Dear Grandma

sorry you're dead

It’s so strange to write to you like this after all this time. Mostly because you’ve gone and died, but also the whole english thing, and computers. I’ve really gone to some great lengths to make sure you never get this.

Could you imagine? Actually telling people how you really feel, how much you’ve missed them, how they’ve touched your life, to their face.. while they’re still alive. No no no, ridiculous, absurd, too much, much too much. Better to wait till they’re dead, or write it somewhere they’ll never see, in a language they’ll never learn. Wouldn’t want it going to their head, you know? And it would too, with you, you know? That’s not a dig, I just mean you had a big personality, so much ego, buckets of pride.

Who could blame you though? Raising three kids on your own. Something something, they mostly made it out alright, or is it ‘made it out mostly alright’?

Mom

Question I never got to ask you: how weird was it that Dad married someone with your name, that’s gotta be weird right? At that point you already had a reputation for not liking any girl he had brought over (what was that about anyway?), now he introduces Mom to you and I guess you have to say “well… I don’t hate her name.” I’m sure there was more to it, but that was the start of something that would become enough for you to bless their marriage. What’s in a name anyway. Was it because he was the youngest? The something-est? No need to answer (joke).

That’s a lot of words to say: thanks for uhh.. tolerating(?) Mom. I guess you two always had a lukewarm relationship, which (for everyone involved) was considered a massive success. Mom and Dad have always been pretty easy on me when it comes to partners, maybe I have you to thank for that?

Summer

Do you remember the summer I spent with you when you taught me how to ride a bike?—thanks again by the way, there are going to be a lot of thanks— That summer I’d play with this kid in the village, Petya I think? He was only there that one summer and one of the only kids around my age in the village that year. Day after day we’d play in that open field between the buildings, throwing rocks at trees, riding bikes, typical awesome kid stuff. We tried to make a bow and arrow once with a stick and a piece of string we found, when that failed we resorted to throwing sticks at each other from behind bushes. Truly inspirations to our ancestors. Anyway, that’s not the point of the story.

We’d spent so much time together that I’d picked up some of his mannerisms. When the parents came to get me at the end of the summer they didn’t really notice anything weird. I’d gotten a tan, learned how to ride a bike, they got some rest and time to themselves (*cough*), you got to spend time with your best and favorite grandson, a sweet deal for everyone involved.

A couple days later, we’re back home and sitting around the kitchen table and this fly is buzzing around, buzz buzz, won’t go away, I’m shooing it away from my plate, it’s still buzzing around, I’m annoyed, everyone is annoyed, fly doesn’t care. It’s at this point that I decide it’s about time that I let this fly know how I feel about it. With my newly expanded vocabulary (thanks Petya), my five year old lips begin to cuss out this fly, telling this ‘son of a bitch’ of a fly to go ‘fuck off back to the hell it came from’, among other things. Now… my parents are very understanding people, you know them well, but there’s nothing that could have prepared them for that. The shock and confusion overwhelmed and paralyzed them, they couldn’t understand what was going on, they were so dumbstruck that they had no room for anger. Where had I learned such words? When? How? What had happened to their sweet innocent child? Though if I’m being honest, and if you’ll allow me a smidge of retrospective pride, I think it was the poetry of the profanity that disturbed them the most, it was something about the ease with which the words were strung together, like that of a seasoned dockworker that uses ‘fuck’ as a comma or a breath. All that’s to say, they eventually had a really good laugh and learned something something ‘it takes a village’. I know they gave you a hard time about it for years, but you should know how much they loved telling that story.

Overdue goodbye

It’s been years since you died, and it took you dying for me to learn that I don’t handle that well. Who does? What does it even mean to ‘handle death well’? Like there’s some idea of death that I’ve conceived from movies and books and other people, of how to cope with you dying. Not just dying, but dying thousands of miles away, years since I’d seen you, never till I see you again.

Everyone has grandparents and (as you well know) they die and it was my turn to live that out. It felt like a play, from the second mezzanine, and it was my turn to play the part of the consoled rather than the consoling. I’m on stage, trying to remember how it all works, what my lines are, where to stand, who I’m talking to, what this is all about. Is this rehearsal? dress? the real deal? it’s so hard to tell, the lights are too bright and I can’t see an audience. Also, how awkward would it be to walk off stage? That just seems rude, what’s everyone else supposed to do?

Time passed and after a while, it all started to feel real again, I couldn’t see the stage anymore and most days I forget it’s even there.

So long and thanks for everything,

Your humblest grandson

P.S. Please don’t write back, I have a terrible fear of zombies.