A Day With My Grams

I've been neglecting my blog this week. I'd say I am sorry but I'm not. A week ago today my Grams had a fatty tumor removed from her leg. It was causing her some pain when she walked and since she's already had a tumor on her pancreas, we decided to not take any chances. The doctor who preformed the same surgery on her pancreas removed it in just over an hour and she was able to walk and there's only a tiny slit on her leg. No major issues thus far.

4 Generations of women under my Grams
Left to Right: Grams, My step-niece Sierra, My Sister Roxanne, My mom, My niece Hailey, Me.

Today I just hung out with my grandma. We went to the store to get a few things she was missing but other than that we literally just sat around and watched TV and talked. These are my favorite days. I don't have many of them left. At any minute one of our lives or even both could end. If that happens I'll never get the time back that I should have spent with her.

We talked about so much. I asked her about how she met my mom's dad, whom I never met. He died when I was 7 years old and he lived in California my whole life and never came to visit and we never had the money to visit him. He left my mom when he and my Grams divorced when my mom was 10 years old. I'm not sure what went on throughout their marriage. I know he was a serial cheater, in the air force and ended up marrying a woman of Thai decent named Vee-lie (I spelled it like it sounds because I have no clue as to spelling but that's what it sounds like when my mom talks of her) after he and my grandma divorced. I don't know what took him to California or why he never visited my mom or my 2 uncles who lived in the mid-west near us. My oldest uncle lived in California near him for a very long time.

She told me that she knew his sister and couldn't remember much else except that he was persistent and a very good dancer. Then she told me what I already know, never trust a man who can dance. It made me smile. She also told me that he was every where. Her example, if she was shopping at a department store he would somehow show up. I laughed and told her that he stalked her. We both had a laugh at that. So I asked why she married him because he was an atheist and she is Catholic so it couldn't have been religious based (she lamented that they didn't marry in a church) but she said that she probably only married him because her dad didn't approve. She said he didn't come to the wedding and that he said it wouldn't last more than a year (they had only known each other 6 months before they were married) and she said that she only stayed with him as long as she did to prove her father wrong. SO THAT'S WHERE I GET IT FROM!

Then we talked of her second husband and of course my Gramps. We talked about sex and psychology as it relates to mental illness in the elderly and about the Catholic church, with the Papal whatever going on and I explained to her my issues with being Catholic and organized religion and everything I've learned and my beliefs and I talked of mythology and paganism and the Bible and God. It's nice to talk with my grams about these things. Some people are so closed off, so closed minded, especially the elderly. They are set in their ways, in their beliefs and so stubborn but my grams has taken great pains to accept me, all of me for who I am and what I like and believe in even if she doesn't agree with it. I remember her freaking out about my pink hair when I was 14 and how she didn't want to take me anywhere because she didn't want to be seen with me. Now she just rolls her eyes and says "oh good God" when I'm wearing something she finds distasteful.

I'm grateful to have these kinds of relationships and a woman as special as her in my life. People don't get to pick their family members. Sure, they can reject them but it doesn't change that they are related. It doesn't change that 1/8th of my DNA comes from this woman. I wouldn't have it any other way even if I could. She's strong and emotional, she's compassionate and forgiving, selecting yet generous and caring, loving yet a formidable woman if you cross her. I get all of these things from her. It is an absolute joy to be her granddaughter and a prevliedge to sit down and hear her stories.

My Gramps, eating pudding and laughing about a year before he passed.

If you have any living grandparents, PLEASE, talk to them. Ask them where they were when JFK was shot, when MLK was shot (grams doesn't remember MLK, when JFK was assassinated my grams was working as a nurse in a hospital in Omaha), what they thought of Neil Armstrong and him walking on the moon (Grams watched it on the new TV she bought). Ask how they met your grandma/grandpa, ask whats the worst thing your parent ever did as a child, find out what stories they have to tell. I asked my gram one time about what it was like in America in WWII. She lived on a farm in Missouri and her first husband joined the Air Force after they were married in 1946 so thankfully he was never involved in that, though they were stationed in Spain in late 1959 (right after my mom was born) and stayed there until my mom was 6 years old. My mom's first language was Spanish. She came to America, Michigan specifically, and only knew how to say Cookie. She grew up with a maid/nanny and wasn't used to anything in the way of American living. Poor thing.

But honestly, talk to them and find out. You may not have that much time left with them. If they don't live near you - CALL THEM. My gramps hated talking on the phone but any time I called he wanted to talk to me, even when his voice was failing him. It broke my heart but I loved that he wanted to talk to me and I only hope that it brought him joy to converse with me even momentarily.

This is why I moved back to California from Florida, even though it broke my heart to leave Princess Ivory. This is why I am here. To capture every second I can with my Grams and just bask in knowing her.

Tell me, are any of your grandparents still alive?
What's their story?