the unmeasurable weight of memories
Aug. 21st, 2009 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
turbogrrlFor nick and I to actually move in ...(I've been typing on this stupid small keyboard for no reason, and it's been driving me crazy. I went and got the full size keyboard off the damn shelf, like I've been meaning to do for *months now*. So There. Take that, keyboard!)
Right. Where was I?
Oh, yeah. for us to move in, a lot of shit has Got To Go. And most of it is, well, memories. My brain doesn't hold them so well, so I outsource them to tangible objects.
So I just found a card that my dad's dad sent me in early 03, which is basically a plea for me to come and visit him at the Friends' home for elderly Quakers.
I did not go.
He passed away in 07.
I could leave it at that. I *should* leave it at that, or at least, save it for a book called 'things I shouldn't write about' and published under a pseudonym.
Part of it was that no one in that family really considered me one of the family. There were his granddaughters, and then there was me, 'oh, yes, and Ken's daughter Jenny'. Riiiight. Thank you. I was a graft that didn't take very well, I guess.
But part of it was just that as I got older I was able to tell just how horribly wounded all of his children were, and how horribly wounded most of *their* children were because their parents had grown up knowing nothing but beatings and not-quite-enough food and rigid moralizing. And it made me angry. And rather than pour all of that cold anger over an old, frail, lonely man-- because I wasn't quite sure how I could contain that anger-- I let him think that I was just a stereotypically distant youngster who couldn't spare any time for old people.
Sorry I didn't visit you, Grandfather. It's just that, well, I didn't like you.
Right. Where was I?
Oh, yeah. for us to move in, a lot of shit has Got To Go. And most of it is, well, memories. My brain doesn't hold them so well, so I outsource them to tangible objects.
So I just found a card that my dad's dad sent me in early 03, which is basically a plea for me to come and visit him at the Friends' home for elderly Quakers.
I did not go.
He passed away in 07.
I could leave it at that. I *should* leave it at that, or at least, save it for a book called 'things I shouldn't write about' and published under a pseudonym.
Part of it was that no one in that family really considered me one of the family. There were his granddaughters, and then there was me, 'oh, yes, and Ken's daughter Jenny'. Riiiight. Thank you. I was a graft that didn't take very well, I guess.
But part of it was just that as I got older I was able to tell just how horribly wounded all of his children were, and how horribly wounded most of *their* children were because their parents had grown up knowing nothing but beatings and not-quite-enough food and rigid moralizing. And it made me angry. And rather than pour all of that cold anger over an old, frail, lonely man-- because I wasn't quite sure how I could contain that anger-- I let him think that I was just a stereotypically distant youngster who couldn't spare any time for old people.
Sorry I didn't visit you, Grandfather. It's just that, well, I didn't like you.
