In the middle of the night my brother recieved a phone call from my father telling him my grandmother has passed away. That is literally all the information I have about it, as at eight o clock in the morning I didn't think to ask any questions, and even then, I doubt that they would have had answers. I hung up the phone to see a text message from a California number, which at the time I could only assume was my father. The text said, " FYI...Gramma Block passed away tonight"
That was it. No more information, and no one has been able to get ahold of my father- the only person in that family we have contact with- since. Granted, that's not saying anything because I hear from my father maybe once every three or four months, and that is normally in a offhanded way through his twitter account, or in the most recent escapade, on his yahoo profile asking how to change his avatar picture. So, as you can see, this chain of events has not really surprised me at all.
The news of my grandmother's death wasn't much of a surprise either. I haven't seen my grandmother since I was about 16 or 17. When I went out to California for my dad's wedding at age 18, and then again to visit when I was 19, followed by a visit the summer I was 20, my grandmother refused to see me or my brothers. I found out from my father when I announced my engagement a year and a half ago that my grandmother's health was failing. I don't know what was wrong with her, how sick she was, or how she was doing. Heck, I've never even known when her birthday was or how old she was. My father's family just doesn't/didn't talk about bad things like that. I just assumed that my grandmother wasn't doing well in spite of having next to no information. Every once in awhile I would hear through the grapevine that my grandmother was in the hopsital(never knew why) or that something had happened, but my brothers and I have always been kept in the dark. Part of me thinks my brothers wanted it that way, it would certainly run in our family.
My father's side of the family has never been very good at communication, myself included. The letters I sent to my grandmother,(as well as my aunt and uncle that lived with her and depended upon her for financial, as well as physical, support) were few and far between. I attempted to call every few months, but I can count on half of one hand how many times the phone was even answered. My grandmother was bitter about it, and understandably so.
Growing up my brothers and I would fly back to California every Christmas for a week, and month every summer. For years while my father went to nursing school, and then when he got a job as a nurse, we would spend more hours at my grandmother's house in Rosemead staring at the wall then we would at my father's. My grandmother smoked like a chimney, walked around the house in house shoes and house dresses that were little more then near-transparent muumuus, and talked bad and complained about everything from my aunt's haircut to the way I say "ya'll". My grandmother was a very bitter woman. She hated when I would say I was from Oklahoma, mention Oklahoma, mention my mother, my stepfather, or anything to do with the mormon church. She would complain about my accent, she would give me dirty looks behind my back when we arrived for the summer(she hated how with each passing year I looked more and more like my mother), she would correct my english(and I had dang good english for a ten year old), and she would make my brothers and I feel uneasy with just one sentence. But she was my grandmother.
My grandmother lost her husband some time before I was born, and has three children, my father, aunt and uncle. My father is the only one that married, and when my parents divorced she paid for him to go to nursing school. My aunt never married, and lived with my grandmother for as long as I can remember. When I was fifteen my aunt got pneumonia, broke her back, and had a gastric bypass, all at the same time and due to her extremely unhealthy weight. My grandmother paid all the medical bills, and when my aunt was in a wheelchair she had renovations done on her home so that my aunt could get around easier. I remember my grandmother making my aunt's meals for her restricted diet afterwards, and her making my brothers and I food before she even had a chance to eat her breakfast. That was something my grandmother never said a word about. It was just how it happened. My uncle also never married. I never knew exactly why but my uncle was always odd. At first he lived by himself in Pasadena and I think at one point and time he was working even. During the summers he would take a bus to Rosemead and hang out in my grandfather's old decrepit office that was falling apart in the back yard. Later, as I got older, I started to notice that my uncle is handicapped, and I'm sure to some extent was supported by my grandmother even before he moved back in with her when I was 14.Looking back I think he may be on some level autistic, or something along those lines. I spent many hours with him every summer picking lemons, oranges, and kumqwats off the trees with him in the backyard. Although on occasion my grandmother made it feel very awkward she never complained about having to support him either.
One summer my grandmother bought my brothers and I a pool. We would fill it up with the hose and my brothers and I would spend literally hours outside just crawling around in it, pretending we were swimming or that we were sharks, or sometimes just staring at the sun avoiding going inside and being extremely bored. My grandmother would watch us from her bedroom window. She didn't like to go outside very much. The year that the Playstation came out my grandmother bought us one, and she hooked it up to her twenty year old black and white tv so that we would have something to do. I tried to teach her to play frogger that summer. It didn't work out very well.
Sometimes my grandmother complained about the lack of communication between us kids. Actually, she complained about it alot, but that was just her. My brothers and I sometimes dreaded going to see her for that reason, but I know she just wanted to hear from us. I didn't hear from my grandmother ever really, but every Christmas, my brothers and I would get cards in the mail, most of the time there was no signature, but we knew they were from her. Even though when I called her to tell her I was getting married, and she knew nothing about what was going on in my life, and I know she's very bitter towards the idea of marriage itself, she still congratulated me. She wasn't able to be at my wedding, I don't know if she would have even come if she hadn't been sick, but she still sent a card.
I have a lot of memories of my grandmother, and even though most of them are from before I turned sixteen almost seven years ago, those cards still stand out in my mind. I love my grandmother, and even though she showed it often in very weird ways, I know she loved me and my brothers too. Those cards I got every Christmas told me so.
I don't know how she finally died, how old she was, and there probably won't be a funeral for her, because that's how my family is, but I love her. I had talked and talked about going out there at least one last time, to show her that I turned out Okay, to have her meet my wonderful husband, and just to try to get to know her before it was too late, but I never made it out there. Now it is too late.
This post is way too long, but has been therapeutic. It has no purpose other then that. Just a way of sifting through thoughts, getting a handle on things, and in a way, just remembering.
Goodbye, Grandma Block. I hope you're in a happier place.
Sorry again to hear about your grandmother.
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