When I think about my family, I’m struck by what a haunted house it is. Scary things go on in every room, but the noises from the other rooms make you afraid to venture out, for fear there’s worse than what’s happening to you.
It’s apparent to me now how these things go on for generations, how people get shaped into things as children and then shape others as they get older. How many fingers on how many arms would I need to point to everyone who bears some responsibility for yesterday’s debacle? And that’s not counting the people, I’m afraid like me, who sit back and do nothing.
I mean the almost nursery-rhyme level of if my father had not scared that girl and my grandpa had not beaten my dad and if my great-grandmother had not terrorized my grandfather and if whoever did whatever to her… on and on.
It feels like a curse, like a terrible thing that just comes with our family like blue eyes and curly hair. You might be a monster. If you aren’t, you might not know how to love anything but a monster.
Here’s the other thing that I can’t quite let go of. I love my Grandma A., rest her soul, with my whole heart. My dad’s mom. Every memory I have of her and me is one I cherish. I loved going to her house. I loved being spoiled by her. One of the hardest times of my life was watching her waste away but not being able to die, thinking that God had abandoned her.
And my dad also adores his mom. Doesn’t have a bad thing to say about her. Frames himself as a kind of protector of her from his dad. That gibes with my memories of her.
One of the things my brother’s girlfriend said on the phone is that it really bugs her and makes her feel like my dad is constantly comparing the two of them the way he goes on about how wonderful my sister-in-law is. My sister-in-law. A woman so vile I can’t even get into it because, if I get started, I won’t be able to make it through the day–the cigarette burn on my nephew’s forehead, the taking him to the fucking strip clubs when he was a baby, the time she threatened to kill my dog, the shitty things she does to my nephew now, and how much he loves her anyway, because that’s what kids do, the refusal to divorce my brother, etc. etc. etc.–a woman who is not allowed to know where I live and who I will probably end up assaulting at my father’s funeral, because I know she will come and try to sit with the family. Just like she tried to take my dead grandmother’s stuff after her funeral, a woman she did not know, because she was “part of the family now.”
And yes, my dad does talk about her like she farts sunshine. And he sends her money whenever she asks for it. And it is completely insane. She is objectively terrible.
It taints my opinion of my grandmother–that my dad so adores this terrible person. It makes me worried that my grandmother was terrible in some way I don’t know about because I was too young to see it when she was alive and he’s successfully rewritten history now that she’s dead.
And that kind of pisses me off. That I can’t even be sure that I really knew the people I love most.
Tiny Cat Pants 
Well, you know for sure who and what your grandmother was to you. Whatever your father may (or, ya know, may not) be inventing, you have your own memories of your own interactions with her. Those, for you, are true. She may (or, ya know, may not) have interacted differently with others than she did with you, and it’s true that you can’t know that. But you have no reason to think that her behavior to you was a lie.
And your father may be capable of loving more than one kind of woman, in more than one kind of way — grant him that level of complexity.
I’m still reeling from “the taking him to the fucking strip clubs” – what in the actual hell?
It may also be that your grandmother being a good person made it harder for him to believe the other one is not. Maybe he can’t let himself believe that deep down, she’s really that bad. Some men actually do have a very hard time believing a woman they know (or found charming) could be a bad person. Don’t assume the worst and let it poison your good memories.
The worst part in my family is that the grandparents refused to talk about their parents. So you see family members repeating echos of behaviors, and of course inventing their own individual ways of passing down bad AND the elderly grandparents finally falling apart from holding in all their lives and never processing things.