Mar. 20: Visit with Grandma

Yesterday we drove to Cottage Grove to meet my mom and hand Katie off to her for most of spring vacation. Cottage Grove is a good halfway point between Portland and Medford, and it’s been our meeting place for the last few years. I’m not sure what’s in Cottage Grove besides the fast food restaurants at exit 174. Cottage Grove is neither cottagey nor grovey, and as there is no evidence to the contrary, a complete bore. Discuss.

The downside of the drive being only a couple hours long is that my grandmother invites herself along with Mom most of the time, and it’s hard for Mom to come up with a good reason to say no. For this meeting, though, Mom asked if it was alright if she invited Grandma and I agreed that she should. Mom and I managed to keep the heavy sighs to a minimum during that conversation—yay us, right?

If you’re not familiar with the back story here, this is it in a nutshell: my grandma hates my guts, and no one’s exactly sure why. I gave up feeling hurt over it and decided I pretty much can’t stand her either, and we’ve been like that for the last handful of years. It’s an awkward co-existence, but it is what it is. (You can click the “my evil grandmother” tag at the bottom of this post to read more about Grandma’s nastiness.)

BUT… since my cancer diagnosis, Grandma has forgotten that she hates me and keeps insisting that she wants to visit me in Portland. For many reasons, we have all discouraged her from making the trip, and she has accused me of all sorts of meanness over it, especially at a time when I “should have my heart open” to her. She says my mom’s lying to her when Mom reminds her how hard it is to get around at my house in her wheelchair, etc., that there must be other reasons no one will let her travel to Portland to see me. Like many ancient human artifacts, Grandma hears and forgets very selectively.

My goal yesterday, then, was to get Grandma to leave Mom the hell alone about insisting on a trip to Portland. A little bit o’ Jen in Cottage Grove is better than none at all, right? Ha.

Usually when I see Grandma, I just sorta wave to her—no huggy-kissy-fakey crap for me. She’s all about the huggy-kissy-fakey crap, so I can tell this irritates her. And while I don’t ignore her during our brief visits, I don’t usually go out of my way to talk to her. Yesterday, though, I went up and hugged her right away. I think I surprised her. She probably assumes cancer has softened me, because HELLO? I’m such a bad granddaughter I NEVER could’ve changed on my own.

She asked right away how I was feeling and I answered honestly: TIRED. (I left out “annoyed that I have to see you and pretend you’re awesome” and “Mom has already smirked at me five times over your behavior during the drive here so you’ve managed to piss us all off before we even see you!”)

She said, “Well, you look really good!” as though I was lying. In fact, I’m pretty sure she did think I was lying. When Mom recently gave her a photo of me and Vic at chemo, she told Kathy, “I think Jen looks great, but I have to believe your mom that she’s not well enough to have visitors...” (Insert eye rolls from Kathy, Mom and Jen here.)

We chatted over McNuggets for half an hour, in which Grandma asked about my symptoms and cancer in general, how my cancer compares to the cancer my dad had, if I caught it from him, when I’ll start feeling better, if I can swallow pills easily, is that why my eyes are so blue right now, etc. She seemed genuinely concerned, and, surprisingly, listened when I replied to her questions. Before we left, she said, “It was good to see you. I feel better having some answers.”

I imagine it would be difficult for someone like her to understand all of this, as most of her knowledge of cancer is probably what she hears on the news or from her friends—no complete facts and research. No Internet. No desire to spend an afternoon at the library reading up. Her word search books tend to be light on the latest cancer news. So while I didn’t feel like I was giving her all that much real information, it was probably a lot more than she knew before and to some degree, it must have set her mind at ease.

So… our visit yesterday was one of the nicer ones in my recent memory. When I hugged Grandma goodbye, she got choked up, squeezed my hand and said, “I’m praying for you, Jen.” I admit, it choked me up a little bit too. It’s hard to be aloof when someone is being as sincere as they’re capable of.

It’s the first time in a long time I’ve said goodbye to Grandma while not wanting to just plain choke her.