My brother was always my
grandmother’s favorite. I didn’t really see anything wrong with this since I
thought my big brother was the neatest person ever myself. And my grandmother
never short-changed me in the love department; she just loved my brother a
little bit more.
At the time that she died, my
brother and his first wife were having marital problems. Shortly after she
died, they split up, and my brother moved into my grandmother’s now vacant
house. He invited his good friend, Doug, to be his roommate, and all was well
in their bachelor pad.
About a year later, my brother
started dating a gal who was, shall we say, a bit high-maintenance. She
eventually moved in with him. At first we thought Sandy was making stuff up
when she talked about finding spent matches on the edge of the stove. The old
thing had a flaky pilot light that tended to go out on a regular basis. Sandy
was convinced that Grandma was re-lighting the pilot to keep her precious boy
from blowing up or being overcome by leaking gas. We didn’t even believe her
when she told us she’d actually seen a plump gray-haired woman up in the attic
when she’d gone up there looking for something. The woman was standing in front
of a pile of boxes of my grandmother’s things, glaring at Sandy.
Then one day, she asked my
brother why he kept moving her slippers out from under the edge of the bed. For
the fifth time, she’d found them across the room when she was sure she’d left
them close to hand (or foot rather) under the bed.
That stopped us cold. My
grandmother was a lady. She never, ever said anything blatantly off color. But
when she was watching old movies with Rock Hudson or Cary Grant, she would sigh
and say, “That man can put his shoes under my bed any time he wants.” We, as
kids, had no clue what this meant. It just stuck in our heads because we
thought it was a strange thing to say.
When Sandy accused my brother of
moving her slippers, the pieces fell into place. Grandma did not like Sandy!
She did not want this girl’s slippers under her grandson’s bed.
A few months later, my brother
decided he agreed with our grandmother and he gave Sandy the boot. Awhile after
that, the sweet young woman who ended up becoming his second wife moved in. And
we never heard from Grandma again.
Fast forward 35 years. My mother
died at 76 after a 6-month battle with cancer. She and my stepfather had
retired to Florida but most of their friends and family still lived in Maryland
(including my brother and I at the time) so he decided to have her memorial
service up north. After the service he headed back to Florida. He had already
decided that he didn’t want to live in their house alone; he was going to move
into a condo. On that long drive south, he was thinking about everything he
needed to do to get the house ready to put on the market. As he thought about
how he would dispose of my mother’s clothing, he started getting a case of the
guilts. Was it disrespectful to be so hasty about throwing out or giving away
her clothes and other personal belongings?
When he got home, he walked into
the bedroom and opened the closet door. The rod in the closet had broken, on my
mother’s end, and had dumped all my mother’s clothes onto the floor of the
closet. He looked at the ceiling and said, “Got it, Marty,” and went to get
bags to start packing up her clothes for Goodwill.
So, this is a Mother’s Day
tribute. To Ma and Grandma, who stuck around even after they were dead to make
sure everybody was okay.
