Not only her, but also my great-grandmother and my elegantly intellectual great-aunt. (My grandmother was gone long before I came onto the scene.)
Oh, my! How my mother would have admired her bright and classy grandson today! She really would have thought he was The Business.
But alas, she smoked herself to death shortly before her grandson came on the scene.
When the word came down, in the 1950s, that smoking causes cancer, she decided the pronouncement was Big Brother trying to control our behavior. So she chose to ignore the science.
And, not surprisingly, she developed the disease shortly after my father retired and betook himself and her to Sun City, Arizona.
Not long after her cancer was discovered, my pregnancy was also discovered! No kidding: my first (and only) child.
She was so sick by the time she lay dying that she didn’t much care about anything or anyone around her. No doubt what she most wanted was an end to it all.
Shortly after M’jito was born, I took him out to my parents’ house in Sun City, there to introduce the grandparents to him.
When I carried him into their bedroom to show him off, she took one look at him, shrugged, and said,”Meh!”
She wasn’t even slightly interested in him.
So offended was I that I felt I never wanted to see her again. But…well… That was neither feasible nor humane. My father needed my support, and on reflection I had to allow that she had no reason to get all excited about a child that she would never watch beyond infancy. Particularly given that she didn’t especially like children…
Eventually, then, I got over it. After all (as I came to realize)…
- She would not live to see this child grow old enough to toddle around on two feet.
- She didn’t especially care for children; she had me only because her grandmother insisted on it.
- When she died, we figured, our little son would be well short of the age when he would remember her. And that proved to be true, in spades.
- And I could not walk away from her as she lay dying.
Still. What would it have taken to have muttered, “That’s nice, dear. Congratulations…”
So. OK, I never got over it. And yeah: I want my mother back. The mother who was still reasonably healthy before she smoked herself into oblivion, the one who cared about everyone around her, the one who would have been delighted with her adorable little grandchild.
But no. ‘Twas not to be.