Today, I had breakfast with my grandfather. I hadn’t seen him in eight years, since the year my mom died. Since then our connection had been limited to brief emails asking how I was and sending me business articles focused around financial stability. Which felt ironic considering the debt I had accrued when caring for both of my parents and being responsible for tying up all all the loose ends following their deaths all on my own.
Last week he sent this email:
“Taylor, we really need to get you access to this unit that was your parents’ and see what's in there so I can terminate the contract.
Breakfast or lunch on Tuesday or Thursday at Parkway would be nice. 10?
Don’t forget the death certificates.
Love,
Grandpa.”
When he greeted me we hugged and it felt like he was a stranger.
When I was seven years old he once came to pick me up and take me out to lunch. I don’t remember this, but I was told I politely declined because I told him I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere with strangers.
He caught me up on his life, his finances, his new car, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend's kids. People I didn’t know, and would probably never meet. He told me a story about how he once went on a cruise to the Caribbean but didn’t get off the boat a single time because the air conditioning felt better. He asked me how I had been, how everything in my life was currently going. I think this was him trying.
Here’s what I didn’t say:
I wanted to ask him if he ever misses my mother? His daughter that he hasn’t mentioned during the entirety of breakfast, or for the last eight years. When I was little I hoped more than anything I would look just like my mom when I grew up, I thought she was beautiful, and i Idolized her. I’d watch her style her hair or put on her makeup in the mirror and couldn’t wait to someday be doing the same. I wanted to tell him about how after she died my dad used to get really drunk and tell me how he couldn’t bear to look at me. He couldn’t look at me because it was too painful for him to be reminded of her. Sometimes when he was drunk enough, he was convinced I was her, that I was an angel coming to take him with her. I grew so much shame in this, and I still have a hard time looking at pictures of myself or in the mirror for too long without seeing her face looking back at me either, and it doesn’t feel beautiful anymore, it feels like a constant pang in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to tell him another part of me is I’m afraid of getting older, not because I won’t be beautiful, but because I won’t look like her anymore. I wanted to ask him if this is why he erased her from his memory too. When I was in first grade his wife, my grandmother, died from an accidental overdose one night while sleeping next to him. Was looking at my mom too painful for him, did he treat her the way my dad had treated me? Instead of hanging on to the last part of what he lost?
I wanted to tell him I carry both of my parents with me today, on the inside of my breast pocket. The weight of them is heavy in these two death certificates. The only proof I have left that they ever even existed since my house burned down. Does he know how heavy those two pieces of paper feel?
I wanted to tell him how proud of myself I was for never giving up. I wanted to tell him I’m proud even if right now is a rough patch and I haven’t been sleeping much. Most days it still feels like my heart is breaking, and that I’m not sure I will survive if I experience another loss in this life, which prevents me from getting closer than I ever need to be. I wanted to tell him about my friends, and the people who love me and show up for me when I don’t even know how to do it for myself. These people that choose me. I wanted to tell him how my boss and my coworkers are so much more than just that. I wanted to talk about my dog, and how I’m trying so hard to love the world despite what it’s done to me and the people I love. Most of all I wanted to tell him how sorry I felt for him. That through all my loss I have found so much love. That his focus on financial stability seemed to have robbed him from so many good things in life. From so many parts of my life that he missed out on, and my mothers. How sad it was that he didn’t get to have fun with us and sing in the car or eat ice cream together in the summers. How his life was filled with memories around possessions and money. I wanted to tell him how I built this chaotic and beautiful life without any of his help, how I had to raise myself in so many ways and It’s taken me 30 years to realize that I did a damn good job. I can do anything.
None of this would have been anything he wanted to hear.
So instead what I really talked about was:
My car that was paid off, how I am debt free, my income, and my commitment to my job. I talked about how I was saving and planning for a better future than my parents ever got the chance to have or give me. That was it. We made our way down the street to sign some paperwork and we awkwardly hugged again and parted ways. Him off in his 2022 Lincoln Navigator that he paid for with cash, and me to my well loved Rav 4 that took me years to pay off. It still has the broken radio knob from when my dad wouldn’t stop fiddling with it on our test drive, it smells like a dog, and has permanent grains of sand from the dessert and tears from people I love laughing too hard embedded in its fabrics. How rarely life turns out the way you think it should, but how fortunate that those good pieces sneak themselves in when you least expect it. I’m trying to trust the process, to trust myself, remind myself there is still a lot of good to be had, and to let life do its thing a little and keep learning to feel like I’m exactly where I should be.