I’m in my hometown again to visit my grandmother. She continues to have slipped further away every time that I return. Her pride has remained though; she fought and raged against this world harder than anyone I have ever met, and that continues even now. I admire, empathize, and am repelled by the way she approached this life. Ninety-six years, however you get there, is an accomplishment.
Most of this last year with her has been in the rest home. Even here her pride refuses to let her eat with the other residents, and yet she remains cheerful and funny with the nurses. She swings wildly between an uncompromised attitude toward life, and a resigned attitude towards death. For someone who has told me for so long that she wants to die, has expected to die, she is on a fundamental level a survivor. This however is coming to an end. Even I can see it and feel it. Someday soon her prediction will be proven right, but she will have been wrong for so many years, that she’ll remain the most fucked up role model I will ever know in my life. And I will love her forever as a kindred spirit.
