chu_totoro (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chu_totoro) wrote2008-11-13 04:02 pm
chu_totoro) wrote2008-11-13 04:02 pm
Entry tags:
A Tribute, of Sorts
My grandpa died yesterday.
My back is killing me.
The latter of the two matters so much more to me than the former.
Perhaps that says something about my character?
Then again, my grandpa died a long, long time ago. 'sbeen a decade, at least. It just took his body this long to catch up.
That is a strange way of putting it, though. My other grandpa has not been doing anything particularly productive with his existence of late, and still I would be much, much sadder if he died. But then again, I still see him around at family gatherings and other such, and he is well enough to go off ranting at the slightest mention of current Taiwanese politics, and laugh with the rest of the family, and stare down at Sabrina and Caitlyn and go "Hehhhh? Gotten taller, have you!" When he's sick he goes off into his recounting mode, the whole Life Was So Tough When I Was Your Age thing, and starts telling you all his not-really-war war stories. And h e still has those silly grudge matches with my grandma... I sometimes think they grow more and more immature as they get older. Just last week, my grandma got flu shots and then got sick (weak immune system, presumably), and my mom visited and grandpa was all "harharhar I'm not sick! I told that old woman not to get those shots and she insisted and now look at her! And look at me!" (Grandma: "Aaah don't listen to him he's a silly old man who doesn't know what he's talking about" Grandpa: "Me! Me not know! Just look at her now!" Grandma: "Pay that man no mind!" Grandpa: "Ha!" *gloat* Mom: @__@)
.. come to think of it, my grandparents (on my mom's side) are kind of hilarious.
My other grandpa, though. He really hasn't been there. He's been more or less a decrepit bag of bones living purposelessly in an apartment room that smelled of piss, with nothing really left inside except the memories of playing with his favorite five-year-old granddaughter after coming to America. All that life, all eighty, ninety years of it. China, Taiwan--all gone. Just playing hide-n-seek and peek-a-boo with a little girl, singing nursery rhymes and clapping in delight, and not even that because all that was years, a decade ago, and all he has are memories.
I hate it. All of it. Being liked makes me neither proud nor happy. It just makes me sad. Because the me he remembers isn't really me. It's a little me, a long-ago me, a me so far away I can hardly remember her. All my memories of grandpa, real memories, memories outside of that cramped, foul-smelling apartment building and the stuffiness that pressed down so heavily I just wanted to turn and run - all my memories of him are so faint, echoes of the feelings of a thought long past, that they can't really be called memories anymore. The clearest one I have is of learning 兩隻老虎 (the song) for the first time, running to the phone and dialing, leaving the message: "Grandpa! Grandpa! I learned a new song! It goes..." and then singing it for him. In a message, over the phone. And that makes me so sad, because I must really have loved playing with him, once upon a time, but I can't remember any of it and he remembers all of it.
I don't remember when he stopped coming. That's too far back, too. I can't remember when he did to begin with, so how can I remember when he didn't? Only that eventually things became the way they are now, and that's the way it's been for ten, twelve years. My dad used to drag me out with him (when I was much smaller) on visits, because seeing me always made him so happy, but as soon as I was old enough to be rebellious I started refusing to go, because I just hated it there. The smell, for one. And that stiff, awkward feeling of just sitting there, not knowing what to do or what to say, as he made the same slow comments he always made ("You've grown so much... Grandpa doesn't recognize you anymore...") and went off into broken memory tangents about how cute I was when I was little and how we used to play. There was nothing to do but sit there as he pointed at me with shaking fingers and exclaimed to no one in particular, voice trembling, how I've grown. I couldn't talk to him because he was nearly deaf, and even if I could there was nothing much to say. He didn't want to know about my current life. I always felt that most keenly of all. I didn't visit often enough and his mind wasn't sharp enough to keep any of the changes in, and it was always the memory of the little girl, of little me that prevailed, in his long hours of nothing-existence. Everyone thought it was great when I visited, because he was so responsive. Normally he hardly even talks. I make him so happy every time I visit, they say. And maybe that's true. But every time I visit, he realizes again I'm not the little girl he remembers, and I watch him struggle to reconcile the image before him with the images in his mind, and he is happy that I visited, he is, for certain, but he is also sad that I have grown up and will never play with him like that again, and he's too far gone to interact with and relate on any new level than the ones he has already established, too old, and it's acutely uncomfortable because he looks at me trying to find whispers of who I once was, instead of looking at me.
It's not fun. It's a burden, to have - not even you, but just a memory of you - be someone else's entire existence. He's such an insignificant part of my day-to-day life that I feel guilty, sometimes, because the imbalance is so great and how can I ever repay something as huge as that, only it's not a matter of repayment because it isn't as though he's really given me anything, it's just... what is there to do? The only thing is to go see him, but even that isn't what he wants, really wants, if only we could replicate a little fairy girl to go play with him all day long, he would be the happiest man on earth, but we can't, we can't, so the only thing to do is to go see him, and even if that's not right it's at least a little more right than wrong...
