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My mother's mother, my grandmother, who I've wanted for many years to die,
a fact which I have stated to the family on several occasions, is finally
granting me my wish. She's old. She's be senile soon. She's a burden. She
makes me sad; she had such potential... My grandmother was sold, when she was
several months old, by her parents to a rich couple. The rich couple had
found themself unable to concieve, it seemed, and so decided to buy a child.
They needed a child, it seemed, for parties; something to dress up, to show
off, someone to sing and dance. My grandmother was a great dancer; she
studied with Martha Graham and Twyla and all of those greats. She was given
a chance to be on Broadway, but was too scared of the stage to make the leap.
Her parents tired of her quickly, it seemed; they sent her off to boarding
school as soon as they good, she spent most of her childhood and all of her
teen years in convents. The rich couple never told my grandmother that she
was adopted, she found that out when she read their obituary in the New York
Times. Unfortunately for my grandmother, before they had died they had
managed to have a daughter of their own; all of their money went to her, and
my grandmother got nothing. She was engaged to Ripley, of "Ripley's Believe
It or Not!" for a while, but broke it off when she met my grandfather. They
divorced when my mother was in highschool. My grandmother had a lot of
potential, but she made nothing of it. She used to write and illustrate
stories for my mother, she filled many notebooks with poems; she never made
anything of her gifts. Now she's finally dying.
No one close to me has ever died before. I sort of feel like I've been
missing out. I guess Nana doesn't really count, I mean, we're not really
that close, but ah well.
So I wanted her to die, so that she'd stop being a burden, so that I'd
have something to write about, and now she's obliging me. I feel like if I
don't write about her death, that that would be like wasting it.
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