smokes and jokes

I worry I am losing my memories of my grandmother. Did she talk with her hands?

I can see her in my mind, sitting in a chair rolling her hand in the air - there should be a name for that gesture - her palm down parallel to the floor, forearm perpendicular to her torso, then sweeping her hand slightly toward her belly then back to forearm perpendicular while she flipped her palm face up, the gesture repeated to show repetition. “And more and more and more” “it goes on and on and on” “they just keep talking, get to the point.” Her other hand holds a lit cigarette that bobs slightly with the emphasis in her words.

This feels true. Is it? I could ask my mom. If I ask my mom, and if she says no, then… what? I won’t have anything to replace this idea of my grandmother’s mannerisms.

I didn’t go see her in the end, didn’t want the her with Alzheimers to stand in the way of the her I remembered. My mom was kind ‘it’s fine, she won’t know even if you’re here;’ I still believe it but I now see how coming to see her would have also meant helping my mom carry some of the weight a while, doing my share. I wasn’t ready to do that, in part because of the cloud around - between - my mom and me. (Hard to type that, feels like a betrayal - how dare you have your own feelings?! a frequent subtext so loud it drowned out whatever words that bore it - and feels like I’m going to get shouted at. Part of where the cloud comes from I guess.)

I think I can remember the skin on her hands being very wrinkled and very soft, creased like paper folded over and over, long nails shining from colorless nail polish, a small watch with a thin silver band, and almost always a lit cigarette. I know they’re poison sold by the worst people indifferent to the harm, but I think of cigarettes nostalgically, my grandparents smoking them in down time during or after a meal - two fried eggs, bacon, corned beef hash, cup of coffee, two slices of toast, cigarette in the hand or ashtray. I wish I had one now, for comfort.

I can remember the fabric of her couch, her with pink curlers in her hair, her taking out her teeth, dark circles under her eyes, dark wood panels in the kitchen. What was she like though?

I wonder if I am not losing the memories so much as realizing the gaps, the lack of context, the partiality of the picture. I’m an adult now, close to her age when I was born. I relate to people much differently than I did when I was a kid and she was in my life. It’s like I have a child’s drawings of her and have begun to realize they’re not photographs.

Jets to Brazil have a song lyric I’m not sure I remember correctly, something like ‘Mom and Dad I’m so glad I finally got to know you, years after I left home.’ I don’t know that I have the kind of relationship with my parents for that to happen, not sure I and they are equipped for that. I’d like to think it could have happened for my grandparents, and it’s an easy thought because it never has to be attempted. The evidence that this hypothesis is sensible is slim, and there is counterevidence: her insisting I did in fact believe in god, rolling her eyes at my tattoos, not listening when I explained I was in fact job hunting. Maybe if she’d lived longer we’d have fought more.

I don’t believe in god or an afterlife and I don’t want to be argumentative or disrespect anyone’s beliefs. I would like to believe that she’s still around somehow and that I could meet her again. I understand the attraction of that belief. But which her would I meet? Her at 50? 60? 70? And which me would I be? 5, 15, 25? Our relationship was a sequence over time of pairs of ages - me at 5 and her at 50, me at 15 and her at 60. Changing one number would change the whole sequence. Loss is forever.

I can hear the gravelly sound of her voice and remember verbal mannerisms. ‘That gal’ ‘you little squirt’ ‘give me a squish’ ‘oh sugar, I spilled my god blessed coffee.’ I can’t convey to my kids what she was like - she cooked poached eggs for me, on a special plate, she let me pick the music on the radio, listened patiently while I explained my drawings about robots - and that evokes her to me - or maybe it evokes to me what she did for me, is any of this actually her as a person or is it that I enjoyed what she did for me? do I even know what she was like? To my kids any of these are too abbreviated accounts, give them little of substance.

She gave good hugs, liked it when I sat in her lap, made me laugh. I can remember a couple stories she told, her face very animated, laughing. Even if inaccurately recalled, her stories still crack me up. I tell them to my kids and they crack up too, the laughter contagious through time.