A Love Letter To My Flawed, Complicated Grandparents
Grandparents are with us for a short time but they leave quite the lasting impression on us
At some point in our lives, most of us will undertake the massive task of reconciling love for family with the flaws we observe in them. By reflecting on my grandparents not only through my eyes, but also my mothers, I learned the power of judging others at their best. Family is more complicated than other relationships; but perhaps that’s a feature, not a bug.
Grandma and Grandpa were smack-dab in the center of my childhood. Their home was an intoxicating mixture of familiarity and mystery. It had the best VHS movies, their pop was tastier than ours, and I could swear our bedtimes were just a tiny bit later.
The walls were covered with pictures of us and our parents. Eventually, I formed a vague idea that Mom and Dad were once kids, just like me.
But my grandparents were a staple. The man and the woman I recall from my earliest days didn’t change much. They always had gray hair and a medicine cabinet full of prescription drugs. Their living room looked the same. During each visit, new pictures from our lives would appear along with the seasonal hard candy selection, but other than that…
They stayed the same. Grandma was sweeter than cotton candy. I would always run to her first for a hug. Sometimes I’d blurt out a crucial update; my voice muffled by her cardigan. “I got a new gameboy!” or “Pookie peed in my room!”
“Goodness gracious!” she would exclaim. Then I’d wrap my arms around Grandpa as he gently patted the back of my head.
There were so many questions. Questions about our lives, our school, our piano lessons… we never asked them much. It was simply out of the question. I never learned about Grandpa’s time in The War or his deceased brothers. Grandma never told me if she ever dreamt of attending college or how difficult it was to lose a daughter. Over time, these mysteries drifted into my periphery. I overheard snippets from our parents. Photo albums offered clues.
Once, I found a Purple Heart in their attic.
Unfinished glasses of milk were meticulously poured back into the carton. If we left the front door open for longer than a second we’d be chastised for letting all the heat out. They would jiggle the gas pump until every drop made its way into the station wagon. My grandparents were of the generation where everyone participated in The War Effort, and endured The Great Depression. They were pro-union, anti-communist, and obsessively frugal.
My parents were the first in their family to attend college. Today, I live on the other side of the country and have opportunities beyond their wildest imagination. For this, I am grateful.
While we grew older and stronger, Grandma and Grandpa grew weaker. It became difficult to do activities together. They stopped driving to us. Instead of presents, they gave us cash. After a while, we missed holidays together. Grandpa had a quadruple bypass. Then Grandma got Leukemia.
All of the sudden, my Mom had so much to do. Along with her finances, her health, and a gaggle of misbehaved preteens, her parents desperately needed her help.
My mom’s relationship with them was far messier than ours. She also needed to process the unresolved conflicts and trauma. Believe me, there was trauma. This is when it dawned on me; Grandma and Grandpa were people too. They had their own complicated story.
Grandpa survived surgery. Grandma’s cancer went into remission. They were more frail than before, but things went back to normal. We watched videos on their old, wooden TV and searched for garter snakes in their backyard.
During my high school years, I was finally able to peel back some of the mystery of their lives. They would never let me in on any secrets, but clues were everywhere.
Kathleen died a week after my Grandma gave birth to her. She hid her grief somewhere deep and did her best with her two surviving children.
Grandpa’s brother perished in combat. He was awarded the Purple Heart for his heroism. Grandpa served as a prison guard in Italy. I wondered what their farewell was like before shipping off to the war. Afterwards, he became a mailman. He worked every day, regardless of his personal health. His unglamorous work was performed solely to provide stability to his family. That’s how he expressed his love.
Grandma bottled up the pain from her loss. “There’s no crying over spilt milk,” she’d say when her children needed her to open up. Grandpa had a temper and a mean streak. Sometimes he would snap with terrifying results. My Mom suffered greatly due to their failings.
Some stories seemed irreconcilable with my angelic image of them.
But it was up to my Mom to reconcile these memories; not me. To me, my grandparents were the same people they were when I was five. They faded over time and death became a dear friend. Even then, they side-stepped questions about their life and expressed a relentless interest in mine.
I didn’t have a complex mystery to unravel when they died. I only had memories to cherish. Memories as sweet as cotton candy. Grandparents offer us a special gift that we cannot fully appreciate until it’s gone. We were never wrong for endlessly sharing the minutiae of our little lives. They loved it, and we loved that they earnestly enjoyed it.
This all happened long enough ago that I’m now seeing the same joy in my niece’s eyes when she visits my parents. An interesting idea dawned upon me while watching them delight in each other’s company this past week.
In a sense, we get the chance to know and love our grandparents at their best. They’re at their kindest, and the desire for worldly prestige has long since faded away. They’re able to do something we spend decades trying and failing to do. They live in the present and celebrate the joys in front of them.
To us, they’re not flawed or complicated, they’re simply our grandparents. Grandma and Grandpa were two of the first people I ever loved. We had a short time together, and I never fully appreciated what they were to me while they were around. But perhaps that’s alright. They were living proof that every person can be wholly judged not at their worst, but at their best.
