My grandmother was in town today. Actually, yesterday as well, but she didn’t call me to tell me this until about 9pm last night. I love my grandmother, but whenever she comes to Denver, she stays with my Aunt. (My head hurts, so I’m typing this with my eyes closed and my head back on my chair to rest, sorry for any typos.)
On September 24th, it will be six years since the last time I set foot in my Aunt’s house. I was coming to Denver for a job interview. I am (was) a small town boy, and I didn’t really know my way around anywhere, certainly not around Denver, so the plan was to crash at my Aunt’s house, then get directions to the interview the next day. I would drive to Denver on my lonesome, which was not really a problem — I’d done the long solo roadtrip before. Piece of cake.
Long, boring story made short: I got to her house, very tired, declined to eat because I was both sick and nervous about the interview the next day, messed with a problem she had with her computer (because it was godawful slow and old), dozed off on the couch, which caused her to freak out and throw my stuff out on the sidewalk, forcing me to find a hotel at 10pm at night in the middle of a big city I’d never been in alone.
I had 50 bucks to my name at the time (earmarked for gas),. I ended up in a really bad part of town (I didn’t know there were better parts at the time), in a rat-trap hotel with only one outgoing phone line and cracks in the door that let the streetlight in. I was terrified. It was, simply put, one of the most trust-shattering experiences of my life.
That was six years ago. My aunt’s dire predictions of my imminent failure in the “real business world” have failed ENTIRELY to come true. I do not miss her, I have nothing in common with her son, and I don’t want her around my family. I don’t regret freezing her out of my life. Except, right now, she’s getting chemo treatment for cancer, and I’m her only relative besides her son within 10 hours, and I still haven’t gone over there.
“My god, Doyce” you gasp, “what the hell are you thinking? The woman’s sick! Have some compassion!” Well kids, even given these very unusual circumstances, this one thought stays with me: if I were to go to her house, and step through that door, she will believe herself the moral victor. She will think to herself “I won. I was always right, and this proves it.”
Please understand (or at least try to, because I know how it sounds) that this is not about me being right. I don’t want anyone to tell me I’m right. I don’t care about any of the right and wrong of it any more, but if she were to request my presense in her house from her Death Bed, I would deny her because what she wants me to say, implicitly or directly, is a lie. She threw her family onto the street because she FELT like it. She wasn’t right, and I won’t let her think that she was. Want me to visit her in a hospital room? Fine. I’ll be there with a big-ass bouquet and read her Whitman all night, because I:00 AM not heartless and I:00 AM willing to do that thing.
That chain-letter forwarding ‘Christian’ told me to get the fuck out of her house six years ago, and said it was a mistake that I’d ever come to Denver, and told me I would fail. Well, that’s the way she wanted it: I will never enter her house, and as far as she can be concerned, I’m not in Denver.
So.
[Waits for the stampede of enraged people leaving the site as they realize they hate me.]
Okay, for the two of you who’re left, my grandma was in town. I love my Grandma Floy, and Jackie loves my Grandma Floy (and I’m pretty sure Grandma likes Jackie more than she likes me). She hadn’t seen the house yet, so I took a half day off, cleaned the house, went and picked her up, drove her over, showed her the house, the neighborhood, our plans for the front yard, Justin’s school, my workplace, and (don’t ask) the local supermarket. We talked about the Boy, Denver, Jackie’s college stuff, my job and how the Attack will affect it, and we talked about the possibilities of the upcoming war/conflict/whatever. She is worried, because all her grandkids (myself included) are in the range of ‘draftable’ adults, and in her experience, War means People Get Drafted.
I talked about the reserves being called up, and that I didn’t think this would turn into the sort of war where you sent in 400,000 infantry, you sent in 400 elite infantry with pictures of the people to kill. She seemed to get the idea that we’re really not going to be at war with a country, but I don’t know if the whole thing helped.
This post didn’t really go the way I wanted it to go. I’m not proud of how I feel or how I act in this situation. I’m not. But I’m tired of not talking about it: I removed a member of my extended family from my life, at their request, now they are sick, so concensus view is that it all should just go away. I disagree. That decision is on me, I suppose. My burden to bear, my karma to work off, and I’m okay with that.
But I think it makes my grandma sad.
