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Apr. 12th, 2009 01:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altarflameMy biological maternal grandpa - my mother's birth father, that is - I call him Grandpa.
He's never been a big part of my life, and when he has it's been pretty negative.
But he always meant a whole lot to my mother, which I tried to understand. It was not always easy. He could be very demanding of her and take advantage a lot and then insult her to death...I got in some screaming arguments with him for the way he was treating her in her own house, after she drove hours to get him because the cops were after him or some nonsense, as a teenager.
He lived on houseboats most of the time, off the coast of Key West. He did a lot of really small time international drug running. I could never talk about this when he was alive because he was wanted under multiple names in multiple places. We had "grand jury detectives", whatever the hell that means, come to our apartment when I was in middle school and serve my mother a subpoena to appear in court - she was offered the witness protection program if she'd turn him in. But she never would. We had a childhood dog once named after him - "Alias". I visited him in jail in the upper Keys when I was about 11. He went to jail with my x-x-stepdad (not Todd, the one before him) in Jamaica and they ate chicken backs (scraps bones, almost starving) and peed in buckets and slept on the floor for months. My mother would call and ask to talk to "the white man" and they'd bring back either her boyfriend or her dad because those were the only white men in the jail. They'd been on a run together. They came home rail-thin, heavily bearded, with scurvy. Scurvy! I always said he was a pirate.
There were times when my sister and I would get our own hotel rooms in fancy places in Key West, when he'd just gotten back from somewhere, and for a week we'd be eating every breakfast at Denny's and spending every evening in a hot tub. And plenty of times when he was homeless for too long between runs and ended up crashing at our place, sometimes leading shady characters to our door.
He died today. He was 60. It was some kind of sudden thing with vomiting blood that led to rapid detorioration - it hasn't even been properly figured out and diagnosed yet. They couldn't keep transfusing him fast enough.
I haven't talked to him in years, and liked that just fine, because he was mean and spiteful and honestly just all around wack. He drank beer all day every day and smelled horrible and used to wake up on our couch and act like my brother was a deck hand - "Swab, get me my cornflakes" (a beer). Beer my mom was buying for him when we were on food stamps. The last I heard he was talking a lot of shit about my "illegitimate children", who's names he couldn't even get right.
*sigh*
But, my mom. My mom was kind of all he had, because he really drove people away from him...and he had driven her away, finally, this past year or so. They hadn't talked in months, she'd neglected to call in January for his birthday and also at Christmas. Both of which are huge things for them to miss. But he didn't care that Elise was in trouble, didn't care that I was in trouble, caused problems for her and Todd and then also didn't care that she needed help when she was getting divorced, after all the years of her helping him. So she finally was like, yeah, I won't call you anymore then. Basically.
She tried to drive down and see him before he was gone, when she got the call. She didn't make it. She stopped here, in Homestead, and I spent the evening at my sister's house, trying to cheer her up, feel her out, help her somehow. She was numb, we got her to smile and chuckle some because we are always "on" around her, performing. Lots of hugs. It's strange because she knows neither of us cares personally about Grandpa. But we both care a lot that she's upset. And especially just coming out of a divorce, already skinny and strained from stress, to lose her father. She was a total daddy's girl. She didn't get to reconcile, or see him alive one last time. I called Grandpa's sister for her, to urge them to please wait to cremate him until my mother can see his body. Which is really important to her.
My sister says she was a wreck before I arrived. Which I can understand. But I was honestly surprised it wasn't worse...she wasn't shaking much, was walking around a little, was drinking tea, when I arrived. It wasn't what I was afraid of. She says, "Wait until tomorrow" ominously, because tomorrow, she's going down to Key West. I'm taking her to church first. And hoping that it helps. Strange ressurection Sunday, for sure...
I called my Dad, to talk about this. He drives a cab in Key West. He is not in direct contact with my mother and hasn't been for a long, long time, but they hear about each other through Laura and I. Anyway, my Dad, he was like, "WHAT? I gave him a ride 2 days ago! Damn!" and so on. It turns out my Dad's been giving him a lot of rides. And so he can testify that Grandpa had an actual apartment for over a month, a girlfriend who was pretty nice, and was hanging out at bars and doing coke and up to all of his old tricks right up til the end. Trying to get my Dad to deal for him out of the cab, my dad refusing cuz he doesn't want to lose his license. Which I conveyed to my mother and hope can be comforting in some sort of dysfunctional way. I think I'm going to end up interrogating my father for more, because it seems through some odd twist of fate that it's the only way she'll find anything out about the past year of her dad's life. My parents only talk TO each other if I'm hospitalized and they accidentally end up in my room at the same time.
