Dear Grandma

I hated visiting my grandma when I was a kid.

We took family road trips to Montana every year growing up, and it wasn’t a trip that I looked forward to. Partially because she smoked, and the smoke smell would always stink up my clothes for many days after we left. But it was mainly because she didn’t let me play my gameboy. And she forced me to finish all my vegetables. Cooked carrots and cooked green beans are gross, man. She was stern and very rule oriented, but never harsh.

Sometimes I would sneak off into the bedroom and play my gameboy and she would come in and say, “nope, nope. No games. How about you read to me?” And she would take out some difficult, non-video game magazine book without any pictures, like “Huckleberry Finn” or “Tom Sawyer,” and I’d struggle mightily through it, while she’d sit by patiently and correct any mistakes and define words I didn’t know. So boring, right?! I wanted to play mario.

She had an old bike and insisted I learn how to ride it. I don’t want to go outside, though, I wanna play video games! Riding a bike is hard. But, after enough scrapes and bruises, I would ride around to the nearby park and back. Sometimes, she’d even give me a few bucks, and I’d ride over to the candy store and pick up some salt water taffy and flavored candy canes.

Every week she’d have her sister and brother come over and some play complicated card games that I didn’t understand. I only liked playing “Crazy 8’s” and would ask them if we could play that instead, but no, Bridge was their game. I did use that opportunity to escape and get some gameboy time in, at least.

Aside from our visits, she’d send letters, pretty frequently. They were all written in elaborate cursive and I could barely make anything out. I’d give them to my dad to read to me, and he’d put his glasses down on his nose and start narrating them, and tell me that I needed to write her back. I would always push back, procrastinate, but he’d keep nudging me until I’d eventually write some one page “Hi Nana I am doing good school is going good here is a drawing of a shark” type letter back.

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My parents divorced when I was 12 and my dad moved out, and after that we stopped taking our yearly trips to Montana, and letters became less frequent (or I would just reply less frequently as my dad wasn’t around as much to nudge me about it). I was a pretty emo kid at the time and mostly kept to myself, trolling people on AOL or playing video games.

When I was 15 my dad took me on a long road trip where we visited my grandma, which was the first time I’d seen her in 4 years or so. Her sister had passed away, but since my dad and I were visiting we had enough players to play Bridge again, and they were willing to teach me how to play, and I was willing to learn. I held my own and felt like something resembling an adult.

The last time I visited, I was 18, the summer before college. My grandma was struggling a lot more this time. She had developed glaucoma and wasn’t moving around as gingerly as before. She still was fiercely independent, though, and even insisted on driving, but uh, that was completely terrifying and we did not let her drive us again…

I drove us back from the grocery store after my dad and I concocted a plan to say that I wanted to practice driving more, and she taught me how to cook burgers by taking a chunk of ground beef, rolling it into a sphere, and then smooshing it between two pieces of wax paper into a nice, flat, round shape. She also taught me how to make mashed potatoes - which, well, was just mashing potatoes and putting a lot of butter in, and prepare corn by putting a bunch of butter in. This was the first time I had made anything other than eggs. I did… Okay, I think? No one complained, at least.

Late at night, I had a fight over the phone with my girlfriend at the time, over some nonsense. I made a big ruckus and woke up my grandma, who came out to tell me I was being loud and to go to sleep, but noticed that I was an emotional wreck and checked up on me. I remember asking her, “am I making a big mistake?” as I was going off to college and my girlfriend and I were going try to do long distance. She said, “I know you, you’ll do the right things. Don’t worry so much.”

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I didn’t know my grandpa - he passed away before I was born. I didn’t really even know my grandma’s life very well either - at least, other than my personal experiences with her. On the drive home from that trip, I asked my dad about them. My grandma grew up during the great depression, which explained how she was generally conservative with money, and eventually became a school teacher, which explained why she was always wanting to teach me things. During World War II, she actually temporarily stopped teaching and worked as a codebreaker for the war effort, and met my grandpa, who was a fighter pilot, somewhere in all of that. They fell in love and married, had my dad, and lived a suburban life in quiet areas of America. They made sure my dad had a strong education and worked hard.

