This morning, I awoke to news that my grandfather had passed away. The text came from my mom, as it was her father, via facebook messenger. I had an immediate sense of loss. Something was lost. Gone. But it passed.
See, the thing is, I wasn’t close with my grandfather. Growing up, we saw him now and then. Sometimes years went by when we didn’t see him. And at other times we saw him relatively frequently. In the last 15 years, since I have lived abroad, I have seen him perhaps a handful of times. At Benita’s naming ceremony, when my little brother got married the first time, at Christmas once when Benita and Zintis were young. I don’t think he ever met Vilnis, and certainly not Johans. Which means it had been at least 3 years, perhaps closer to 4, since I had seen him. Time flies when life gets busy.
He was the last of that generation on both sides of my immediate family. All of my grandparents are now passed on. That is something remarkable. It’s not every day a generation comes to an end. He is survived by his wife, known to us as Duda, a lovely woman who’s been around my whole life, but not my blood grandmother.
My grandmother, his ex-wife, passed away just over a year ago. I also hadn’t seen her in many, many years. Benita was about to turn 1 the last time we saw her. I was able to travel home for her memorial- things lined up schedule-wise, and I felt pulled to be there.
I learned a lot about my grandmother at her memorial. She didn’t want a big funeral, so we kept it short and sweet. A few people said some words- anyone who wanted to actually. They shared memories, told stories, shared laughs. It was a really nice way to remember her. During the memorial, I stood back and listened, and felt a deep, deep sadness at having missed out. My path in life had taken me away from her. She lived far away from where I generally traveled when I returned to the States. I didn’t know her. I found out during that memorial, that apparently she and I had a lot in common. We both loved to cook, shop, be indoors (instead of the great outdoors). We both enjoyed the finer things in life. Eggs Benedict was both of our favorite breakfast. She was a collector of dinnerware, place settings, Christmas ornaments, and clothing and jewelry. I am a collector of baby carriers, nail polish, makeup and coffee cups. We both enjoyed a very well stocked kitchen- both in terms of food and tools.
It turns out, I found out, my grandma might have been someone with whom I would have gotten along. But I wasn’t there to find out.
I won’t be able to travel to my grandfather’s services, and I am not drawn to be there either. I am at peace wishing him peace from here. I have offered my support to my mom if she needs it from me, and I have sent my love to Duda.
Mostly, the thing that keeps bubbling up over this last year of loss, is what it means to stay in touch with family. I realize that my relationship with my grandparents was highly influenced by my parents' relationship with their parents. And now that I am an adult child myself, I realize what a complex thing it is to be an adult child and to have that relationship with your parent.
I want my kids to have their grandparents in their lives. I will do my best to allow them access to those relationships- but relationships are, and always have been, a two-way street. Grandparents have to make an effort to connect with grandkids as well.
Not all grandparents are equal. Not all grandparents are out of the movies. Sweet little old men and women with white hair who bake cookies and read stories. Nope, in fact, my kids don’t have anyone by that description. My kids’ grandparents have varying levels of gray in their hair, super varying cooking and baking abilities, and very, very different amounts of patience for their grandkids’ antics. Some have lots, some have little. They are human.
And what I have come to see, what I have come to uncover because of my personal, inward journey, is that my parents are the children of broken people. People who lived through and survived things that broke them. People who lived with realities they never desired, realities they didn’t dream. People who were torn from their homes, forced to new lands, dealt cards for a game they didn’t want to play. They made it through, they healed some of the breaks, but there was a cost. There was a big cost. It cost them personally, which in turn cost their children, which, has also, in turn, cost us, their children's children.
Pain, suffering, hurt and grief can be passed on generationally. Bad habits, parenting mistakes, and all the ways we never meant to do things- they can all be passed on. And, of course, all of these things can be healed as well. My parents both work on healing in their own way. I am also working on it. None of us is permanently broken. We all have the ability to heal- but there must be willingness. The willingness to heal seems to be a generational thing too. As in... older generations, those still living, sometimes don't see the point in getting into it all. The attitude seems to be something along the lines of, "yes, these things happened, they were terrible, they shouldn't be talked about, it won't change anything, move on."
I whole-heartedly disagree. And I challenge anyone who thinks the best thing to do is to take all the bad things that have happened in their life and stuff them down and keep them hidden forever, to ask others, anyone near and dear to them, whether or not it's obvious that they are doing so. I pretty much guarantee that your hidden hurts are not as hidden as you think they are. You're not fooling anyone, except maybe yourself.
This is all why I'm still in therapy, still working on healing stuff. It's ongoing work to try to actually be able to move past the things that happened in your life. Because life is full of shitty things that happen. And if you don't know how to heal or transform the stuff that has deeply affected you, it stays with you, ongoingly affecting everything, whether you want it to or not. Which is why I don't try to hide it. I mean, you don't have to throw your stuff all over the place- but you don't have to pretend that life hasn't happened to you.
I have to bring this back to the beginning and say that, my grandparents were not the willing types. They weren't able to heal the stuff that happened to them. They didn't like to talk about the things that happened to them. And that is what it is. And so, what I wish for them, in the afterlife, is to be in a place, where their hearts are freed from the experiences and memories that plagued them. To be able to face, forgive and move on from the pain.
I don't know how to end this... my grandfather passed away. A man I didn't have much of a relationship with. My grandmother passed away and I wished I had known her better. My grandparents went through really tough times in their lives. They didn't deal with a lot of it, and that had an impact on their kids, and their kids' kids, and the relationships we all had/have with each other.
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