I would appreciate prayers for my mom...she's at a pretty tough point in life. Beaten down really hard. Her mom, my Nana, just had a major surgery 2 weeks ago that she traveled to Lakeland to be with her through. And that came right at the end of this horrible mess with her marriage ending in the worst convoluted betraying way. She's ended up living with her brother and his wife, working as a waitress because the economy in Titusville is so bad, driving this old piece of crap she hates.
So all this is dominating my thoughts in a big way tonight. Since about 6pm or so when it started for me.
It's strange, you know, there have been so many points in the past few years for us, watching and waiting while someone is in the hospital. My mother herself, Isaac, Elise, me, my Dad, my Nana. And you sit there with this baited breath and refuse to think the unthinkable. It's crazy that it really happens. That sometimes...you don't get better.
My mom is looking at my weird protruding belly and BEGGING me to get it fixed before it is an emergency :x
ETA BECAUSE I FEEL GUILTY - Positive Things About my Late Grandpa
-he was really great at sailing
-and cooking
-and cutting hair
-and sometimes told a really, really hilarious story
-there was some wisdom mixed up in his non-judgemental way of thinking that I could probably learn from
-he was really into appreciating the little things and realizing how much more we have - even "poor as hell" in America - than people in 3rd world countries have
-there was not a predjudiced bone in his body, he was actually probably my only totally non-racist relative growing up
-he had a peace sign tattoo on his arm that I liked a lot when I was younger
-and made me feel a certain kinship with a whole subculture I'd never have been aware of otherwise - "dock people" in Key West, daily life on houseboats, all that sort of stuff
-he was really great at training dogs and always kind to animals
Before this shift....
My day with the kids was great. We got this HUUUUUUGE box of strawberries from Knaus Berry Farm to make pies and muffins and waffles and syrup and all kinds of stuff out of. And some of their fresh baked bread, cinammon rolls, peanut butter cookies, and milkshakes, which we had in our backyard while we watched our chickens peck around and huddle together.
I have Jeckyll and Hyde kitchen. I started cleaning it really thoroughly this afternoon - clearing and scrubbing counters, cleaning the cabinets, spraying appliances, the floor, whole shebang - and got almost exactly halfway done when we had to go to the birthday party. There's actually a line you can trace all the way up and down where it abruptly goes from spotless and sparkling, to filthy (spattered flour, caked on dripped batter, piled dishes, crumpled wet dish towels...I have been cooking SO MUCH lately). I'm hoping to go in there after this entry is done and extend the line to at least the 3/4 mark ;)
I think we might do our private family celebrating of Easter on Monday. Because I think I'm either going to be babysitting Brian all day long or in a car with my mom most of the day...I miss Grant. He got off for his half the week off, tonight. I'm glad he's so incredibly understanding and awesome.
The kids totally don't get it. They've never even previously heard of Grandpa (though I think Ananda was around him once or twice as a baby/toddler and my mom was still talkng to him or around him a lot when not with us throughout their lives...). It's so weird to ever try to tell them anything about, like...having relatives you don't really like or talk to. Or people being sort of horrible, to themselves and each other. It's kind of unreal, how different their lives are, vs how mine was as a kid.
He's never been a big part of my life, and when he has it's been pretty negative.
But he always meant a whole lot to my mother, which I tried to understand. It was not always easy. He could be very demanding of her and take advantage a lot and then insult her to death...I got in some screaming arguments with him for the way he was treating her in her own house, after she drove hours to get him because the cops were after him or some nonsense, as a teenager.
He lived on houseboats most of the time, off the coast of Key West. He did a lot of really small time international drug running. I could never talk about this when he was alive because he was wanted under multiple names in multiple places. We had "grand jury detectives", whatever the hell that means, come to our apartment when I was in middle school and serve my mother a subpoena to appear in court - she was offered the witness protection program if she'd turn him in. But she never would. We had a childhood dog once named after him - "Alias". I visited him in jail in the upper Keys when I was about 11. He went to jail with my x-x-stepdad (not Todd, the one before him) in Jamaica and they ate chicken backs (scraps bones, almost starving) and peed in buckets and slept on the floor for months. My mother would call and ask to talk to "the white man" and they'd bring back either her boyfriend or her dad because those were the only white men in the jail. They'd been on a run together. They came home rail-thin, heavily bearded, with scurvy. Scurvy! I always said he was a pirate.
