family legacy

my grandmother is 81 years old. it’s not the longest run in history, but it’s a damn good one. it’s interesting to think that she was born in 1929. that was the year of the wall street crash, the beginning of the great depression, the st valentines day massacre, the opening of the san fransisco bay bridge. in the same year martin luther king jr was born as well as audrey hepburn and anne frank. (read more here: 1929)

i found out last wednesday night that my grandmother has cancer. she will not be a cancer survivor. this will be the final chapter for her. by the time they found the cancer it was beyond any treatment options. the best they can do now is give her pain meds (which she doesn’t like to take because they make her too groggy) and wait for the end.

i’m angry at the universe about this. i get that 81 is a good run, but this is NOT a fair way for this amazing woman to go. there is NOTHING fair about this. here’s why:

my grandma is where i get my rebellious streak. there’s pictures of her in college holding hands with boys. i know- doesn’t sound so scandalous until you realize she went to a college with separate mens and womens dorms. not very unheard of at the time. but then you look in the background of the pictures and you see signs about men and women not being allowed to fraternize together. pictures of her holding hands with a boy with a sign about no fraternizing in the background. there’s also a picture of her and several girlfriends standing on a wall directly over a sign that says “no sitting or standing on this wall.” she had a strong wild streak to her. granted, i’m basing this off two pictures, but they do say a pictures worth a thousand words. she was also very in love with her first husband and there may or may not have been less than 9 months between their marriage and the birth of their first son. unfortunately at that time it was not at all something that people could deal with like they pretended to do when it happened to me (minus the marriage part). it caused a rift in her family and she was (i believe) disowned due to it. if not actually disowned it caused a large rift that caused great pains later on.

my mum was born in 1955 when my grandmother was 25 or 26 (forgive me, i don’t know her exact birthday- we’ll stick with 26). a few months before my mum was born my grandmother’s husband was killed in a plane accident. i can’t even imagine. 26, baby on the way, suddenly alone. in 1955. additionally, my mum has 3 older brothers. at 26 my grandmother was a sudden single parent of 3 small boys and a baby on the way. can you even imagine? i made the choice to become a single parent at 23 leaving my marriage. granted, not a choice i really wanted to make at the time, but still it wasn’t like having my whole life ripped from me. it was damn hard with two little guys. i can’t even begin to imagine three small boys and a baby on the way. she had to scrape together a few thousand dollars to have his body railed (yes, by train) back to his family AND pay for burial costs. you’d think at a time like this her family would step in and help. remember that whole great pains? they wouldn’t help. his family stepped in to help, but still. she was on her own. talk about a hard knock. she did it though.

in 1958 she married again and had two more kids. six total. that alone deserves sainthood.

now. our family has pretty tight lips when it comes to history but over the years i’ve heard a few things consistently enough to know that there’s a strong truth to them. still, please understand that this is a generation removed and a that no one is willing to talk about what went on.

my grandmother’s second husband is a pretty horrible person in my opinion. he is the type of person that never had qualms about using brute force to get his way. my mum talked only a few times about growing up with him and it was never good. one thing she remembered was my grandmother in the bathroom giving birth while he was in the kitchen demanding dinner. she talks about how when they got in trouble as kids (which was a continual thing due to the type of person he was) he would grab whatever was handy to beat them- a hairbrush, a belt, a metal rod. my grandmother and the kids went through this- no one escaped. in addition to that demeanor, he was also very politically defiant. he has strong ties to branches of the aryan nations and different supremacy groups. it was not 6 degrees of separation to our family when things like ruby ridge happened. it was maybe 1 or 2. hell, the wingnut even started his own “church” and considers himself a minister. hand in hand with all that goes a distrust of modern medicine, resistance to “government tracking” (drivers licenses and birth certificates), stockpiling weapons and food for the end of the world- the batshit crazy just goes on and on. did you know that if you eat mushrooms and ham you’ll catch aids? and that if you snort enough cyan pepper you can cure cancer? (one snort and i would NEVER complain about another medical problem as long as i lived. kind of like the egyptian answer to headaches). he is, to the core, in every way possible, a terrible person. even now, as my grandma is immobilized by cancer he’s demanding that she just needs to get up and walk more and she’ll be better. he gets angry with her for struggling through the pain and being confused or groggy. he talked yesterday about the “good old days” and how when they would argue she would simply say “you’re the head of the household” and that would be the end of the discussion. does anyone else catch the undertone to a discussion like that?

my mum did her best to keep my brother and i away from that whole mess growing up, one thing i am extremely grateful to her for. we rarely visited my grandmothers ranch and we NEVER spent time alone there.