My grandpa, unfortunately, passed away quite young - suddenly, from a blood clot, when my dad was in college. My grandma never remarried - never even dated again. But she was determined to never be a burden to my dad. She saved her money, she paid off all her debt, she took care of her siblings, and she always vehemently insisted that she could take care of herself just fine, by herself.

And she did.

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While I was off in college, I got a call from my dad. He said, “your grandma was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, the doctor says she has maybe a year left. We’re going to visit now, and we’ll assess the situation, but we want to come pick you and your sister up in a few weeks for a full family trip.”

“But you should write her a letter.”

I agreed, and that night, I went to my computer and stared at a blank word document for what felt like hours. What do I even write? I hadn’t written a letter to her in many years. I made the font really big and bold to make sure she could read it, and eventually just started writing… Something. Honestly, I had no idea what I wrote, I just wrote whatever came into my head. The letter ended up being 15 pages, and I crammed it into an envelope, which looked rather silly and bulbous, and put it on my dresser.

I addressed it and it was all ready to go, but I only had one stamp left, and thought to myself, “this is too big for just a single stamp… I’ll go pick one up tomorrow and then send it.” Tomorrow became two days, three days, a week. I would make a mental note of it every morning when I saw it, but then I would think, eh, you know what, maybe I’ll just bring the letter to her when we visit. But the truth was, part of me didn’t want to send it. It was embarrassing. It was just, like, so long. Like… Sooo looong. What did it even say?!

My dad called me the next week. “Your grandma passed away peacefully last night, in her sleep,” he said. “It was just her time.”

She lived to 88 years old.

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She had a military funeral. All I really remember was my dad spoke, there was a three-volley salute, and my sister was crying the entire time. It was probably the first time I had ever seen my dad nearly cry, though he held his composure well.

But I didn’t feel sadness. I just felt numb.

I thought I was a broken.

I went back to school, did my midterms, and just kind of kept going through the motions. But every day, I would see the unsent letter. That massive bulbous envelope on top of my dresser. That stupid letter. What an idiot. Why didn’t I just send it? Why was I such a stupid lazy idiot, who couldn’t even be bothered to buy a stamp, while my grandma was dying? A stupid, lousy, lazy, ungrateful, broken moron, that’s what I was.

I still hadn’t even really felt sadness about it all - just numb, with some self-loathing sprinkled in. I would feel that pang of guilt each time I saw the envelope. You idiot. You could have just sent it. You should have just sent it! Loser. Jerk. Why were you so scared to send it? What did it even say?!

One day, I was fed up with myself. I grabbed it off the dresser and stared at it. “What the hell did this stupid say letter anyway?” I said out loud, to no one in particular.

I sat on my bed in my tiny studio apartment and ripped the letter open. All 15 pages spilled out. I collected it, and started reading it, out loud, as if I was reading it to her.

And all the emotions finally came pouring out. I was a blubbering, sobbing mess.

What did it say? Well, I talked about everything. My life, my school, my girlfriend, random things I was thinking about, my goals, my hopes for the future. I talked about all the many nice memories of visiting. I told her about how my dad was the “grandma translator” for all her letters. I talked about how I taught my college friends Bridge, and how we would play every few weeks in the dorms, and would think of her.

The last page was just thank-yous.

Thank you for teaching me how to read. Thank you for teaching me how to ride a bike. Thank you for teaching me how to cook. I still make hamburgers the exact way you taught me, wax paper and all.

Thank you for being such a wonderful mother to my father, who has been a wonderful father to me in turn. Thank you for instilling in him so many good values, he has carried them over. I hope I make you both proud.

You have taught me so very much and made my life better in so many ways. Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for everything.

Love you, Nana.

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I learned a lot of important lessons from my grandma, but that was the most important one - that I should never be afraid to tell someone that I am grateful for them. That, although it may feel vulnerable and embarrassing, I should always express my appreciation to those who have made a positive impact in my life, while I can.