Life with Gram

My phone buzzes on the bedside table. I look over to see Grandma flashing on the screen. I shut the door to the guest bedroom and swipe to answer.

“Hey Gram”.

“Hey Ri. How’s it going?”, she asks.

“I’m ok”, I reply, trying to wrap my mind around the series of events that occurred over the last several days that have led to me crashing in my best friend’s guest room.

“Say… you know, if you need a place to stay, you can always come live with me”, she says, getting straight to the point.

My shoulders sag with relief and I resist the urge to break down and cry. I’m 29 and my marriage is ending. The past few days have been filled with endless tears, angry words, and questions that I don’t have answers for. Grandma’s offer feels like a lifeline, and I quickly grab hold.

“Ok”, I reply. “Is it ok if I come now?”

She assures me it’s fine, and I let her know I’ll be over shortly. I hang up the phone and toss clothes and a handful of other belongings into my duffel bag. I’m grateful to my best friend and her husband for their generosity, but I can’t help but feel like an imposition. Being friends with both me and my soon-to-be ex, my presence here is making things difficult and awkward for them. I’m also running out of vague answers to give their kids when they keep asking why Auntie Ria is sleeping in the guest room.

After packing up and saying my goodbyes, I arrive at Grandma’s. She brings me to the back bedroom where she’s moved some things around to make space. The wood paneled room is covered floor to ceiling with pictures of family - school pictures, family reunions, weddings, and baby photos. Normally, I find this room comforting, but with much of my family currently expressing some version of disappointment, anger, or outright hostility towards me for ending my marriage, at this moment the photos take on a slightly different feel. I take my own wedding picture off the wall, shove it in a chest of drawers, and head back to the kitchen.

“You want a ham sandwich or something?” Grandma asks.

“Sure”, I chuckle as she starts pulling out ingredients from the fridge. I’ve often wondered if Grandma runs some sort of secret hog farm based on her seemingly endless supply of ham. I don’t even like ham that much, but making food has always been Grandma’s way of expressing love, and it’s comforting to be taken care of in this moment. 

I watch as she spreads mustard on the two slices of Italian bread, popping bits of sliced Swiss cheese in her mouth as she prepares the sandwich. She brings the plate over to the table and pats my shoulder as she sets it down in front of me. 

We sit on opposite sides of the table, making small talk in between bites of my sandwich. She doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t push, she simply lets me sit and eat. And at that moment, I couldn’t love my grandma more.

***

I feel apprehensive as I walk into the house and see my parents sitting at the kitchen table. It’s not unusual for family to stop by Grandma's, but these days, I’m not sure if it’s just a casual visit or one where we sit around the table talking in circles about how I may or may not be ruining my life. 

Tonight feels like more of the former as my dad greets me with his familiar, “Hey Ri”, as I kick off my shoes and toss my coat on the back of the chair. I feel some of the tension ease from my shoulders and sit down to catch up with my parents, making small talk and trying our best to avoid the elephant in the room. 

I can smell supper cooking on the stove and look over as grandma emerges from the basement with a customary dish towel draped over her shoulder.

“Dinner’s ready”, she says as she makes her way into the kitchen.

She grabs a can of Coors from the fridge and takes a seat at the kitchen table while me and my parents load up our plates, waiting until we’re finished before she serves herself. My dad pulls the lid off of the sauerkraut, sausage, and potatoes, poking at its contents.

“Ma! These are breakfast sausage links!”

“Oh, what’s the difference?” Grandma responds.

Dad makes a face and rolls his eyes. We all break down laughing, making our way to the kitchen table, the great dinner faux pas having eased some of the tension in the room.

***

I wake up frightened, enveloped in darkness, confused by my surroundings. I’ve been dreaming that I’m still trapped in my marriage. My ex and various friends and family are plotting to keep me locked inside a glass house, telling me it’s for my own good. I bang on the windows, begging someone to unlock the doors and let me out, but the house keeps getting smaller and smaller, closing in on me. I can feel a weight on my chest, a heavy sensation, like someone is lying on top of me and holding me down. It’s this sensation that startles me from my dream, that feeling of suffocating. 

