caerula's Diaryland Diary

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the old folks at home

I'm feeling kind of crappy today. Not sure why. I don't think I slept well, and my throat feels funny. It doesn't hurt, exactly, but it feels raw and like there's something stuck in it, sort of. I can't really describe it. But it isn't good.

Dropped in on Crazy Mormon Cousin Family yesterday; I was in their part of town and had half an hour to kill. The Diva was outside in her pajamas on the swing set (it was 4 pm). Bubbles was apparently upstairs, but she never appeared so they may have her tied up in a closet somewhere, I don't know. They are remodeling the house, apparently, and it's completely torn apart. R was in the garage hammering and sawing, and T and I stood in the disheveled kitchen to chat. She claims to be recovering from scarlet fever. Who gets scarlet fever any more? Isn't that what made Mary Ingalls go blind?

Anyway, that's not a very exciting CMCF story, but it relates to the story I am going to tell, which is about Grandma. T and I got to talking about her latest adventure, and I was reminded that I hadn't mentioned it here. I know I've mentioned before that my grandmother is crazy mean, what with setting the kitchen on fire, rummaging through the neighbors garbage in the middle of the night, and wandering around nearly naked. But this latest nearly tops all of those.

Where to start. The rest of Grandma's remaining family � her brothers, sisters, and their kids � all live in Alabama still, where Grandma was grew up. Grandma goes down periodically to visit, usually accompanied by my cousin S, who is the only one who can put up with her for the length of time required. By all accounts, Grandma hates her family. All we ever heard about was her dad beating her, her brothers cruel teasing, her sisters ignoring her because she was the baby. But she visits them anyway, I expect to give her new excuses to tell 40-year-old stories to us.

So she and S flew down a couple of weeks ago because her brother Rand was dying. Her oldest brother, whom she lived with when she was a teenager after she left her parents house, and who all we knew about was that he was really mean to her and his wife was worse. I never met the man, but I believe this is the man who said to my father, upon meeting my mother soon after they were married, "You let your wife wear pants?" I've never heard anything good about this man. But he was dying, so Grandma had to go down.

Hospice had been called in. Grandma firmly believes that hospice workers kill people, because every time someone she knows has hospice case, they die. Doesn't matter how many times you explain to her that hospice is generally only called in when someone is certainly dying anyway; hospice kills people. So I guess she was going down to stop hospice from killing Rand, or something.

You have to understand that to Grandma, if you're dying or dead, you're suddenly a martyr. Nothing bad can be said about you. My grandfather, whom I never met, was, according to my dad, a lying, cheating, alcoholic son-of-a-bitch. I grew up thinking he was a saint, just from listening to Grandma's stories about him. So it wasn't surprising that once Grandma got down there, her phone calls were suddenly full of stories about all the wonderful things Rand had done for her when she was young. She even said to my dad, "you know, I'd forgotten about some of the things Rand did for us, until he reminded me the other day." Sigh.

Anyway, last week Rand, not surprisingly, died. The man was like 88 years old, and had some sort of fatal illness, I'm not really sure what. Anyway, he's dead, and frankly, no one up here is mourning for him. Grandma had been staying with her sister Eunice (yep, that's really her name), but apparently they had a big fight, so instead she went to stay with Rand's second wife, whose name I do not know. This was after he died, but before the funeral. She went with wife #2 to the funeral home to "help" with the arrangements, and, you guessed it, ended up paying for the entire funeral.

Grandma lives on social security and her pension. $900 a month. She recently had some money from the sale of some property, and was living off that; apparently she's now spent the rest of it on the funeral of a man she didn't even like, because supposedly "those people don't have any money." And, well, she gave wife #2 some spending money, because she was so depressed. Grandma called my dad after she'd written checks to the wife and the funeral home, telling him to make sure there was "5" in her checking account.

Dad:"Mom, I'm sure you have $500 in there."
Grandma:"No, I mean $5000."
Dad:"Mom, what did you do?"
Grandma:"It's my money and I can spend it how I want."

Dad eventually wangled the story out of her, along with the confession that she'd probably spent more like $10,000. So then he asks her how much longer she's staying - he's afraid she's going to decide she can't fly back alone, and he's going to have to go down and get her.

Grandma: "I'm not coming back until I get these people down here straightened out."

Honestly. I am not going to live long enough to see that happen; Grandma certainly won't. My southern relatives are true hillbillys. Rand and his wife were living in a trailer in the middle of a field somewhere in rural Alabama. Eunice goes broke every week playing bingo. Rand's one remaining son is a deadbeat and an alcoholic. (He had three. One died of an aneurysm. The other was stabbed to death in a bar fight -- by his wife.) Grandma wants to make sure the remaining son doesn't run off with Rand's estate (despite the fact that she's paying for everything because he had no money), keep Eunice from running herself into the ground, and spend more time with wife #2, because "she's been so sweet to me." Sure she has. Once she finds out she's drained you dry, I bet the sweetness will stop quick.

The only good news is that at least someone else is dealing with Grandma for a while. My mom's comment was, "they're getting her money, but they have to put up with her." That about sums it up.

So that's my dad's side of the family. I am sooo glad that they left Alabama before Dad was old enough to get killed in a bar fight or lapse into alcoholic stupor. I could be working in a Piggly-Wiggly somewhere, missing half my teeth and beating my dog.

It just goes to show that family really isn't everything.

11:13 a.m. - April 05, 2002

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