Blog #7 – A Very Special Relationship

Blog #7

I was never close to my grandmother as a kid, mainly because my mother always said horrible things about her mother and talked to her in such a demeaning way that I think it made it very difficult for any of us kids to see her in a positive light.

When Randy and I were preparing to move to California, my grandmother became one of my biggest supporters. She had to do this in secrecy, because she was afraid of my mother. I totally understood this because she was already severely verbally and emotionally abused by her, she couldn’t afford to let her know that she was on my side, that just would have made her life so much worse.

One afternoon before we left she took Randy and I out to lunch to talk to us about how she felt about everything. It was the first time she’d confided in me about how my mother made her feel, it was heart wrenching. She was feeling the same way I was but because she felt emotionally dependent on my mother, she felt stuck in her situation.

My grandmother had been a very independent woman until she retired and moved from Queens, NY to Long Island to be closer to my mother. She told me that she regretted that move because it didn’t change her relationship with my mother, it made her more dependent on her for emotional support and my mother took advantage of that, my mother always took advantage of vulnerable people. Once my grandmother moved, the part time abuse became full time.

As she did with me, my mother wouldn’t visit her, she expected my grandmother to always do the visiting but she made her wait for an invitation. Her standing Sunday dinners continued but, as was the norm, she was treated like an unwanted guest. So now she was living in the same town as my mother, had left all her friends and was more lonely than she had ever been in her life.

Grandma told me that she was so happy for Randy and I, and the move we were making. She told me that the move was more than she could have ever hoped for for me because she didn’t want me to get stuck in the same situation she’d gotten herself stuck in. From that day forward, Grandma and I formed a bond that would last until the day she died. I am so, incredibly thankful that she reached out to me and that we began one of the most important relationships that I would ever have.

As soon as we got to CA we began writing to each other. I wrote to her about everything that was happening. It was a difficult time in my life, my family wasn’t speaking to me, I left friends behind and Randy was very busy with his new job. I was feeling very alone, having her to share the experience with, made it a little easier. Receiving her letters was a highlight of my day. I can also remember her phone calls that would come in the very early mornings, she always had so much trouble with the time difference. I would always pretend that she didn’t wake me up, or I would say that I was just getting up anyway, even though it was 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Her phone calls meant the world to me, I didn’t care when she called and I certainly didn’t want her to feel badly about calling.

During our conversations she would tell me that she read my letters over and over again because she just loved hearing from me. She was the only one, at that time, that I felt really cared, other than Randy, of course.

The closer we got, the more she shared with me. She began calling me on Sunday’s after she got home from spending the day with my mother and family. A lot of the time she was crying because of the way that she had been treated while she was there, it just broke my heart. I kept trying to convince her to come and visit us, but once again, she was afraid of the blowback this would have with my mother. I was now the “enemy”, no one was “allowed” to have contact with me.

She was even afraid to visit her son, my uncle, and his family, who treated her so wonderfully and respectfully and they were just a few miles from her. Everytime she would visit them my mother would give her a hard time about choosing them over her. I don’t know what the story was when my mother was growing up. I know that my grandmother wasn’t the greatest mother in the world but, whatever it was, I know that she tried very hard to make things right with my mother but all she got in return was pain and disrespect. Grandma wanted so badly to have a good relationship with my mother. I saw her time and time again try to make things right, but my mother wasn’t one for forgiveness.

I so wish I could have saved my grandmother from the life she found herself in but, my mother was her daughter and she loved her. Whatever my mother did to her, Grandma wasn’t going to give up on her, even if it meant being her verbal and emotional punching bag for the rest of her life. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.