Love Letters -- Guest Blog Post by D.K.
I was conceived and born of two people, who I’ll call Family #1. They were young and in love and unmarried. Because of the pressure to conform to societal and religious expectations, I couldn’t be kept. I was given away. Then an institution decided what was best and gave me to Family #2. Married strangers, who they presumed were a better fit for me. Those parents divorced, which ironically left me living with an unwed mother. She eventually marries again to create Family #3. I marry into Family #4 and then create my own Family #5.
When I write it out this way, I think –Of course—this is why family is a hard concept for me to grasp. My experience is so convoluted. Seemingly unstable. Two mothers, three fathers, three brothers, two sisters, five sets of grandparents, in-laws, countless extended family and then some I don’t even know. As much as I want to have the mindset that this just gives me more people to love, it makes me recoil. Take an abandoned child with attachment problems, throw all of these people at her and then see if they stick. Splatter some extra trauma at someone who already feels unworthy. The end result is a blank wall. Built of the strongest steel. Almost impenetrable. Very few can pass.
So I was caught off guard when recently I looked through a box of memorabilia from my childhood. Something made me cry. I found some letters from Grandma C. My step-father’s mother. What made these letters stand out compared to all the other cards I had kept is that she actually wrote to me. Sentences on paper. Not just a cheesy greeting card with a signature. She picked out stationary cards with a black horse on the front because she knew black horses were my favorite. She would write about her day, her garden, her visits with other family members. She would thank me for painted pictures I had sent her and tell me why she was proud of me.
I can remember going to her house in a small Oregon town. It was a green house. The kitchen was yellow. Pink fixtures in the bathroom. A candy dish with old-fashioned hard candy, peppermints and butterscotch. A beloved chihuahua dog. Yellow roses growing in the garden, a favorite of her late husband. I would play in that garden sometimes with a cousin, who was her real granddaughter. We had similar names, but not the genetic connection. I was jealous of her, though I had no reason to be. Grandma C. treated me, the adopted daughter of her son’s second wife, just like all the others. With kindness, love, attention. She had enough for everyone. She fit the definition of what a grandmother should be.
She was the first person I watched die. I had lost a dog and two hamsters by then. But they had already been replaced. You can’t replace a grandmother. This was final. That much I understood. From a distance, I watched her wither away as the tumor filled her skull. My mom took care of her in my bedroom turned hospice room. I don’t remember where I slept. I do remember standing in the hallway and watching my mom try to feed her, turn her, bathe her. Until one day she didn’t wake up. I don’t remember feeling sad or crying. But I must have, right? Had my wall already been built by then? Even death couldn’t find a way in.
