Six days. It took six days for the tears to come; To feel
anything for certain. I was starting to
wonder if I’d ever cry over my grandmother’s death.
A single sympathy card arrived today; I don’t expect any
others. It was from the woman who had
petitioned to take over legal guardianship over her decision making. A woman named Christy who I owe an enormous
debt of gratitude, even though it may have mostly been “part of the job” for
her. I still don’t think I could handle
dealing with any of it right now.
She was my father’s mother, but I never really knew my
father. That made things awkward sometimes.
Her name was Judy and her first husband’s last name was Judy and that is
probably the only funny thing about this story.
Her married name was Judy Judy or Judy (squared) as I joked with her
many years ago after she told me this tale.
How horribly comedic and yet, somehow tragic, because she married an
alcoholic and her only son became a drug addict.
Years later, the year 2004 in fact, she was so bitter about
her earlier life decisions that she made no secret of her regret for marrying
this man and having this child. I had
just graduated college at the time, and even my optimism waned at this
profession of honesty. I heard my
grandmother say she wished she never had my father…
Of course, to understand how conflicted I may have felt at
the time, I need to back up to my mother.
She did the best she could with what options she had, of that I’m
certain, and I want to be clear that I don't want to cast blame on
anyone. But when I was young, she wasn't honest about who my dad was. Then, when I was about ten, this
woman showed up in my life who claimed to be my dad’s mother, and I guess it
was true because from that point on, this women who I have always called Judy,
and not grandma, was to be a part of my life.
Judy wanted to be involved but her son never did. Later on, I learned that my mom didn’t want
him around and I respected that. Even
later, I learned that he had other kids with other women. I have a brother and a sister whom I’ve never
met. Weird.
Fast forward to High School Graduation. I took my first major trip alone by train up
to Oregon to
visit Judy. It was a lot of fun. She was
still very active and in reasonably good spirits and she had this great apartment
overlooking a river. I will never forget
how awesome that trip was. If you’ve
ever been to Oregon ,
you will understand how lush and amazing it can be in the right season.
After that, I went to college and took way too long to get a
bachelor’s degree (even though nobody seemed to care how long it took). I took another trip up to visit her after I
graduated and had landed my first real job.
This time, her son had been living with her for a while and was trying
to get sober and sorted out. He had lost custody of both of his other children
because of drug abuse. When I made my
plans to visit, Judy made him find somewhere else to go for the week. This is the trip where she expressed negative
views on marriage and having kids and to be honest, the whole thing left a bad
taste in my mouth. I left there feeling
like I didn’t know if I wanted to keep in touch with her or not.
My dad died in July of 2011. I remember it well because it
was my last week at a particularly important job. I had met him for the first time since I was
a small child in the beginning of that year.
We only spent a short time together and it was mostly conversation
deflected at the guy I brought along with me, but still… I’m glad I got to.
Without him as her caretaker, Judy’s health and well being
deteriorated. She lost almost everything
and ended up being moved all over the place to the point that I lost track of
her for a few months. When I found her
again, she insisted on going back to Salem ,
Oregon
I agreed to drive her and her cat up there and help her find
a place to live. This turned out to be
one of the single hardest journeys of my life.
I have never had to take care of another person for any length of time
and all of a sudden I was renting a car, driving, making hotel arrangements, getting
the wheelchair in and out of the car every time she got out, loading and
unloading ALL the bags (plus the cat, catbox, food, etc.), helping her get in
and out of the car, helping her go to the bathroom, dealing with adult diapers
and all that entails, dealing with bathing, helping her get dressed,
researching what living arrangement options she had, trying to figure out what
to do. Meanwhile the whole trip up the cat was unhappy and shitting in his
carrier, so ya - I had to clean cat shit up before we even got to the first
hotel… HARDEST FUCKING JOURNEY TO DATE.
I finally found a place that would take her and that she
agreed with, and we parted ways. I went
back a couple days later to check in and things were ok. I headed back to California and spoke with her once or twice
after that. It became clear to me that
it wouldn’t be easy to contact her and I admit that I lost the motivation after
a while… then someone else stepped in, in a legal capacity.
That pretty much brings us up to date. She was in hospice care last week. She died on Monday, February 11, 2012. She was married twice, had one son with her
first husband and has 3 grandchildren.
Her name was Judy Hauser.
