Everyone’s grandmother is the greatest, right?
In 1960, two years after her husband died, my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease and told she had six months to live. They clearly didn’t know who they were dealing with.
Her parents came from Germany in the 1800’s, speaking fluent German in the house. I suspect that Teutonic sera kept her going through the pain and weakness in the sixties.
I was her sole grandchild (my other grandparents died when I was in infancy), and while she was poor, she kept a very neat house. Every summer, I spent a week with my aunts in the coal regions and spent several afternoons with grandma.
A kid can tell when they are surrounded by light. Her love was always there, affirming and edifying. We played store a lot, which I guess helped my math skills. Walking outside in her huge garden, which was slowly returning to nature. Winwood sang, “She bathes me in sweetness.” That really sums it up.
As I grew and received only hate and vicious anger from my father, I clung ever tighter to that little house and the holy occupant therein. She always had a smile for me, I never saw the pain. When she came to our house to stay awhile (when mom or dad were hospitalized), it was Christmas every day. It was a rare time when someone welcomed my voice, eager to hear about the most trivial things in my life. I’d go on about “the field”, and she’d nod like she’d been there with me a hundred times.
When someone brings you to know your own song, it is a bond that defies all manner of space and time.
Especially when you’re abused.
One of the last times we took her out, we went to visit a movie set nearby–Martin Ritt’s ‘The Molly Maguires’ starring Sean Connery (please see my earlier discussion of the ‘Mollies’ many posts back).
<Side note: The movie itself is OK, it has very little relevance to what really happened, and of course, Sean is Sean. The best part is the beginning, where it shows the drudgery and soul-crushing mine work, the greed of the owners, and the way the Irish were treated like worthless dog shit. Mancini’s score was perfect–the opening theme captures the loneliness and despair, as well as the Irish determination to hold their heads up and earn enough to feed their families for another week.>
By that time, she couldn’t finish the walk down one block from the miners’ homes to the fake ‘colliery’ that the crew built.
A year before she died, she must have sensed the time was coming. Without asking my parents, she made me the happiest boy in the world. Even though she was poor, she scraped together $50 for me to buy a brand new bicycle.
She was gone the next year. The light of my life smothered. The only person who could feed the tiny flicker that kept me going in the septic of my abuse.
Her grave, along with my godfather’s, is the center of my being, the keystone of my reason for living.
I sit on her grave and read these lyrics, I cannot repay what her life has meant to me.
Next time: My bike!!