Patricia Ann

Hi grandma. I don’t really know how to start this, I know I haven’t talked to you in a while and i’m sorry, I hope you know how often I think of you. I think of you with everything in me every day, even if it’s not appearant. Working with the people I work with makes me think of you the most. I think about what your story was, I think about the you I never got to know. I think about what your reasons were, why did you turn to alcohol and drugs? Was it grandpa? Was it just something the people you knew were doing? What were you numbing yourself from? I know Mary drinks, Annie kind of focuses her energy into her dog, Kathy seems well adjusted, your brothers are… well you know. So I don’t know if it’s something that happened to you as a kid, something that didn’t happen to anyone else, something no one knows. I just want to know because I want to understand you, I think everyone spent so much time being mad at you that no one tried to figure out why, what pain were you feeling to be doing these things. If anyone knows, they haven’t told me. Some times I think I went into this field because of Tanner, because of the things he would say to me, but I realized recently that it was because of you. I couldn’t help you, but I want to help others. I think I realized that in a moment after you passed, I remember in my human services class my professor talked about when she first became a counselor her boss had asked her if there was any population she couldn’t work with and she had said older people because her grandparents just had died and her boss made her first client an older person and said she had to get over that. I remember hearing that and thinking of you, I think I realized at that moment it was all for you.

I miss you so much, when I think about it for more than 10 minutes I can’t help but cry, which I know it doesn’t mean much considering I am always crying but this is a different cry. This is a crying that hurts, that gets stuck in my throat, makes my face turn all red, makes the birth mark in the middle of my forehead become visible, which doesn’t happen every time I cry. It hurts in my chest. I’ll never forgive myself for being so mad at you, and punishing you in your last months. I know I didn’t know they were your last months but that doesn’t make it easier. I can’t believe I was so stubborn, I remember everyone talking to me and telling me I needed to be nicer to you in those months, but I didn’t care. I was always the nice one to you, everyone spent years being mean to you and I was good to you and you hurt me and so I felt I deserved to be not nice. I will regret it for the rest of my life. There is nothing that can make that better, I just have to be better. I don’t allow myself to get angry at people anymore, I don’t avoid anyone anymore, even when I’m hurt I keep it pushing. I’m too scared of someone dying while i’m mad at them. At the time you died, the only other time I allowed myself to be angry at someone was Tanner and he had killed himself (yeah I know that’s not true but can you believe THATS the story they went with????). So the only 2 times I allowed myself to be mad, the people died, at least at the time that’s what I had believed. I would learn until a year later that Tanner was never dead, but a whole year went by of me thinking me being mad at people killed them or something. That has done damage to me that I can’t even begin to explain. I know i’m allowed to feel all the things I feel but I just can’t, I can never risk that again. I need people to die knowing I loved them.

I’ve been thinking about the last weekend I spent with you, I remember the smell of that hospice or hospital or whatever it was. I remember how the staff weren’t helping you, I remember my mom doing everything for you. I remember you yelling for help when I came in and I didn’t know what to do, I tried to follow your direction but I was so startled and panicked. I feel like I froze, or maybe I was on auto pilot. I remember you hating the food there so I ordered us dominos, I worked at a library then. I remember you wanting a specific poem with you when you died but you couldn’t remember it, I searched everywhere for it, I don’t even think I found the poem you were talking about but I found one and you said you thought that was it so I wrote it out for you, my handwriting doesn’t look like that anymore. My mom found it a few years ago and I said “who wrote that?!”, when she said I did I realized my writing doesn’t look like that one bit anymore, you’ll never know what my handwriting looks like now. I just realized that’s where my obsession with handwriting comes from, i’m scared I won’t have the handwriting of people I love when they die, I don’t have yours. I still have that poem, I have a few of your bobby pins that were in your hair when you passed and I have your glasses. I have your rosary beads and a few of the art pieces you had in your home. I have you in other ways, but not in the way I want. I don’t have you here, I don’t have your handwriting, I don’t get to see you get older, you don’t get to see me get older. You don’t get to see my mom grow or Lori. Sometimes I wonder if my mom is still with Him because she thinks of you, she gave up on you and didn’t have a good relationship with you because of your alcoholism and so she feels like she wants to help someone. I guess her and I are similar in that way.

I wish you were here to meet Raf, sometimes when he tells me or the people in his life tells me he talked about me it hits me in the heart for many reasons. The first being how lucky am I to have such a beautiful, loving and caring best friend that actually likes who I am at a person, doesn’t seem to be ashamed of me or have a problem with any parts of me, loves and accepts me as I am through and through AND wants to talk about me and share my existence with the people he loves. Another reason though is I always wish you were here to talk to about him, no one here really cares and if my mom asks it’s to judge me and to gossip about me. I can’t tell any of them anything because they all gossip and judge and it kills me and not that there’s anything to judge about Raf but I refuse to let him be a subject in their judgments. He is far too good for that. I think you’re truly the only person that would care, or get it. I’d kill to take you to the museum and just talk about my best friend with you and take you to eat.

Now that you’re gone I think of all the things I wish we could do, just to even be able to talk to you again. I watch the video Lori took of you on your last birthday with us sometimes, just to hear you and see you in motion again. I don’t know how realistic all of the things I wish we could do are, the chances are if you were here I would’ve forgiven you, I would talk to you as much as I could, we probably wouldn’t be close since no one lives in Taunton anymore and that’s the only time I saw you, hopefully we would’ve called. My mom was texting you more than I knew. Maybe things wouldn’t be like how I want because I would’ve never experienced losing you to know I wanted more. I experienced losing you and still don’t talk to grandpa much, in fact I think i’ve started to resent him more after your death. It made me so mad that all of these people that had all these comments about you when you were alive and just were so unkind with everything in them towards you had all these things to say and sorry for your loss and blah blah blah. They didn’t like you alive why pretend to like you now. When I die I hope no one does that, I don’t want that fakeness in death, I don’t know who decided that’s the polite thing to do.

I know this is a stupid hope, but I hope you’re okay. I don’t know if heaven is real but I know you believed so. I hope you’re there, I hope I get to see you again. I will remember you saying you are in my heart for the rest of my life, even though I was only 5. I think about that moment so often, even when you were still alive. I feel you in my bones, and I hope you’re around me. I hope you watch over me sometimes. Maybe you’re the one that guided me to Raf, doesn’t make sense that the universe would be kind to me so it had to be you. I’m seeing Stevie in a few weeks with Lori and my mom, i’ll be thinking of you the whole time.

I will always love you, I will always be sorry, and I will always miss you.