Can't Figure Out What to Feel
Well. My grandfather died yesterday afternoon. He was 94, and had head & neck cancer. He'd had part of his jaw removed and then radiation treatment, and he couldn't swallow and had to get sustenance through a tube into his belly. He still stuck around for 2 or 3 years after all that, cursed with some kind of genetic physical vigor (his mother lived to 99).
The thing is, he was kind of a bastard. Well. He was actually a real shit. He beat his children and his wife (this I only learned a couple years ago, actually). He was smug and "Christian" and a steely disciplinarian. He was also soft-spoken and sanctimonious and butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Everybody in town thought what a gentleman he was, how charming. He never drank alcohol (somebody in his family--I forget the exact story--had died in a boating accident, stinking drunk). He ran a men's clothing store in a Vernon Hills, a small town in Minnesota, until he retired. His wife spent her life in the kitchen. They had 4 children.
My dad was a kind of shy, studious, quiet kid. My grandpa wanted him to play football, and forced him to, even though my dad would cry and shake and throw up before games. Finally my dad's younger brother was old enough to play football and actually enjoyed it, which finally let my dad off the hook.
There's a bunch of other stuff, too. For some secret reason I still don't know, I was persona non grata with him starting when I was 12, starting at one certain visit. When my dad remarried a few years later, apparently my grandparents asked that I not be invited to the night-before restaurant dinner. (My dad's always been a dutiful son, but he did draw the line at that, and I was of course included.) When I was married (at age 31), I sent my grandparents an invitation (out of respect to my dad), and got back the response card, in my grandfather's handwriting: Name: Mr. & Mrs. Carl Bonner, Number of Persons Attending: 0. That was it. Ooo-kay. (Actually, my grandma sent me a nice card a couple weeks later.)
The thing is, I then went to his 90th birthday party, four years later, and the old coot greeted me like I was his long-lost favorite and made a point of taking me down to see all the old family photographs hanging in the downstairs hall, and walking me through every one, including the ones of my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. He told me the story of how he met and courted my grandmother, which I'd never heard. He was making up for lost time. It felt a bit weird, but by that time I'd been estranged from him for so long, he no longer even really felt so much like a relative. I felt myself slip into "geriatrics clinic nurse" mode and was warm and polite and deferential and... professional. And from what felt like a great distance, I could just look at him and feel sorry for him. I could easily be guessing wrong, but it seemed to me at the time that he had realized at this late date that he had screwed up this whole living thing pretty badly, that he was trying to make his peace.
Over the course of that weekend, I watched him try to reach out to his children, who were all there, but of course, it was just too little too late. They were too scarred by him, there's too much history. They didn't trust him an inch, emotionally.
So oddly enough, having been spared a painful history with him because he had not deigned to see me for 19 years (except unavoidably at my dad's wedding, and then later my brother's first wedding), I was the one best able to connect with him. And he just seemed so pathetic and old to me, any anger I had at him over his treatment of my dad and his siblings, and my grandma, and me, just kind of oozed away.
So that was my grandfather. I saw him once more, on the occasion of my grandma's 90th birthday last summer, but I was mostly chasing a very mobile but not very cooperative Cassie, so didn't get to talk to him too much. I knew that he and my grandmother had done a lot of travelling when their health still permitted, so I asked him, when conversation lagged (and conversation always lags at gatherings of that family), about where they'd gone, and what moments he remembered, which places were his favorites. He lit up and talked about Peru. And some place in Asia--I don't even remember. I was too distracted by how happy and animated he was talking about it, when most of the time he looked pretty stony and miserable.
And now he's dead. And I don't know what to feel or to think. I hope that my grandmother is okay. Taking care of her family, and then just him, has kind of always been her raison d'etre, you know? But beyond that, I just feel strangely oppressed by the news of his death. It doesn't make so much sense. After all, he was in his mid-90s, and he'd been suffering. Besides which, he was for much of his life a real sonofabitch. Maybe I just don't want to admit that sometimes it's too late for redemption. Sometimes (as on Seinfeld) the story doesn't end with learning and hugging.
I'm going to go to his funeral. It's this coming Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes.
