My first vacation, and my grandfather's death.
Tuesday, 17 September 2002 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59All Persons, Living And Dead, Are Purely Coincidental.*
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More childhood stuff.
As I said in an earlier entry, my Grandpa died when I was three.
I don't remember much about it. It was also the summer my cousin was born, and the summer my mother, grandmother, father and I drove to Florida. My father was having a manic episode, his first since my parents' marriage, and nobody knew what was happening. At one point he left us in a motel in the Great Smokey Mountains, disappeared into the night with the car. I don't remember that, either. What I remember about the trip to Florida was the ocean. Nobody told me we'd arrived, and so I thought we'd come to this water we couldn't get over or around. I thought this was very bad planning on my parents' part.
But about Grandpa's death. He was alone when it happened because it was Band Day at the fair. It used to be I'd spend the weekend with my grandparents, then my mother and I would spend Monday with Grandpa. But this Monday was Band Day and we went with friend of my mother's. So he was alone, and he had either a heart attack or a stroke.
It was years before I found out that's what had killed him. See, he had this rocker, one of those overstuffed ones that turns around and rocks. I loved it, loved to sit in it and rock and spin around, only my grandmother would yell at me. Not because of the chair, but because it was sitting right in front of a window, and when I rocked hard, it would bang against the Venetian blinds, and, according to my grandma, they could fall down and cut me.
So for years I thought the Venetian blinds had got my grandpa. Oddly enough, that didn't frighten me. I kept sitting in his chair, and I kept rocking. I just watched out when I did it.
For a very long time my mother felt responsible for Grandpa's death. If only we had not gone to Band Day, she would have been there . . . .
She finally told me this, I think when I was in high school. (By this time I knew that the Venetian blinds had not been responsible.) And I remember thinking how wrong that was. I know I told her that's not how it works. I told her, if you'd been there, we'd been there, and just what would you have done, with your father having a heart attack and your three-year-old daughter there. Basically, we would have got to see him die, and I don't think either of us needed that.
I'll believe that the universe is random, that there is no plan. And I'll believe there is a kindness watching over us, sometimes moving us out of the way of bad things. But I refuse to believe in a bad plan, that my mother was kept from saving her father.
*Kurt Vonnegut
-:- -:- -:- -:-
More childhood stuff.
As I said in an earlier entry, my Grandpa died when I was three.
I don't remember much about it. It was also the summer my cousin was born, and the summer my mother, grandmother, father and I drove to Florida. My father was having a manic episode, his first since my parents' marriage, and nobody knew what was happening. At one point he left us in a motel in the Great Smokey Mountains, disappeared into the night with the car. I don't remember that, either. What I remember about the trip to Florida was the ocean. Nobody told me we'd arrived, and so I thought we'd come to this water we couldn't get over or around. I thought this was very bad planning on my parents' part.
But about Grandpa's death. He was alone when it happened because it was Band Day at the fair. It used to be I'd spend the weekend with my grandparents, then my mother and I would spend Monday with Grandpa. But this Monday was Band Day and we went with friend of my mother's. So he was alone, and he had either a heart attack or a stroke.
It was years before I found out that's what had killed him. See, he had this rocker, one of those overstuffed ones that turns around and rocks. I loved it, loved to sit in it and rock and spin around, only my grandmother would yell at me. Not because of the chair, but because it was sitting right in front of a window, and when I rocked hard, it would bang against the Venetian blinds, and, according to my grandma, they could fall down and cut me.
So for years I thought the Venetian blinds had got my grandpa. Oddly enough, that didn't frighten me. I kept sitting in his chair, and I kept rocking. I just watched out when I did it.
For a very long time my mother felt responsible for Grandpa's death. If only we had not gone to Band Day, she would have been there . . . .
She finally told me this, I think when I was in high school. (By this time I knew that the Venetian blinds had not been responsible.) And I remember thinking how wrong that was. I know I told her that's not how it works. I told her, if you'd been there, we'd been there, and just what would you have done, with your father having a heart attack and your three-year-old daughter there. Basically, we would have got to see him die, and I don't think either of us needed that.
I'll believe that the universe is random, that there is no plan. And I'll believe there is a kindness watching over us, sometimes moving us out of the way of bad things. But I refuse to believe in a bad plan, that my mother was kept from saving her father.
*Kurt Vonnegut