I Don't Really Know My Grandparents
My grandma had a minuscule stroke recently, and I thought she was going to die. This was on April 29th, she's better now and has had no sequelae, the whole thing seems like a bad dream, but it made me think a lot about life.
Specifically, April 29th was a Wednesday, and my grandma was at the hospital for a week or so afterwards. During that time, someone in the family was always by her side, as it is important not to leave the elderly to their own devices, and my mom wanted me to stay a while too, as alternating would make the whole ordeal less onerous to everyone. It ended up being unnecessary, my father decided he would spend an entire day there and friends of my grandmother were called upon, but it made me think about what could I say to her.
The first thing that came to my mind were memories from when I was a young child, maybe 5 or 6, when my other grandma was dying of cancer. I remember her propped up on her bed as she didn't have the strength to stand up, barely able to talk, entirely hairless; it was the first time I remember noticing an adult could be small. I didn't know what to say to her, but my mom asked that I sing her a song she liked - a sappy love ballad from the 90's that took on a new meaning in that context. It became a song of farewell, granny was going somewhere I could not follow.
Her death has only become harder to deal with over time, as the realisation of the depth and breadth of pain that my own mother has gone through sinks in year by year. Every birthday of mine is a reminder that, when she was just a teenager, my mom lost her father to brain cancer. I am getting closer to the age she was when she lost her remaining parent, I think she must have been 30 at most, and it is crushing.
I thought of all that as she asked me to go meet my hospitalised grandmother in the intensive care unit; of how sad my cousin's upcoming wedding would be if my grandma passed, as he was basically raised by her; of how my dad would deal with it, as unlike my mom he hasn't really lost close family yet.
More prosaically though, I thought of the actual details of the situation. What will I talk about with her? What can I possibly say? She was so distressed at being in the hospital and the battery of exams that we thought she might have a neurological issue, she couldn't recognise people or even remember what a papaya was.
That's when it hit me I don't really know my grandparents. Or rather, I don't know them as an adult human being. My relationship to them is, as yours to your own grandparents likely is too, one of filial piety. It doesn't matter that I can commiserate with my grandpa about politics and how much Bolsonaro sucks, or talk to my grandma sometimes about this or that news article or the world cup; there is an unsurmountable imbalance predicated on the fact that they see me as a kid. And they're right in doing so, they were already in their 50's when I was born, ten years ago I still had to ask an adult's permission to go to the restroom while they were getting retired. They were there every single step of the way and watched as I grew, much like how I will (hopefully) be there for every step of my niece's life, and when she is my age I will be 40 and still remember what her face looked like when she was 2.
Initially, I thought this was a scary proposition. It's weird and strange to think about how I don't really know my grandma on that deep of a level - I know about her values as a person, but I don't know about her tastes, for instance. I know about her history yet I could not tell you her favourite colour, it's just not the nature of our relationship. Yet, I think that comes with another feeling.
Growing up, my biggest bugbear was alienation. I never really felt like I belonged anywhere or with anyone; not in school, not at home, not with any of my exes, barely even with my friends. Yet now more than ever I feel my exact place in my family, because I know that if something unspeakable ever happens to me, they will be there - and if something unspeakable happens to one of them, it will be expected of me to be there for them, too.
Though it is tempting to say this is just what comes from a bond of blood, I disagree with that notion because of something else that happened with this crisis. Soon after Sunday, the subject came up to call a caretaker and pay them to be there with my grandma, and friends of my grandma were suggested, but one of my cousins said she thought that was a "bad idea" because "someone of trust from the family should be there" - even though she didn't want to go because of "her immunity" (she has some sort of arthrosis that is prejudicial to her immune system; never mind that one of our cousins and aunt are both HIV positive and were willing to put that aside to be with her for a week), and her shitty father, who didn't show up even as his own wife died of cancer, also remained silent.
This provoked widespread outrage. My mom and sister (who were at home) wept out of anger and said that if she were around they would beat her up. There were a lot of complex feelings and history wrapped up in that event, but I think it boils down to a pretty simple ideological conflict: to my parents, and aunt, and grandparents, a true friend is just as much a part of the family, and to question their trust, their commitment to friendship and to being there in a time of need, is tantamount to insulting your own mother. To my family, if someone could not be relied upon to be there in a time of need, then they aren't your friend at all.
This also connects to just how extensive and deep the bonds between my grandparents and their friends are, something my inconsiderate cousin didn't even think about to vomit out the nonsense about questioning their reliability. When my grandparents moved from the country, they lived with their friend who became a godfather to my dad and which I only learned wasn't actually my great-uncle but entirely unconnected to us by blood around age 10; one of their friends was sheltered by my grandparents when she was fleeing an abusive husband or something like that, I never caught the full story; their entire house was built by a builder who they were helping along and is still their friend. These people know my grandparents, they are their peers, their family; the space they hold is that of equals.
I think there must also be a broader cultural dimension to this, as it is common practice (or it was anyway, not as much these days) to call your closest friends "cousin", muddying thus the boundaries of what it means to be family. By the same coin, someone who wouldn't be there for you if you were in the hospital or in another terrible situation isn't family; my mother has taken to saying that "your grandma has only two kids" (my dad and aunt) after my uncle's complete failure at doing the bare minimum expected of his place.
Thus, now I understand my place and can say I finally feel like I belong, and I also feel like I share more commonalities with my family. My parents can be hot-headed, lazy, consummate contrarians who will spoil my niece rotten if they get the chance and instil in her a deep-seated fear of the world that they have, but they are also hard-working, reliable, principled people to whom I owe any sense of justice or idealism I might have. Much like the rest of my family, they have shaped me into who I am today, for better and for worse, and I would do and give anything for them, because I now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would do the same for me. In fact, they already have.
