited.  She loaned everyone in my family money, or gave them money.  She made sure we had money for cars, houses, and schools, or to pay off debt.  She paid for me to go to Washington, D.C., when I was in junior high, and visited me in Europe when I was studying abroad.  She took me and a friend on a hellacious but incredible road trip to Disneyland when I was a kid.  She paid for my Costco and AAA memberships for years.  She took me with her to McCall to visit friends most summers when I was growing up, and my happiest childhood memories are from there.  She bought my girls Kindles for Christmas a few years back, and was constantly trying to write them checks, even when she was low on money herself, near the end.

My grandmother was an iconoclast.  She was shaped like a blueberry, had riotous black ringlets that framed her face, and she dressed like a gypsy cowboy in polyester bendovers, decorated with reams of gold necklaces and beads.  She wore wigs.  She always looked like she had a Halloween costume on, but those were just her normal clothes:  muumuus and flip flops.  She had a membership at the country club, and would show up there, loud and bossy, doing belly flops off the diving board just to shock all the entitled assholes who liked their world quiet and tidy.  She hated men who thought they could tell her what to do.  She worked as a miner, living out of her camper, for a long spell in the seventies.  I think those were probably the happiest times of her life.

My grandmother was an entrepreneur.  She loved to say that she was fired at the only job she ever got.  She used an inheritance to buy properties in Boise, and owned a motel, and a medicine delivery business.  She took care of all this like her life depended on it, and had a strong work ethic.  She also partied very, very hard and made all sorts of exciting and painful mistakes.

My grandmother got to die in her house, like she wanted.  On Sunday, she had brunch at her country club, with some friends, and then had a drive around the North End, the most important place in the world to her.  I like to think that she died soon after, on my daughter's birthday--life and death seeming to always come and go together--and that she didn't suffer, but lay unconscious while the last difficult breaths left.

That's what I'll choose to believe.