I roll over and flick on the bedside lamp, breathing heavily, trying to shake the eerie feeling that someone is in the room with me. I can still feel the sensation of being held down, arms pinned above my head, not being able to move. I will continue to have variations of this nightmare for several years, each one equally unpleasant. A quick Google search tells me it’s the result of unresolved conflict, but I don’t have high hopes that it will resolve itself anytime soon.

I grab my book from the dresser and readjust my pillows trying to get comfortable. I hear the familiar sounds of the TV floating through the shared closet between my bedroom and Grandma’s. Grandma’s vice has always been television and there’s rarely a moment where the TV is not turned on. Occasionally, I’ll get up in the middle of the night and turn off the TV while she’s sleeping, having read enough studies about the problem with TVs and sleep disruption. But tonight, I leave it on, comforted by the sounds of the 46’th screening of The Godfather and Grandma’s gentle snores.

***

“Oh, she’s just being a pissant”, Grandma says as she wipes down the kitchen counter. “Give it time”.

I attempt a half-hearted smile and swirl my wine around the bottom of the glass. There is so much I want to say, but I remain quiet. I’ve just returned from my sister’s house. Our conversation quickly went from bad to worse, and if there’s a side to be chosen, it’s clear she isn’t choosing mine. I’m furious with my ex for the narrative he’s packaged in a pretty bow, one in which he takes no accountability, and I’m the only bad guy.

But I’m less angry about the distortions and false perceptions. I’m mostly uncomfortable because the mask has finally fallen, and that narrative is longer and more complex. Because the problems started long before our short-lived, two-year marriage failed. Truthfully, that was over before it really began. My real betrayal was failing to be honest long ago. 

The gap between how a person presents outwardly and the truth of our inner experience is much wider, I think, than many of us like to acknowledge. Somewhere in the decade I had been together with my ex, I lost myself in the relationship. It was like death by a thousand cuts. 

After college, the things that once drew us together became less central as the realities and demands of day-to-day life set in. We briefly broke up during that time period, perhaps sensing that we were starting to develop different expectations and priorities. He initiated the break, and I was devastated. We’d dated through high school and college. I’d moved back to my hometown to be with him. This was supposed to work. I felt too invested and scared to start over. I stubbornly refused to look deeper, solely fixating on what I deemed to be my flaws in the relationship, adapting my needs to meet his own, intent on proving I was “super girlfriend” (and ultimately “super wife”), a person he couldn’t live without.

I cooked, cleaned, washed and put away laundry, and bought groceries, trying to be the ultimate example of domesticity. I took an interest in snowmobiling, trying to find the bright side of what mostly seemed to be a very expensive hobby that involved long, boring, freezing cold rides. I merged our finances and created our budget, saying yes to every fun expense even when we couldn’t really afford it, internally agonizing how to pinch pennies and cut costs in order not to be a wet blanket or be accused of poorly managing our funds.

I ignored how we spent more time with groups of people than one another, taking off in different directions when we’d meet up with friends. I’d typically find myself home before midnight while he preferred to be out until the wee hours of the morning. I ignored all of the arguments during our wedding planning, how we seemed to have completely different visions of what getting married should look like, while seemingly overlooking the fact that we hadn’t spent a lot of time planning on what building a life together truly meant. I ignored how he deferred to his mom when making big life decisions, disregarding my input, and how easily it seemed that she could manipulate and control our lives. I rarely voiced how I wished he’d try harder when it came to my interests, how it actually hurt my feelings when he’d tease and poke fun at them. I never mentioned that sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night, worried that we were fundamentally incompatible, and wondering if he felt it too.

