A Death.

My maternal grandfather died this morning.

I didn’t know this guy. 

He didn’t live across the globe, and he wasn’t in prison.  So far as I know he wasn’t suffering from some debilitating mental illness which would have prevented us from  having a relationship.

I just never knew him.

My personal experience of him consists of s snapshot of a memory; an event which took place when I was very young. 

I remember that he used to call on Christmas, apparently drunk, but mom wouldn’t let us talk to him.  She would either intercept the phone call or demand that we not answer it if she suspected it was him.

Sometime in the mid-late 2000s, I heard that he was in the hospital.  I thought then that I ought to go visit the guy and get to know him for myself.  I wondered if he was a completely different person than I had heard.  It wouldn’t have been the first time people had intentionally misled me on family matters. By all posthumous accounts, mine was a hopeful wish.

Maybe he really was just a used up old drunk...

Either way, I didn’t go see him.

I spent most of my life telling people that I never had any grandfathers. One died before I was born. He was a hero, a local legend, and the master of his domain (a domain from which I will soon find myself disinherited).

The other grandfather was some kind of despondent alcoholic demon, although I never witnessed anything that bad. I heard stories, and that was enough for me as a youngster, but this is the case with many nonsense stories.

I recognize that you can get young people to believe anything with stories.  I convinced one nephew that good monsters live under all sidewalks  (bad trolls live in the street, so you should stay on the sidewalk), and the other that trees give magic powers to plastic bottles...

Can I claim a tax exemption now?







I felt weird as a boy, not having any grandfathers, but knowing perfectly well one existed and was accessible—he had even tried to contact us.   I wanted to go fishing and eat Werther’s Originals and all of that shit.

But I knew  it was all nonsense.

Should I be upset for my mother discouraging a relationship? I don't think so.

I imagine that she probably felt like she was doing the right thing, although my guess is that she was doing the right thing for herself more than the right thing for me and my brother. 

I love my mom but, I often question her decision-making skills and motives. 

I’m sure she questions mine, but I think for different reasons.

So now I’ll have two memories of him. One from when I was very small, of him sitting in a chair. Cigarette smoke and brown carpet.  And one now, of him in a cardboard tube... a room with soft light and elevator music.

I’ve never been particularly troubled by family deaths, but I’ve never had to experience one I felt was unjust.  They’ve all been older people who have had an opportunity to live their lives.  Until now, I’ve been able to tell myself that they’d had good lives, were good people, and probably did something to make things better. 

But I didn’t know this guy.