Grambo is Dead

Apologies to Amara, who I promised an entry days ago.

***

Today, while I was doing some weight training, I dropped a twenty-five pound disk on my foot, which now is swollen and has some zig-zag mark across the top of it.

***

Mom told me to sit down on the bed.

"What?" I thought this was some family intervention about my drug use, you know, a kind, concerned lecture about the dangers of addiction. She did look concerned.

"Sit down."

"The dog is in the way." There's the weaner, swagging her tail ferociously.

"Move her."

So, I sit down.

"I have some bad news about grandma."

I think that maybe she's just in the hospital, and it's interesting that we both know which grandma we're talking about.

"She passed away."

I put my head in my hands, and say, "I fucking knew it!" I leave the room, and go into my bedroom, where I start sobbing hysterically. This is, of course, the grandmother with dementia, who refused to move in with either my mother or her son, my uncle once it became obvious that she was sick.

She's gone.

I had been planning to visit her, but she lives in the desert, and my SUV needs a new radiator. My parents didn't think it would be wise to travel all that way in something as worn as my Mazda. The engine might overheat. I didn't have the money to replace the radiator until Tuesday of this week. So, I just didn't go. Weeks had passed since anyone had stopped by her house, then it became months. There are other family members who could have gone--but they didn't. Grandma made everyone around her upset and angry. No one really wanted to go. Even I was constantly consumed by the ideas that I really couldn't help her beyond driving her around, and paying her bills, using her checkbook, and assuming her identity. Her illness made her think that she wasn't sick, that she didn't need anyone to help her--that in fact, some of us were plotting against her in some degree or another.