The thing is, he was kind of a bastard. Well. He was actually a real shit. He beat his children and his wife (this I only learned a couple years ago, actually). He was smug and "Christian" and a steely disciplinarian. He was also soft-spoken and sanctimonious and butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Everybody in town thought what a gentleman he was, how charming. He never drank alcohol (somebody in his family--I forget the exact story--had died in a boating accident, stinking drunk). He ran a men's clothing store in a Vernon Hills, a small town in Minnesota, until he retired. His wife spent her life in the kitchen. They had 4 children.
My dad was a kind of shy, studious, quiet kid. My grandpa wanted him to play football, and forced him to, even though my dad would cry and shake and throw up before games. Finally my dad's younger brother was old enough to play football and actually enjoyed it, which finally let my dad off the hook.
There's a bunch of other stuff, too. For some secret reason I still don't know, I was persona non grata with him starting when I was 12, starting at one certain visit. When my dad remarried a few years later, apparently my grandparents asked that I not be invited to the night-before restaurant dinner. (My dad's always been a dutiful son, but he did draw the line at that, and I was of course included.) When I was married (at age 31), I sent my grandparents an invitation (out of respect to my dad), and got back the response card, in my grandfather's handwriting: Name: Mr. & Mrs. Carl Bonner, Number of Persons Attending: 0. That was it. Ooo-kay. (Actually, my grandma sent me a nice card a couple weeks later.)
The thing is, I then went to his 90th birthday party, four years later, and the old coot greeted me like I was his long-lost favorite and made a point of taking me down to see all the old family photographs hanging in the downstairs hall, and walking me through every one, including the ones of my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents. He told me the story of how he met and courted my grandmother, which I'd never heard. He was making up for lost time. It felt a bit weird, but by that time I'd been estranged from him for so long, he no longer even really felt so much like a relative. I felt myself slip into "geriatrics clinic nurse" mode and was warm and polite and deferential and... professional. And from what felt like a great distance, I could just look at him and feel sorry for him. I could easily be guessing wrong, but it seemed to me at the time that he had realized at this late date that he had screwed up this whole living thing pretty badly, that he was trying to make his peace.
Over the course of that weekend, I watched him try to reach out to his children, who were all there, but of course, it was just too little too late. They were too scarred by him, there's too much history. They didn't trust him an inch, emotionally.
So oddly enough, having been spared a painful history with him because he had not deigned to see me for 19 years (except unavoidably at my dad's wedding, and then later my brother's first wedding), I was the one best able to connect with him. And he just seemed so pathetic and old to me, any anger I had at him over his treatment of my dad and his siblings, and my grandma, and me, just kind of oozed away.
So that was my grandfather. I saw him once more, on the occasion of my grandma's 90th birthday last summer, but I was mostly chasing a very mobile but not very cooperative Cassie, so didn't get to talk to him too much. I knew that he and my grandmother had done a lot of travelling when their health still permitted, so I asked him, when conversation lagged (and conversation always lags at gatherings of that family), about where they'd gone, and what moments he remembered, which places were his favorites. He lit up and talked about Peru. And some place in Asia--I don't even remember. I was too distracted by how happy and animated he was talking about it, when most of the time he looked pretty stony and miserable.
And now he's dead. And I don't know what to feel or to think. I hope that my grandmother is okay. Taking care of her family, and then just him, has kind of always been her raison d'etre, you know? But beyond that, I just feel strangely oppressed by the news of his death. It doesn't make so much sense. After all, he was in his mid-90s, and he'd been suffering. Besides which, he was for much of his life a real sonofabitch. Maybe I just don't want to admit that sometimes it's too late for redemption. Sometimes (as on Seinfeld) the story doesn't end with learning and hugging.
I'm going to go to his funeral. It's this coming Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes.
posted by Rosie Bonner at 3:39 PM
2 Comments:
I just "tagged" you with a quiz, "Sticky Books."
When my father's parents died I just felt empty. Like they had made their lives and now their lives were over, and they were strangers to me. What a wry little twist that your geriatrics work would serve you so well, give you the detachment to treat this man kindly. Too bad your grandmother's liberation didn't come till she was 90 years old. (??)
--Angela
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