My Grandmother

My grandmother just died. 

For two weeks, I've been wanting to say that to every stranger I see. Grab them and shake them and scream those four words at them. I want to make them feel as uncomfortable as I feel. 

Because I'm angry that they didn't stop...that the world didn't stop when she did. Things just kept going as if she never existed, as if she never mattered. But I want them to understand that my world did stop. 

I want them to understand that my eyes are swollen and haunted because I've never watched someone I adore slip away into nothingness. Understand that I'm sleepwalking in a fog of grief---slow and distracted and not myself. Understand that I've never felt so fragile, like I'm made out of glass.  Like my heart is breaking and I can't breathe.  

I never knew I was capable of enduring pain this intense and this unrelenting. It's the absolute worst moment of my life. And I'll never be the same. There was me when she was alive and now there's me when she's dead…

***

My grandmother was beautiful. Achingly, stunningly beautiful. She was strong and complicated and smart and funny and damaged and a force of nature and charming and ambitious and stubborn. But most all, she was mine. She's the only grandparent I ever met. 

My grandmother was my mother's mother. My mother was her only child just like I am my mother's only child.  Whenever they'd describe our triangle, they would say, "Unica hija de una unica hija." 

My grandmother and my mother had an epically awful relationship. My entire life I've felt guilty about the wonderfully close relationship I have with my mother.  It is in many ways the direct result of how bad her relationship with her own mother was. 

And so the thing my mother most wanted in life was to be a mother---and in her mind, right many wrongs. And becoming a mother didn't come easily. She lost two sets of twins before having me.  When I was born, I was a kind of miracle.

My mother was determined to be everything to me that my grandmother hadn't been to her.  For better or worse, I knew that from a very young age. It was this thing all three of us knew but never talked about, like some unspoken sisterly pact. 

In the past few years, things had hit a breaking point in their relationship. As my grandmother grew older, she became increasingly stubborn and hurtful, refusing to see or talk to my mother. Money became wrapped up in their six decades of issues. There were lies and emotional daggers galore. I was used as a pawn. It was all kinds of ugly. 

And after 30 years of being caught in the middle of the two women who raised me, the two women I loved most, I'd had enough. I decided I didn't want to be part of the emotionally scarring cycle anymore.  I realized I wasn't a little girl anymore. I had a choice.

So I chose my mom. Which meant I stopped trying to talk to my grandmother. I stopped trying to see her.  I shut down. 

Mr. Diabolina, knowing how painful my decision was, would periodically bring her up. See if I wanted to reach out, call her, write her. But like her, I was stubborn. I said I didn't want to hurt my mom. I reminded him my grandmother had my number too, that I wasn't the only one that could reach out.  

And frankly, I thought I had time. My grandmother had always been healthy as a horse, looking years younger than her actual age. Her side of the family typically lives well into their 90s.  I figured things would work themselves out and we would reconnect. I guess I didn't want to even think about the alternative...

But then one day, we get a call telling us my grandmother's in the hospital. She's dying. To come quickly. 

When we get there, she's unrecognizable, full of tubes, motionless, in a coma, dying. She's not beautiful and she's not stubborn and she's not strong anymore. And yet she's still mine.

My mom and I are told that we have to make the decision to take her off the machines, that she's in pain, that mentally she's not there anymore.  And it's not like the movies where you quietly watch someone slip away.  There's nothing peaceful about it.  It's horrifying.  

My mom and I are doubled over, howling in agony, praying for her soul, begging for her forgiveness, clinging to each other for dear life. Ultimately, we didn't have to make the decision to let her go, her body just gave up. 

And we were there by her side in those last moments...watching her life force drain away...watching a major part of ourselves die too.