It's Too Late Now

There was a particularly painful time in my life when I was a young girl that forced me to choose to leave my father's home and stay with my sweet, adorable Irish grandmother. She was a selfless, loving parent who never thought twice about doing for me. Somehow I feel she felt young again having me there with her every day to worry over. She had a joy about her with the ability to laugh easily. And did we ever laugh....hysterically at times.

Then one day there was an unexpected knock at the door. My father and step-mother Dolly came to visit, but we found that they had a purpose. They immediately wanted to take me aside from my grandmother into the outside room to talk directly to me. I thought for sure all hell was going to break loose and that there must have been some horrific wrong that I had done and that I was about to get slammed to the wall. Grandma was not included in the conversation and in stead was left to her own ends on the other side of the door. Little did I know that she was pacing the floor, drinking a hi-ball or two. On my side of the door, my parents were urging me to return back home with them within the week, and because of my loneliness for my father and my sister, I readily agreed---and promised to put an end to the distance between us.

After they left, my grandmother flew into a rage, screaming and yelling horrible names--things the like I had never before heard from her lips....and worst yet, they were all directed at me, her "sweet pumpkin." I knew a grief I had never felt before. How could I reverse the damage already done when she was "dis-owning me", throwing her best crystal at the walls and literally falling apart before my eyes? I had entered the "do not return" zone. And my insides were bleeding in agony.

I returned home and the communication with grandma was never quite the same. I wavered for the first several years because of the guilt that I felt, but once I realized my loss, I decided to break the stiffness between us--in any way and every way possible--in order to gain her trust and love once again. Slowly, but surely, that old bond between us started to grow, but somehow I always felt she was holding something back.

As the years went by we loved as best we could. Then grandma became terminally ill and was hospitalized. First she had colon cancer and had a colonectomy procedure that weakened her terribly. Not only physically, but mentally. She never really got better. I would occasionally go out to see her. She would love a treat like homemade cheese enchiladas or lemon meringue pie. I would read prayers to her out of her little prayer book. Then one particularly sad day, after I had been with her for over an hour, she looked at me with a cheerful little sparkle in her eyes and said, "You know dear, you remind me of my granddaughter!" I felt so miserable and alone. I cried on the drives home every time I left the hospital.

Grandma died shortly after. Matter of fact, she died on her 57th wedding anniversary, June 6, 1983. I miss her SO much! I can only pray she had truly forgiven me that rash and hurtful decision of years gone past, but, until I die I will never really know.