Some details, and thoughts
"Grandma Dorothy" was born June 13, 1923. She graduated nursing school in 1944 and shortly thereafter worked for, then married, "Doctor Grandpa." Together they had eight kids, six boys and two girls, of whom my father was the third.
Growing up, the three eldest boys had a life markedly different from that of the five that followed. A polite way to sum it up would be to say that Grandpa was very strict. He was also my first example of pharmaceutical hostage-taking, freely writing prescriptions for Grandma to keep her mellow and compliant. A life on these drugs essentially ruined all chance she had for a healthy body, and I always knew her as fat, though there were photos to prove this had not always been the case.
In the early sixties, they moved to Hillside. Her parents had a little farmette there, and sold the neighboring lot to their son-in-law to build a house. That was the house I will always think of as my grandparents', a grand split-level home built into the hill with a walk-out basement. And at Great-grandma Aurelia's next door was the huge yard and in-ground pool. Most weekends of my childhood were spent there, visiting grandparents and Great-grandma and grandma's sister Jeannie, who was taking care of their mother.
In summertime, we'd get out to Hillside in the midmorning, spend the day swimming, visiting, running about and swimming some more. It was like a party every weekend, my aunts and uncles bringing my cousins, my dad's cousins bringing their kids, and everyone happy and at ease in the joy of family and recreation.
After Great-grandma died, Jeannie took over the property. Then came the summer everything fell apart. Jeannie went on a trip, and while she was gone Grandpa decided that the diving board for the pool, and the fence on that side, was on his property. He had some of his younger sons come while Jeannie was away and remove the board and move the fence.
This asinine act forged a rift. Siblings had to choose sides; most of them agreed with Grandpa, his eldest son (my Uncle Ray), and my dad agreed with their aunt Jeannie, and the second son simply decided he wanted nothing to do with any of it and refused to speak to anyone for a while.
It was heartbreaking for me as a child, to see my cousins visiting Grandma and knowing they couldn't cross that imaginary line into Aunt Jeannie's yard to play. That was the year I started hearing the ugly truths about Grandpa, how he treated his family, and how much Grandma's siblings despised him for ripping their family apart.
All because of a stupid diving board. Of course the board wasn't really the issue: it was just a physical representation of Grandpa's determination to be right and have his way, no matter what the cost to those around him.
As time went on, the rift was healed to some extent; when Aunt Jeannie died, it seemed that summer that they would all forget the stupid fight and we could all be a family again. But reconciliation didn't last long, and soon the family slipped back into its quiet division.
Once I hit 18 and moved out of my parents' home, I didn't see much of my dad's family. I didn't want to; older and wiser, I knew much of my dad's troubles with his own family were directly caused by what his parents had put him through, and I had a hard time forgiving them for that. I did miss my cousins, and many of my aunts, whose only sins had been being the children of or married to the uncles that followed Grandpa no matter what.
We did make the trip north to Wisconsin for their 50th wedding anniversary, and to Berwyn for Grandma's eightieth birthday in 2003. That birthday was something: eight kids and their spouses, 24 grandkids, and four great-grandchildren in attendance, along with other family members and friends, made for a very crowded banquet hall.
So much of Grandma's life was overshadowed by Grandpa...
She died late Monday, June 9, 2008. My dad called me a little before 6:30 AM Tuesday to let me know. And I cried, not because I felt any grief for her or myself, but because, after everything, my father was clearly torn up to know that his mother was gone, and he would never see her alive again.
So on Thursday I made the trek to Hillside once again, to be there for my dad. And of course Grandpa was there, mostly deaf, getting infirm, but still the same old curmudgeon, freely criticizing his three eldest sons and their sons, even as his wife lay before him in her casket.
It did give my cousin Jason, only child of Uncle Ray, an epiphany to his father's "pinched look," to know he had to silently accept the abuse about his weight (hefty but not fat), his habits, his wife (who wisely stayed in New Mexico). My brother, who had already learned this, cheerfully said "yes, Grandpa," to every slam and slur, and let it go without a second thought. Not so for my cousin David (only son of the uncle who, back when, opted to ignore the whole family rather than get dragged into a fight with them), who more than once simply walked away when Grandpa started to talk to him, giving the excuse of having small children to tend to.
Grandma was interred the next day, her birthday, Friday the 13th. We actually started off the service at the funeral home with a verse of "Happy Birthday," cruelly ironic icing for the whole morbid ritual. After the singing stopped, a small hopeful voice of one of the great-grandkids piped up from the back: "Are we gonna have cake?"
After the funerary rite at the church, we all went to the gravesite, and once the casket was lowered and the lid placed onto the liner, the family milled about, pointing out the marker stones of other dearly departed; some of us went to the section for "the Innocents," where children are buried, to find graves of those unfortunate infants that didn't survive very long. We could not find the marker for my mother's sister, who had been struck and killed by a car when she was ten, but we did find, in my mother's family's area, the grave of her youngest brother, also killed in a vehicle mishap in 1995.
Then it was lunch at a local restaurant, and by three we were at Uncle Ray's, where most of us (who weren't driving) commenced to drinking. I spent most of the next four hours outside. We talked freely of everything and anything except Grandma and Grandpa, and I got to remember that sometimes, family can be good, and soothing for the soul.
When my parents were leaving, my dad got a little teary as he told my brother and I how much it meant to him that we had been there both days for him. On the long ride home, my brother admitted he didn't have a favorite memory of Grandma, and I vented a bit of inherited venom about Grandpa.
At the church, I did write a poem about her, politically-correct but pointed just the same:
"Grandma Smiled"
Grandma smiled
While cousins cried
And aunts sighed
Grandma smiled
If a kid's wild ride
Made uncles chide
Grandma smiled
Deer gobbled corn
Made Grandpa forlorn
Still, Grandma smiled
In her heart and her mind
As the clock did unwind
The truth of her peace
Kept her always at ease
And she smiled.
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