There were ample opportunities to speak up, to leave sooner. But I just kept digging a deeper hole, trying desperately to bury my head in the sand. I know people who would have a much easier time being honest about this sort of thing, people who have a hard time understanding or relating to my choices. But as a lifelong people pleaser, I struggle initiating conversations in which I might cause people pain or even tension. My ex was a good person who loved my family, and my family loved him in return. All of my friends were his friends. Maybe we weren’t a perfect match, but it seemed good enough in comparison to other relationships I’d witnessed. And as someone who had often been labeled as an idealist and a dreamer, I convinced myself that it would all work itself out, that I should adapt my expectations to match reality. 

But somewhere in the gap of presenting an outwardly happy, perfect life while dealing with my own inner turmoil, I’d subconsciously flipped into some type of self-destruct mode, one where I completely checked out, hoping that people would get fed up and want to leave me. I didn’t want to have the hard conversations because that kind of honesty would hurt people. The problem with this approach is that it’s cowardly and cruel. You end up hurting people anyway in addition to creating a lot of chaos and confusion. No one likes feeling duped. Gradually, I realized that making anyone dependent on me was unloving, enabling behavior that tied people to me in an unhealthy way, ultimately fostering resentment. I couldn’t fault my sister for being upset with me, even after I’d attempted to explain myself. The truth almost felt worse.

I continue to sip my wine, trying to decide at what point I’d go back in time and do things differently if I had a time machine available. I think of the sensory timer Grandma used to have, the one filled with green goo that sat on top of the fireplace mantle. We’d turn it upright and watch the jelly liquid ooze to the bottom. That’s what time feels like right now, something slowly oozing, like a festering wound that refuses to heal. I feel defeated with little energy to fight back against all that is happening around me. So, I take Gram’s advice and sit and wait for time to pass, because it feels like the only thing I can do. 

***

I sit in the basement surrounded by “keep, donate, and toss” piles, having moved all of my belongings from my old house. Nearly a decade of my life surrounds me, and yet, I find that the toss pile is becoming the largest of the three. I’m not sure as to what it says about my life choices thus far, but maybe it’s a cleansing of sorts. It’s taken most of a week to sort through everything, and yet, someone mysteriously keeps taking items from the donate and toss piles and placing them back into the keep pile. A pair of red, pointed toe flats sit perched on top of the keep pile, a pair I know I definitively tossed into the donate pile yesterday.

“Grandma?” I yell up the stairs. “Do you want these red shoes?”

She makes her way to the top of the stairs and looks down at the shoes in my hand.

“You can’t get rid of those! They look brand new”. 

“I’m not getting rid of them”, I responded. “I’m donating them so someone else can enjoy them”.

“But you’ve hardly worn them”.

She’s not wrong. I bought them for a New Year’s Eve outing. On our walk home from the bar that evening, one of my friends said they reminded him of the Wicked Witch of the West. I hadn’t been able to wear them since. Nonetheless, I place them back on the keep pile figuring I’ll sneak them off to Goodwill when Grandma isn’t looking. 

Upstairs, stacks of Tupperware are scattered across the kitchen floor. In addition to sorting through the piles of my life in the basement, I’ve decided to reorganize Grandma’s Tupperware drawer. It’s a scene, in classic Grandma fashion, a vortex into which all of the lids disappear, leaving behind only mismatched bottoms. Every time Grandma walks by, she laughs, as I sit singing along to a Taylor Swift album sorting through the pieces.

Eventually, I make my way to the fridge, pulling out expired condiments and wiping down the shelves.

“Gram, you have fourteen sticks of margarine in here!”, I exclaim, as I place them in stacks on the second shelf. 

As I work through the cheese drawer, I find a purple lighter buried at the bottom. I think back to Grandma’s fruitless search for this very lighter a few days ago and start laughing. I laugh so hard my stomach hurts and tears begin to run down my face. The laughter is a release, a salve against the ache in my chest. I place the lighter on the kitchen counter and continue to make my way through the contents of the fridge, grateful for the distraction.