53 years. my grandmother has endured 53 years of abuse after losing the love of her life, having her family shun her and being left on her own in 1955 with three kids and one on the way. she stuck with it because it’s what her generation does. you stay. there is no other option.

and she still maintained the beautiful person that she is. hidden in there peeking out when the coast is clear is that rebel. the amazing woman that gave me my love of vintage books. the first person in our family to go to college. the young lady in the picture standing on the forbidden wall. the woman that i look up to for what she went through and continues to go through. she raised six kids. SIX. she ran the ranch for over 20 years with “small” gardens that would put most gardens to shame (ACRES of gardens). she provided food for countless families that passed through and stayed on the land at different times. she made (and hand tied) quilts for all 9 of us grandkids. every year since my kids started school she helped make sure all their supplies were provided. visiting her over the last week i’ve still seen an amazing sense of humor, beautiful intelligence, unimaginable strength and patience. it breaks my heart to think of how much i missed out on growing up because of what she was stuck enduring.

and i’m angry at the universe because she never got a break. a few years ago her husband was very sick and it didn’t look like he was going to last very long. i was so excited for her thinking that finally she would be away from his tyranny. she would be able to get a nice little place in town and live a few years of her life in peace. a few years away from the constant abuse. a few years with her kids who had all distanced themselves as adults. a few years with grandkids, great grandkids that had been kept at a distance. instead he’s pulled through and is in fine health (aside from dementia) and she’s in the worst possible pain, completely overtaken with cancer and no chance of pulling through. no chance of peace. no chance to have the life she deserved. no chance to be the beautiful independent, free spirited woman she once was. i’m so angry. i’m so filled with hate and rage to see the scales once again not balance out. i don’t understand how the universe works. i don’t understand why things like this happen.

i’m also terrified.

my grandmother has lived with 53 years of abuse. my mother grew up in that household. i have to acknowledge that experience and how it shaped her adult life and approach to relationships. i have no question that her marriage to my dad was unhealthy. i love my father with everything i am, but i am not blind to his faults. i know that he had affairs. i know that he was young and didn’t treat my mother the best he could have. i know they were both young and both came from hard upbringings and didn’t have the healthiest examples of how to be a young married couple. i honestly believe that my mother would have stuck with him forever if he hadn’t come home and announced he was in marriage counseling. with the other woman. if he hadn’t left, my mother never would have. she would have stuck in an unhealthy relationship because it’s what you do. how do i know this? because she’s doing it now. she’s married again to a horrible man. a man that has lied to her, mistreated her, hidden things from her, abused her kids. she is in an abusive relationship now and she is sticking with it because that’s what you do. my grandmother married a second time because she needed help raising four young children. my mother married a second time because she needed help raising two young children. both stuck out abusive marriages because it’s what you do.

i’m TERRIFIED. i’m TERRIFIED to be a third generation of this. and i KNOW i’ve already broken the mold. i was in an abusive marriage and I GOT OUT. but the fact remains that i was in an abusive marriage. i followed their steps. i did it. i married an abuser. a third generation. i did get out, but i’m TERRIFIED that i don’t know any better. i don’t know what a healthy relationship is. i don’t know how people are supposed to work together. i don’t know what the good things are to look for and it’s damn hard shopping when you’re only going off the avoid list.

on the other end i’m terrified of avoiding relationships and not trying to find someone to try to give my kids a healthy example to look up to. no example is just as damaging as a bad example. they need something good and healthy and strong to learn from and aspire to. but i don’t know how to give that to them. i only know that i want to protect them from an unhealthy one. i don’t want to fuck up a fourth generation. i don’t want my kids to look back 15 years from now and be in the same boat facing the same fears and the same bad experiences. how do you fix things like this? how do you unlearn what you grew up with? how do you change the family legacy? i don’t want to be the third generation single mother who marries for help and stays no matter what.

and so what do you do? you’re terrified to get stuck in a bad one and terrified to not have one at all. i want to break the cycle. i want to be the generation that does it right. i want to be the generation that is healthy and happy and successful in a partnership. i just have no fucking clue where to start.