He did die, at least a decade ago. That much I'm sure of. I don't feel like I've ever known him as a person. If I did when I was little, I forgot.
Rest in peace, grandpa.
My back is killing me.
The latter of the two matters so much more to me than the former.
Perhaps that says something about my character?
Then again, my grandpa died a long, long time ago. 'sbeen a decade, at least. It just took his body this long to catch up.
That is a strange way of putting it, though. My other grandpa has not been doing anything particularly productive with his existence of late, and still I would be much, much sadder if he died. But then again, I still see him around at family gatherings and other such, and he is well enough to go off ranting at the slightest mention of current Taiwanese politics, and laugh with the rest of the family, and stare down at Sabrina and Caitlyn and go "Hehhhh? Gotten taller, have you!" When he's sick he goes off into his recounting mode, the whole Life Was So Tough When I Was Your Age thing, and starts telling you all his not-really-war war stories. And h e still has those silly grudge matches with my grandma... I sometimes think they grow more and more immature as they get older. Just last week, my grandma got flu shots and then got sick (weak immune system, presumably), and my mom visited and grandpa was all "harharhar I'm not sick! I told that old woman not to get those shots and she insisted and now look at her! And look at me!" (Grandma: "Aaah don't listen to him he's a silly old man who doesn't know what he's talking about" Grandpa: "Me! Me not know! Just look at her now!" Grandma: "Pay that man no mind!" Grandpa: "Ha!" *gloat* Mom: @__@)
.. come to think of it, my grandparents (on my mom's side) are kind of hilarious.
My other grandpa, though. He really hasn't been there. He's been more or less a decrepit bag of bones living purposelessly in an apartment room that smelled of piss, with nothing really left inside except the memories of playing with his favorite five-year-old granddaughter after coming to America. All that life, all eighty, ninety years of it. China, Taiwan--all gone. Just playing hide-n-seek and peek-a-boo with a little girl, singing nursery rhymes and clapping in delight, and not even that because all that was years, a decade ago, and all he has are memories.
I hate it. All of it. Being liked makes me neither proud nor happy. It just makes me sad. Because the me he remembers isn't really me. It's a little me, a long-ago me, a me so far away I can hardly remember her. All my memories of grandpa, real memories, memories outside of that cramped, foul-smelling apartment building and the stuffiness that pressed down so heavily I just wanted to turn and run - all my memories of him are so faint, echoes of the feelings of a thought long past, that they can't really be called memories anymore. The clearest one I have is of learning 兩隻老虎 (the song) for the first time, running to the phone and dialing, leaving the message: "Grandpa! Grandpa! I learned a new song! It goes..." and then singing it for him. In a message, over the phone. And that makes me so sad, because I must really have loved playing with him, once upon a time, but I can't remember any of it and he remembers all of it.
I don't remember when he stopped coming. That's too far back, too. I can't remember when he did to begin with, so how can I remember when he didn't? Only that eventually things became the way they are now, and that's the way it's been for ten, twelve years. My dad used to drag me out with him (when I was much smaller) on visits, because seeing me always made him so happy, but as soon as I was old enough to be rebellious I started refusing to go, because I just hated it there. The smell, for one. And that stiff, awkward feeling of just sitting there, not knowing what to do or what to say, as he made the same slow comments he always made ("You've grown so much... Grandpa doesn't recognize you anymore...") and went off into broken memory tangents about how cute I was when I was little and how we used to play. There was nothing to do but sit there as he pointed at me with shaking fingers and exclaimed to no one in particular, voice trembling, how I've grown. I couldn't talk to him because he was nearly deaf, and even if I could there was nothing much to say. He didn't want to know about my current life. I always felt that most keenly of all. I didn't visit often enough and his mind wasn't sharp enough to keep any of the changes in, and it was always the memory of the little girl, of little me that prevailed, in his long hours of nothing-existence. Everyone thought it was great when I visited, because he was so responsive. Normally he hardly even talks. I make him so happy every time I visit, they say. And maybe that's true. But every time I visit, he realizes again I'm not the little girl he remembers, and I watch him struggle to reconcile the image before him with the images in his mind, and he is happy that I visited, he is, for certain, but he is also sad that I have grown up and will never play with him like that again, and he's too far gone to interact with and relate on any new level than the ones he has already established, too old, and it's acutely uncomfortable because he looks at me trying to find whispers of who I once was, instead of looking at me.
It's not fun. It's a burden, to have - not even you, but just a memory of you - be someone else's entire existence. He's such an insignificant part of my day-to-day life that I feel guilty, sometimes, because the imbalance is so great and how can I ever repay something as huge as that, only it's not a matter of repayment because it isn't as though he's really given me anything, it's just... what is there to do? The only thing is to go see him, but even that isn't what he wants, really wants, if only we could replicate a little fairy girl to go play with him all day long, he would be the happiest man on earth, but we can't, we can't, so the only thing to do is to go see him, and even if that's not right it's at least a little more right than wrong...
He did die, at least a decade ago. That much I'm sure of. I don't feel like I've ever known him as a person. If I did when I was little, I forgot.
Rest in peace, grandpa.