There were times when my sister and I would get our own hotel rooms in fancy places in Key West, when he'd just gotten back from somewhere, and for a week we'd be eating every breakfast at Denny's and spending every evening in a hot tub. And plenty of times when he was homeless for too long between runs and ended up crashing at our place, sometimes leading shady characters to our door.
He died today. He was 60. It was some kind of sudden thing with vomiting blood that led to rapid detorioration - it hasn't even been properly figured out and diagnosed yet. They couldn't keep transfusing him fast enough.
I haven't talked to him in years, and liked that just fine, because he was mean and spiteful and honestly just all around wack. He drank beer all day every day and smelled horrible and used to wake up on our couch and act like my brother was a deck hand - "Swab, get me my cornflakes" (a beer). Beer my mom was buying for him when we were on food stamps. The last I heard he was talking a lot of shit about my "illegitimate children", who's names he couldn't even get right.
*sigh*
But, my mom. My mom was kind of all he had, because he really drove people away from him...and he had driven her away, finally, this past year or so. They hadn't talked in months, she'd neglected to call in January for his birthday and also at Christmas. Both of which are huge things for them to miss. But he didn't care that Elise was in trouble, didn't care that I was in trouble, caused problems for her and Todd and then also didn't care that she needed help when she was getting divorced, after all the years of her helping him. So she finally was like, yeah, I won't call you anymore then. Basically.
She tried to drive down and see him before he was gone, when she got the call. She didn't make it. She stopped here, in Homestead, and I spent the evening at my sister's house, trying to cheer her up, feel her out, help her somehow. She was numb, we got her to smile and chuckle some because we are always "on" around her, performing. Lots of hugs. It's strange because she knows neither of us cares personally about Grandpa. But we both care a lot that she's upset. And especially just coming out of a divorce, already skinny and strained from stress, to lose her father. She was a total daddy's girl. She didn't get to reconcile, or see him alive one last time. I called Grandpa's sister for her, to urge them to please wait to cremate him until my mother can see his body. Which is really important to her.
My sister says she was a wreck before I arrived. Which I can understand. But I was honestly surprised it wasn't worse...she wasn't shaking much, was walking around a little, was drinking tea, when I arrived. It wasn't what I was afraid of. She says, "Wait until tomorrow" ominously, because tomorrow, she's going down to Key West. I'm taking her to church first. And hoping that it helps. Strange ressurection Sunday, for sure...
I called my Dad, to talk about this. He drives a cab in Key West. He is not in direct contact with my mother and hasn't been for a long, long time, but they hear about each other through Laura and I. Anyway, my Dad, he was like, "WHAT? I gave him a ride 2 days ago! Damn!" and so on. It turns out my Dad's been giving him a lot of rides. And so he can testify that Grandpa had an actual apartment for over a month, a girlfriend who was pretty nice, and was hanging out at bars and doing coke and up to all of his old tricks right up til the end. Trying to get my Dad to deal for him out of the cab, my dad refusing cuz he doesn't want to lose his license. Which I conveyed to my mother and hope can be comforting in some sort of dysfunctional way. I think I'm going to end up interrogating my father for more, because it seems through some odd twist of fate that it's the only way she'll find anything out about the past year of her dad's life. My parents only talk TO each other if I'm hospitalized and they accidentally end up in my room at the same time.
I would appreciate prayers for my mom...she's at a pretty tough point in life. Beaten down really hard. Her mom, my Nana, just had a major surgery 2 weeks ago that she traveled to Lakeland to be with her through. And that came right at the end of this horrible mess with her marriage ending in the worst convoluted betraying way. She's ended up living with her brother and his wife, working as a waitress because the economy in Titusville is so bad, driving this old piece of crap she hates.
So all this is dominating my thoughts in a big way tonight. Since about 6pm or so when it started for me.
It's strange, you know, there have been so many points in the past few years for us, watching and waiting while someone is in the hospital. My mother herself, Isaac, Elise, me, my Dad, my Nana. And you sit there with this baited breath and refuse to think the unthinkable. It's crazy that it really happens. That sometimes...you don't get better.
