index | archives | notes Saturday, Nov. 16, 2013 10:06 a.m. << [ A Loving and Merciful God ] >> The weekend we went up when nana was dying but not for realsies dying yet, we drove up to Canada, so I snuck some joints over without telling the parents like the selfish cunt I am. I mentioned it to dad, told him I was sorry for not telling him about the joints sooner, but I figured it was like helping him pass a lie detector test. The border isn't particularly difficult or invasive as long as you're white and relaxed, but it's always a little tense. Dad is very much a libertarian and takes offense at the presence of border patrol period and doesn't have any moral qualms with my smoking, so he immediately understood and was glad not to have known. My family's pretty great sometimes. Dad and I went back to the hospital to spend more time with nana that night. It was good but terrible the way so much of these trips has been. I asked dad if we could take a smoke break after, and that's how we ended up at the elementary school across from nana's apartment at 10:00 at night. We walked to the side shielded from the streetlights and dad said "I'm almost certain this is what we're looking for." I said it looked perfect to me, what was missing? He said, "What happens if a cop car pulls up to that entrance right there?" "Oh right," I said, "You're in a sling so it's not as simple as just hop the fence. I love that I have a dad that thinks about this shit." After we confirmed entrance number two, we sat on the play structure and I lit up. "I want to know about nana's marriage," I said while the smoke made little swirlies in the cold air. "I know it was shitty and I know she doesn't like talking about it, but I feel like... I feel like I've been waiting twenty-five years for 'the right time' to roll around, and it's never been the right time, so I either ask now or I don't get to ask at all." Dad said he understood, that as a member of the family and someone who came from these roots, I deserved to know what they were, and he rolled out all the skeletons. I knew grandpa beat the shit out of nana. I knew she was unhappy, and tried to leave grandpa when my dad was five or six. He said they spent the day looking at apartments downtown, really nasty, run-down places, and even the poorest among them she couldn't afford by herself back then. So she went back to grandpa and his military paycheck and his pension and their materially comfortable middle-class life. My dad said that if he wanted to, he could feel guilty over that one. He tries not to. I've spent a lot of time with it in the last few days; how miserable she was in their marriage and how she never got past it in a lot of ways. Four days before she died, nana had a fit in the hospital, lots of moving and agitation, but she couldn't talk by then so no one knew what upset her. The nurses were able to translate a couple days later: nana was afraid to go to heaven because what if my grandpa was there waiting for her? And our family, meanwhile, grown from the manure of their marriage. My dad owes that comfortable middle-class life to my nana's pain, so my brothers and I do too. I wish desperately she didn't have to suffer so much for it, I wish there had been another solution or that she had come to terms with it a little better. I wish it were possible to go back and trade it in; "Here God, take my laptop and my paid-off toyota and my college education and my cushy job, but you have to take the pain of that marriage with you too." That's not a thing though, so the best I can do is be grateful and try not to fuck it up. << | x | >> whatiscopyright.org