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Everytime I go and see my Grandparents, it's like life slamming me in the face with a huge board with "LIFE IS CRUEL" carved into it.
My grandparents are the 2 most important adult figures in my life. My grandfather is the only father I've ever had, and my Grandmother (as insane as she is) has always supported me in everyway imaginable. She took me in as a daughter when I was born, and she was 61 years old trying to run a dairy farm. However, their lives now, are so incredibly unfair and depressing. It's hard for me to sit in their sad living room and smile with them for a few hours. It seems that no matter how hard you work, or how wonderful of a person you are, in the end your life will be torture.
My grandmother just keeps getting smaller and smaller. She's become severely anorexic. It didnt used to be like this. She used to be strong as an ox, eating square healthy meals and lecturning everyone who didnt. Both my mother and me have tried everything to help her realize that despite the fact that she takes care of herself, not eating makes that all sort of not count. I talked with her about it yesterday, and she started laughing and shook her head, "You just dont understand. I am not afraid of getting fat. I am not afraid of eating myself to death. When you get old, everything you eat tastes like clay, and it all hurts your body. You get tired of cooking, because there really isnt a point anymore. Is there a point to anything that we do for ourselves?" Ouch. Ouchouchouch. What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? She looks down at me with her grey glass eyes and I can see her thoughts come scrolling across her forehead, Yes love, you will be here soon enough. Then you will understand. She pats my hair and tells me she likes it, even though I know she doesnt. Just like she told me she thought my labret ring was "different" when she really wanted to tear it out of my face. When I start to tell her about apartments in SF and the figures, she puts up a hand and shakes her head, "You just get what you need. You just make sure you live in a comfortable place with plenty of windows." She tears a cheque out of her chequebook, signs it, and hands it to me, "You just do what you need. Your Opa and me will help you." I tell her that once I'm settled in, she can come spend the weekend with me. She smiles and nods her head, "That would be lovely." The wallpaper cracks, peeling into long strips down the walls. The carpet curls up, revealing huge black holes that suck the teakwood furniature and macrame into the ground. The abyss of having nothing left to look forward too. The terrible joke that life is.
My grandfather is barely a shadow of a human being. He spends his days laying in on his bed, dull eyes fixated on the TV, towel draped around his neck to catch drool. He calls my mother Glaydis (his sister) and me Vindie (my mother) and at times doesnt know who anyone is and will just sit terrifed with his hands shaking. For awhile, when I would come visit I would play piano for him, and he would call for "The Blue Bells of Scotland" over and over. And I would be happy to play the tune over and over. But now he cant get into the living room to sit by the piano. He just lays in bed watching channel 10 until he falls asleep.
There were times when him and me would sit outside the ranch, him pointing to the peaches I was painting and tell me to SEE that peaches were every colour of the rainbow, and that I just had to SEE it. That cows have 2 eyelids, that if you wear a bandana around the back of your head while you work the panthers will see the pattern and think it's eyes and not attack you. His library of obscure books used to line the walls of his sitting room. Now they all sit in boxes in my uncles storage unit. The man who used to sing celtic folk songs while he bent wrought iron to make sculptures and fences, now gets bathed twice a week and cant chew solid food.
I should spend as much time with them as possible. My grandmother tells me that I am her daughter, that she raised me to be strong like she was. Like she was. My grandmother has always been strong. You cant put a roof on a house when youre 74 unless you're strong. You cant shoot a rattlesnake point blank in the face from 2 feet away unless youre strong. You cant drive a huge semi truck halfway across California unless you are strong. My grandmother has done these things, and more. She has always been the strongest person I've ever known. But now, it's gone. Sitting inside her drab house with the lost-in-the-late-70's decour, she watches her husband die and waits for her friends and relatives to call her. Everytime I call her, she's a little kid again. So excited that I'm coming to visit! She sounds like she's won the lottery. It pains me. It pains me to think that that's how the great end up. My grandmother and grandfather have already died and are buried for eternity amoung their old paintings and photographs in a dillapidated apartment in the suburbs of Sacramento.
I visit them as often as I can. I show them photos I've taken, paintings that I've done. I tell her about my poems and how I love riding the train. I will bake bread with my grandmother, I will sit by my grandfather for hours watching the news. I like to tell myself that I make a difference, but I really dont. I like to say that I give back to them as much as they gave me, but I really dont. That would be impossible.
Even though I know that every life ends, why must those who mean the most, go the hardest? I just wish there was something me, or anybody, could do.
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