My mom is looking at my weird protruding belly and BEGGING me to get it fixed before it is an emergency :x
ETA BECAUSE I FEEL GUILTY - Positive Things About my Late Grandpa
-he was really great at sailing
-and cooking
-and cutting hair
-and sometimes told a really, really hilarious story
-there was some wisdom mixed up in his non-judgemental way of thinking that I could probably learn from
-he was really into appreciating the little things and realizing how much more we have - even "poor as hell" in America - than people in 3rd world countries have
-there was not a predjudiced bone in his body, he was actually probably my only totally non-racist relative growing up
-he had a peace sign tattoo on his arm that I liked a lot when I was younger
-and made me feel a certain kinship with a whole subculture I'd never have been aware of otherwise - "dock people" in Key West, daily life on houseboats, all that sort of stuff
-he was really great at training dogs and always kind to animals
Before this shift....
My day with the kids was great. We got this HUUUUUUGE box of strawberries from Knaus Berry Farm to make pies and muffins and waffles and syrup and all kinds of stuff out of. And some of their fresh baked bread, cinammon rolls, peanut butter cookies, and milkshakes, which we had in our backyard while we watched our chickens peck around and huddle together.
I have Jeckyll and Hyde kitchen. I started cleaning it really thoroughly this afternoon - clearing and scrubbing counters, cleaning the cabinets, spraying appliances, the floor, whole shebang - and got almost exactly halfway done when we had to go to the birthday party. There's actually a line you can trace all the way up and down where it abruptly goes from spotless and sparkling, to filthy (spattered flour, caked on dripped batter, piled dishes, crumpled wet dish towels...I have been cooking SO MUCH lately). I'm hoping to go in there after this entry is done and extend the line to at least the 3/4 mark ;)
I think we might do our private family celebrating of Easter on Monday. Because I think I'm either going to be babysitting Brian all day long or in a car with my mom most of the day...I miss Grant. He got off for his half the week off, tonight. I'm glad he's so incredibly understanding and awesome.
The kids totally don't get it. They've never even previously heard of Grandpa (though I think Ananda was around him once or twice as a baby/toddler and my mom was still talkng to him or around him a lot when not with us throughout their lives...). It's so weird to ever try to tell them anything about, like...having relatives you don't really like or talk to. Or people being sort of horrible, to themselves and each other. It's kind of unreal, how different their lives are, vs how mine was as a kid.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-12 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-12 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 01:56 am (UTC)Even worse irony and fuckery because their marriage had been on the rocks mainly BECAUSE of WoW - he was one of these fools who plays like every minute, doesn't sleep, misses days of work, won't come to the table to eat, etc.
*sigh*
no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 02:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 01:59 am (UTC)*I've never played WoW so this is my approximation
no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 02:19 am (UTC)BUT DAMN. I can't believe he left her. Thats just nutty.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-12 05:15 pm (UTC)your grandpa actually sounds a lot like my father, which is why i don't speak to him at all. he was recently busted for dealing (at 63!), which i found out about through extended family.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 01:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 06:33 am (UTC)my mom left my dad when i was a tiny infant. he is a mess from vietnam and a horribly abusive childhood. he was very violent and abusive himself. so i only saw him in spurts, growing up, and hated it every time. he scared me with his paranoid talk and loud voice.
i saw him on impulse after i was out of college. he immediately wanted to make up for lost time, and decided to buy me a car. he took me to a dealership and bought me a used car in cash that he counted out of tightly bundles rolls, from a coffee can that had been buried in his backyard.
his presence in my life is overwhelming and i moved across the country shortly after that and haven't spoken to him in 6 years. my mother's cousin lives in the same town as he does, and emailed her a link to the county jail mug shot and newspaper article, when he got busted (pot and hash). i was surprised at how it shook me. i cried. i can't even explain the feeling. my immediate reaction was that i needed to go to see him, offer him comfort or support or something. i didn't, but i wonder at how i will feel when he does die. i always assumed i would feel relief.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-12 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-12 05:25 pm (UTC)I'll pray for you mama.
breath
Date: 2009-04-13 05:22 pm (UTC)Re: breath
Date: 2009-04-14 01:54 am (UTC)It is always hilarious to me that the only time I get anonymous comments where the commenter makes no effort to explain or identify themself, is when it's about typos I'm making. It makes me want to say, "It's ok! You can tell me how to spell and who you are, I won't bite your head off!"
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 08:57 pm (UTC)