Two Dead Grandmas and Two Delightful Granddaughters

One of my two grandmothers kicked the bucket back in the 1960s. I was just a young whippersnapper back then and I remember traveling with my family to Pittsburgh to see her in the hospital where she was dying of cancer. She didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak her language so I just stood there in the familial semi-circle of relatives that surrounded her hospital bed. For the first time in my life I was watching someone die.

I never knew her.

My other grandmother died in the early 1980s. She also didn’t speak English. But I never got to stand by her bedside as she died. She died in Europe while I was sowing my wild oats as a young man in America. I didn’t even find out about her death until several months after she kicked the bucket.

I never really knew her.

One of my grandfathers died a couple of decades before I was even born. The other one died in the late 1970s, a few years before my other grandmother kicked the bucket. He didn’t speak English, either, although I understood almost everything he said.

Although we spoke different languages I loved him dearly. He was the only grandparent that I was ever able to connect with. I was heartbroken when I learned about his death almost a year after it happened.

I am the official black sheep of my genealogical family. I am scorned and shunned and horrible stories are passed down about me. For me, it is a matter of both pride and sadness. The family lineage has been on the verge of extinction except for one male nephew who, with three children, has had one male son. The continuation of the family lineage, according to the male-centric way in which modern society traces family lineage, lies solely in the sperm of this distant nephew.

I have never met the kid.

As far as my own sperm goes, I have only fathered one child and that one child was a girl (thank God). She is the one human that I love more than any other human on the planet. She is the apple of my eye, my one true soul-mate, my dear friend, and the seat of almost all my pride. She blows me away.

She is in her Thirties now and she has given birth to two children; both girls (thank god). I may not have known my grandparents but these two delightful little girls know their grandpa. And, thankfully, we speak the same language.

The oldest of my two granddaughters is in second grade now and the youngest is in kindergarten. Luckily, they only live 11 blocks away from me. I walk over to their house a couple of times a month to play with them. It is one of the greatest highlights of my life.

Whenever I enter the front door of their home they both stand up and start jumping up and down as they scream at the top of their little lungs, “Grandpa! Grandpa! Grandpa!”

For me, this is the greatest reward of my long life. I can’t think of anything better than this.

From the very get-go I have made it clear to my two delightful granddaughters that I am not an authoritarian figure. I tell them repeatedly that they are the boss; that I will do whatever they order me to do. I am their playmate that they can play with and order around. I have experienced countless imaginary tea parties and picnics with them, I have sat and colored with crayons with them for countless hours, I have played hide-and-go-seek way more times than I care to admit. I have played with dolls, I have changed imaginary doll diapers, I have played catch with big plastic balls, I have pushed them on the swing-set in their backyard a zillion times, I have chased them and been chased by them countless times around the yard, I have put together thousands of pieces of Legos with them, I have been their imaginary butler a thousand times, I have sang along with them to an imaginary karaoke, I have been their enthusiastic audience to countless performances, and I have told countless made-up stories that they have forced out of my creative noggin. I’ll do whatever they order me to do.

Is it any wonder that they love me so much?

Of course, the day will soon come when they enter puberty and quickly begin forgetting everything that came before. That is what happened with their mother and, no doubt, countless other little girls. They will begin developing their own identities; identities that propel them out of their formative years into those years when they endeavor to break out of childhood into more “mature” times.

That is when I start fading from their memories. That is when my influence beings to erode. That is when I cease to be a playmate and become the stereotypical grandpa.

That is when I truly start aging. That is when I become a memory instead of a friend.

But I will inwardly rejoice in knowing that I will be a memory of being a friend and playmate rather than a memory of a sick grandparent in a hospital bed who didn’t even speak the same language as them. Hopefully, I will be someone that they intimately knew rather than some obscure memory of a dying grandparent they never really knew.

It may be my ego that wants this but it is also something that comes from my heart. I love them. I want to be the cat’s tied-dyed pajamas that they remember when they become grandparents so many years from now. I want them to experience the love of being a grandparent that I experience now.

I want to pay it forward.