A wasted life ...

I always call her by her first name now. "Grandma" conjures up an image she doesn't fit, has never fit, in my mind. So it's "Shirley." She grew up in the Depression. Her father painted houses and did odd jobs for a living. He was a hard man, tending toward bitterness, and having cut off all contact with his parents and siblings. Her mother, I suspect, was clinically depressed for most of her life. "Shirley" was poor -- dirt poor. She had holes in the soles of her shoes and crossed eyes. The kids at school teased her a lot.

I suspect when she met my grandpa they were two desperately lonely, wounded souls who saw the same fear and loneliness reflected back at them. They understood that in each other. Unfortunately she got pregnant and they got married and then promptly forgot the pain they shared and embarked on causing more pain for each other for the next 45 years.

She feels inferior to almost everyone and criticizes the world so that she can make herself feel better.

She worries about everything and many of her life decisions have been made out of fear.

She has missed out on countless experiences because of what "might" happen. She was the classic buzzkill. Over and over and over again.

She always despised my dad. When I was a kid she put me in the position of defending him. "Really, he's not that bad. I love my dad." What kind of person denigrates their parent to them? What kind of person makes a child defend their parent's behavior or lifestyle? My dad is an honorable man. He has made mistakes (who hasn't?) but he is a good and decent person who never deserved to be looked down upon by her.

She was mean to my grandpa when he was sick. She made him feel guilty for his illness. She made his life hard every day; she made it even worse when he was dying.

Once he died she decided she would find God. I guess the guilt was eating her up inside. Of course that just means that she is now even more judgmental and holier-than-thou than she ever was.

She has plenty of money, yet when I was a starving college student she never gave me any help. When I came to visit her (she lived in the same town where I went to college) she ranted and raved about people who had made her angry, people who were making choices she didn't agree with, and the news. She criticized my hair, my clothes, my choice of pantyhose when I anchored the news on the college's weekly morning show -- oh, and let me not forget that she never failed to notice if I had gained half a pound or had had the gall to spend my own hard-earned money on a new outfit. She got through college with only 2 dresses. The fact that I bought ONE new outfit (off the clearance rack) for a semi-formal occasion after I had worn my only other appropriate outfit dozens of times was just too extravagant for her to deal with.

Now she is very old and frail. She lies about things she has said and done; she might not even remember, now. I think she has some kind of dementia.

She accused my dad of breaking into her house and stealing things: a flashlight, some bath towels, old pictures. She called the police and they had to fill out a report. My father was horrified. My mother was distraught. I was pissed off.

She sent a Christmas card one year, with money in it for me and my family. I agonized over it, but on my mother's advice, I bought something for the kids. I sent a thank you note but said perhaps it would be better if we had no contact anymore as we could not agree on things and it was too painful for both of us.

This brought on a horrific email from my mom's sister -- my godmother. A vile, evil letter received 3 days before my due date with my third child. I was responsible for the entire family's dysfunction, I was evil, she felt sorry for everyone who had ever come in contact with me because I was such a horrible, vicious person who only wanted to destry my family and all the problems the family was having were my fault. A letter that made me physically ill -- that hurt me so deeply I still can read those words in my mind because they are burned on my heart. Words from someone who was supposed to love me but instead betrayed me. She opened up my heart and filleted it. I am crying now, more than four years later. It will hurt me forever.

The last words Shirley spoke to me were over the phone. I had called her and I identified myself. Her response was, "I don't have to take this crap." And she hung up.

Shirley wasted her life. She wasted it on anger, on bitterness, on judgmentalism, on fear. She has no one around her anymore. All have abandoned her (even the saintly aunt who so violently attacked me in her mother's defense). She has no friends, her children maintain a distant, careful relationship with her. She has a restraining order against her filed by one of her kids, she is mentally ill and she will die alone.

I never knew her to do something nice for someone "just because." I never saw her bring a meal to a sick friend, never heard her say something nice about someone if they werren't around to hear it, never learned the meaning of a word from her except for "hypocrite." Because if there ever was one, she is it. I often heard her spew Biblical quotes in a hateful fashion, but I never saw her act in a true Christian way my entire life.

She has never seen my youngest child. She never will. I will not allow her hatefulness to affect my children. She is missing out on the three greatest joys of my life and on those of my brother. The woman has 5 great-grandsons, but they will not even be listed in her obituary. I certainly won't be listed as a survivor, not in the obit, although I am proud to have survived her sharp tongue. I will not mourn her death; I will greet the news with relief and some sadness at the miserable life she created for herself.

She is old now, and I wish that I could find a way to heal some of this -- I really do. But for my own soul and sanity, I have decided I will not even begin to contemplate speaking or writing to her until she apologizes for the accusations she made against my father and the poor way she treated me the last time we spoke. If she can't admit she's made a mistake, I will not subject myself to the potential of further poor treatment.

My kids don't know her. They will only know her through my stories -- stories of a sad, pathetic, poor little girl who had a chip on her shoulder her whole life, who never did anything nice for anybody just for the sake of being nice, who accused their grandfather, an honorable man of integrity, of being a thief and a liar.

So she loses all the way around -- sad life, miserable marriage, no relationship with great-grandkids, and the true story of who she was living on long after she dies.

What a waste.