***

I sit at the therapist's office, filling out a questionnaire.

Do you have any concern regarding the use of substances?

Well, I’m certainly drinking too much wine.

What do you want to change about yourself?

Everything.

Have you ever had any thoughts currently or in the past of hurting yourself?

My pen hovers over the sheet of paper. I’m not sure how to answer this one. I certainly don’t want to hurt myself. But I’d woken up the other morning after having passed out on the couch. On the table in front of me lay an empty wine glass and a notebook and pen with a few sentences scribbled on it summarizing why everyone’s life would be easier without me in it. I hardly remembered writing it. 

Grandma had left for Arizona for the winter, and I missed her terribly. The house felt lonely and boxed wine was becoming my best friend, its numbing effect a relief to the reality that was my new life. Friendships had become strained and awkward. People wouldn’t talk to me, and if they did, it was often to ask uncomfortable questions that were not, for so many reasons, easily satisfied. The worst part was being around people who seemed to think divorce was contagious, like I was going to infect happily married people with the idea that there was something better out there. 

I check no and continue making my way through the form. 

For the first time in over a decade, I am on my own. It feels both thrilling and terrifying. The pressure to do something with this moment, to succeed despite the odds, feels palpable. 

My therapist has a kind face, one that makes you feel like you can open up and say anything. As I sit down and she asks me how I’m doing, a dam of emotions burst through, and I am reduced to a blubbering mess, sharing all of the thoughts, fears, and worries I’ve been carrying over the last several months.

She's quiet for a moment, taking time to form a response.

“Maria… you seem to know yourself very well. But if you continue to live your life solely for other people, you’re going to find yourself back in this same spot again and again.”

It’s not as if I didn’t already know this. But something about hearing these words from someone who was essentially a stranger fundamentally shifted my perspective in that moment. I had placed so little trust in myself that I’d been making most of my life decisions based around what I thought other people would think of them. It was a toxic cycle, repeating itself over and over again, and I realized I had the power to change it.

I left the office that day feeling lighter than I had in months, like I’d dropped a heavy weight that I wasn’t aware I’d been carrying. While the future seemed filled with many uncertainties, I felt a deep internal peace, knowing that whatever happened, I would be ok. 

***

It’s been over three years since Grandma passed, but there are still times where a memory strikes so sharply that the pain feels visceral, and I miss her. I think back often to those months I spent living with her and wish I had more time to express how grateful I am. Love looks different when it’s given by someone who genuinely sees you. I would imagine she didn’t agree with all of my choices, but she never said much about it. She simply supported me in a way she knew I needed at the time, her quiet presence allowing me time to heal and her general goofiness bringing light to an otherwise dark time.

The journey to being honest with myself and others has been a gradual, and often, uncomfortable one. Even in writing this piece and wrestling with certain choices of how honest to be here, makes clear that it is not a journey that is by any means complete. My pleasing habits were so deeply rooted that I created imbalances in many of my relationships in exchange for feeling safe, appearing generous, and avoiding conflict or rejection. Despite my good intentions, my actions were tainted with an undercurrent of manipulation and dishonesty. I was resentful because of it.

While some of my past relationships have ended, it’s also created space for new and healthier ones. It turns out there are people who are excited to discover and adore you, but you have to give them the chance to do so. When I give my word, I want to show up for my commitments. And when I say no, I mean no, and I don’t have to feel guilty about it. 

I like to think I know more now than I did back then, that I’m a better person because of it. I also like to think, if there is such a place as heaven (or something like it), then Gram is up there keeping an eye on things, still a quiet presence who reminds me not to take life too seriously. Because what’s the difference? Life is too short to let all of the difficult moments steal your joy. As human beings, we’re occasionally liable to mess things up - hopefully not too badly, and ideally, we learn from it. And when we do, hopefully there’s a Gram in our lives, willing to sit with us through it all, gentle and unassuming. She was proof that love is one of the things we're capable of doing so well.