I am an Atheist, I think. And most days I feel guilty for that because I know how disappointing that must be for my grandmother, who is dead, and is probably looking down from heaven shaking her head that I don't recognize her seat next to Big White God. But she's probably also shaking her head at how much technology has progressed in the last 10 years since she died--that I can write about her and that people in Turkey and the United States Armed Forces in Germany can read about it, and that most of them are gay guys and straight girls who are dieting in some way.
My grandmother was big on praying with me, and though I never believed in God, the nightly ritual of hanging out in a dark room kindly talking to ghosts and asking them to take care of each individual human, pet, and He-Man toy I ever knew was a practice that I liked almost as much as hula-hooping to the Footloose soundtrack. My grandma taught me kindness, and mercy, and connection, and gratitude. She knew at as Jesus. I knew it as...well, I knew it as her.
In 1998, about three months after my 350 pound grandpa died of a stroke waiting for Grandma Ginnie to finish preparing his turkey sandwich with extra cheese and iceberg salad for dinner (also with cheese), my grandma got the news that she had terminal pancreatic cancer and would die within six months. Boo! I went back to college about a month later, but Grandma Ginnie moved in with Mom and Dad right away, and I got to spend a few weeks with her during the initial weeks of her diagnosis.
I had no mercy, no kindness, no compassion. Just anger and fear about why shitty things happen to good people. I didn't want to hug her. I didn't want to acknowledge what was happening. She got itchy from the infections in her digestive system caused by the cancer. She turned yellow. I made a lot of jokes about nothing, to anyone who'd listen. If there had been Facebook or Twitter then I would have posted an update every 6 seconds, from a cellular phone the size of a giraffes neck, just to avoid dealing.
I worked at a restaurant then that served gourmet pizzas. I ate a lot. I used to steal sausage and go sit on my spot on the top of Lexington Hills and pop cold pork balls in my mouth watching the moon--anything to not be in cancer house. I didn't know how to fix it and I felt like a failure, and I was afraid of being caught for being that big failure.
It wasn't until we weren't in the same room anymore that I was able to get to know my grandmother again and deal with what death really is. Back at college, I called her every couple of days and we'd talk until she was in too much pain to talk, sometimes 15 minutes, sometimes an hour. I learned about our history. I understood how she felt going through the end of her life. I saw what grace really is, in knowing it's almost over, and remaining positive.
On the day Grandma died I was in Nashville at school, and it was in September--the 21st I believe. My Dad put the phone to her ear. I spoke to her and listened to her breathe, unable to respond to me as I begged her to stay tough. That night she died, and Dad called to tell me that my last grandparent was gone, and I suddenly felt very alone--because I had no one to make-believe pray with.
I pretended she was still alive, though. I prayed every night, just to her. I talked to her on the street when I was alone. She helped me through finals by encouraging me to cheat off of my neighbors macroeconomics test.
I've gone off the path here from what inspired this message. On Christmas Eve that year, my Dad walked over with an envelope after I'd opened all my gifts. It was from my grandma, who knew she wouldn't be around, but wanted us to have something to open from her on Christmas.
The outside of the envelope had my name, and it was my grandma's writing. Instantly, she was alive. She had never died. She was just hiding in the other room like a new bicycle when I was five-years-old. I opened the envelope, and there was a check from her that had been filled out half-way by her, half way by my dad because she didn't have the strength to finish writing out her fucking checks. That's how sick she was. Then it was real. She was gone, and she would never be back--and this check and her writing that trailed off proved it.
And sometimes, even though you know it's over, or dead, or lost, you have a dream once in a while that it's still there. Or you see a picture that makes you wonder how it ever could have stopped, because you were so happy there on the Staten Island Ferry. And now you need proof to remind you that there came a point that it all stopped working properly, or broke, or burned into gaseous air that made it impossible to ever recover, and though the half-written check was the saddest thing I've ever seen, it's what let me let go and move on.
I thought about never cashing that check and saving the last shred of Grandma I had left.
Instead I used it to pay for the books in Microeconomics so I could graduate and make things better.
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