My life (or something like it) - Feb. 1994

My grandma was the matriarch of a very large family. My mom has 2 brothers and 1 sister living, as well as one who passed on when she was young. From this sizable brood it was estimated that at the time of my grandma’s illness that she had well over 70 children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and I think at least 1 great-great grandchild. And that’s a lot of people to have visiting your house, not including spouses and friends. But my mom’s family has tried to be a close one (outside of my mom, who moved to OC, most of her family lives down in San Diego), so those that could came to pay their last respects as soon as my grandmother became bedridden in early February. And… most of them spoke Spanish… the whole time. (I don’t speak it very well) And our dishwasher broke, requiring that all the dishes be washed by hand. (Guess whose job that was?)

For some people this may have been comforting, for me it was irritating and then some. I never really got any alone time with my grandma in those last days, and spent most of time either helping clean up after all our guests, or trying to pick out what I could understand of conversations in a language I didn’t speak, trying to be friendly with relatives I hadn’t seen in years. Needless to say I spent a lot of time in my room that month.

On her last night with us a priest came to give my grandma last rites (she was Catholic), and at her request everyone at the house squeezed into her small bedroom, held hands and then the priest instructed everyone to say “the Lord’s prayer”. Except… I’d never been in a church in my life, outside of some intervention attempts by my grandmothers (my other grandma was a Jehovah’s Witness), my parents are carefully raised me in a organized religion free zone, I had been a self-declared practicing wiccan for about two months, and even if I did want to fake it, I had no idea what the Lord’s Prayer was, much less had the words memorized like everyone else in the room seemed to… awkward does not begin to describe this moment. Here was my grandmother’s dying wish and no one had even given me the warning nor the means to grant it. My parents (whom I saw very little of during this time) even knowing the kind of environment they had raised me in, did not warn me, did not prep me, didn’t even talk to me afterwards. When the announcement came the next day that my grandmother had passed away during the night, I knew that now I was on my own emotionally – whether I wanted to be or not.