dharmabumgrl's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Betty and Al Today something is weighing heavy on my soul. Its thoughts of my Grandmother. If you have kept up with my past entries, you know how I grew up and about my family. I have yet to elaborate on my feelings of family now as an adult, but some of the past entries that will shed some light on my past are - Does unconditional love of parents exist? Show me proof, I will believe you I Don't Want Pity, I want Understanding Anyway, my mothers mother,{my Grandma} is this really sweet old lady, who refuses to grow old. She has been an alcoholic her whole life. She was married um.. I think five times, I don't know how many times exactly but I'm sure that I am pretty damn close. She had 7 kids. I only know 6 of them. The story of her first child Georgie, is so sad. My Grandma was about 17 or 18 living in Maine she married her first husband, they had a baby, and named him George. Apparently the first three years of Georgies life, is when grandma developed her drinking habit. It grew so out of control that one day her husband took Georgie and never came back. My grandma said she saw them one day on a bridge in the middle of town and when she tried to approach them they ran away. My grandmother married again, this is where it all gets blurry, we don't know which of her kids have the same fathers and which were out of wedlock. I assume that grandma has such a jaded life that she hasn't been real honest about what really happened and whose father is whose. Anyway, She married a few more times, had three more kids. My aunt Joanie being the oldest, my mother being next to the oldest and my Uncle Mike being the youngest of those three.
I don't know the men who are responsible for creating those three with my grandmother, I only know that my grandmother pegged a man with the last name of Bennett and this was the name they used all through life. No one knows this Bennett character but my grandma, I hear that he was American Indian and French but who the hell knows. Anyway my grandmother continued to drink, handing each of her children over to her mother a year into their lives because she was so addicted to alcohol, that she couldn't care for them. She continued on her shenanigans, sleeping with men drinking, getting arrested, and such. She then got married again, to a man who I have known my whole life as my Grandpa, he of course was not my real grandpa because he wasn't my mothers sperm donor. But he was the permanent fixture in grandma's life, and with her they created two more kids, my uncle Dale and my uncle Mark. Who again were promptly handed over to my Nana (grandma's mom) during their first years, as grandma now had a partner in crime who could keep up with her drinking and trouble making. Grandma tried to sober up many times and take back the six children and it would usually last a good six months or so then the kids would be taken by child services and put into foster homes until my Nana could get through all the paper work to get them back to her home. So my mother and her five siblings spent their time in and out of Fostering homes, in and out of their mothers life, at times submerged into her drinking and into her husbands drinking and gambling and fighting. Then back to there Grandmothers house (Nana) which was the only stability they ever had. Somehow there is also a woman named Louanna who was, I think adopted by my grandmother. To be honest I don't exactly know how she was connected or what but I know its some sort of half-sibling or adopted sibling type thing. Anyway, my grandmother, during my life, was always drunk always broke and spend a lot of time in jail from either being kicked out of bars for whatever, or for being drunk in public or for drinking and driving. I remember as a child she would give me gifts for the holidays, things that she had around the house, like an old beaded purse or an old black and white TV that my grandpa found somewhere and repaired. Don't get me wrong I loved it. I loved my grandma and my grandpa. The thing is though, that my young mind didn't know that she was sick and didn't care if she showed up to family events drunk because I just wanted to see her and grandpa.. that was all that mattered to me. I remember sometimes when they would show up my mother, the look on her face and the tone in her voice when she whispered to a sibling of hers "fuck, their drunk" as if it were a surprise. My grandparents the classic addicts, telling everyone all the time that they had stopped drinking and that they had been sober for so many months. Then all of a sudden my grandmother would call in the middle of the night and give my mother an earful about how she is sorry that she was such a terrible mother then in the same breath tell my mother that she is never there when grandma needs her. This was such a regular thing that mom would just hang up the phone as soon as she knew it was grandma calling. Sometimes Grandma called and I would answer and I would be so happy to talk to grandma and I would say hi grandma, and listen to whatever she was going to say to me in her cute little New England accent, and when my mom heard that it was my grandma she would hover over me and tell me to hang up the phone over and over. The rage in my mothers voice when she dealt with anything grandma was fierce. I hated that, I didn't want to hang up on my grandma, it would hurt her feelings, I don't want to hurt her feelings. I love her. And my grandpa, he was the one, who would put me on his lap and tell me that he was the one all those years ago who took my dimple, and that is why I only have one dimple on one cheek. I remember that I always believe that. This whole thing with grandma, grandpa, mom, and the family, the drinking, its all repetitive, it was a cycle that happened my entire existence. Then one Thanksgiving, I was 20, my Grandpa died, and left my grandma alone. My grandma got scared, and stopped drinking, she straitened her act up, she got an apartment behind the family church and she was actually clean for 5 years. It was nice, grandma and I would talk on the phone all the time, she called me, or I called her she went to bingo, met friends to take walks with. Her son, my uncle spent a lot of time with her took her to dinner and to movies and shopping and my grandmother loved him so much and he really took care of her. In the midst of her 5 year sobriety, he committed suicide in his apartment, and in his suicide letter, he specifically wrote,PLEASE DO NOT CALL MY MOTHER FIRST. But because she was his closest living relative, they called her. She had to go to his apartment, (he was found a week after he killed himself) and identify him. It was her not any other family.. And do you know what? She remained sober through the whole thing.. Uncle Mike was the only child of hers who showed her forgiveness for all her years as a bad mother and he took care of her.. Now she had no one. She remained sober and did so good. Then a year ago, my mother called me and told me that I should not take any calls from grandma because she had began drinking again, after all this time. And that she had been calling my mother in the middle of the night to yell at her and tell her what a terrible daughter she was for not being there for her. I haven't talked to my grandma since. Its been a year now, and my tummy hurts when I think of her. Why did I stop talking to her? Because after all this time I take my mothers advice? I don't feel the anger that my mother feels towards grandma. I agree that my grandmother should not be drinking and should not be calling family in the middle of the night to yell at them. But I am torn. I got a card from Grandma on Christmas. I looked at it and got a sick feeling. A feeling of shame for not seeing or speaking to my grandma, I put the card away and forgot about it. Till today, I was going through some mail and found it. I still have that sick shameful feeling but I cannot bring myself to call her. So I wrote her a short letter. Then I opened the card. Its a perfectly sweet card, my grandmother has had a hard life, I don't know about her childhood but I do know that she was driven to drink for some reason. just to clarify, my grandmother isn't a white trash looking woman, she was a beautiful woman much like Betty Grable, or some other sultry blonde 20's actress. My grandma, was a petit, beautiful woman who had no problem attracting men (obviously) Anyway, this is my story of Grandma Betty, oh and her husband, (my grandpa) He was Al 7:51 p.m. - February 11, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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